Summary
Japanese scientists have created the first step towards a device that can record people’s dreams and read their minds. The current experiments at the ATR institute in Kyoto, Japan showcase a system that uses MRI Scanners to scan subjects’ brains in order to read images from their minds through complicated computer programs. In their experiments, subjects are shown an image and the shown images are reconstructed based on the scans of their visual cortex. The team at ATR, calibrated a computer program by scanning volunteers that were made to stare at hundreds of still images in black, white and grey. Then the computer program was successfully used to reproduce those images, albeit a little blurry than the originals. The next step for researchers is to be able to visualize images in people’s minds that have not been presented beforehand. This is an amazing technology that sounds like science-fiction and opens doors to many possibilities and also raises important concerns regarding people’s privacy and social ethics.
