Filed under: Photo, Weird Wednesday
Weird Wednesday: software that records your dreams?
Each Wednesday Download Squad takes a look at the weirdest software out there. From future tech being cooked up in the lab to bizarre shareware, we'll cover the offbeat and off-the-wall. If you have a suggestion for a strange application, leave it in the comments.Scientists are working on ways to read your mind using software. It makes sense that if you know how to read brainwaves you'd be able to reconstruct what the eyes are seeing, right? But Yukiyasu Kamitani is taking it to another level: using a an MRI to scan your brain and recreate what you see in your mind on a computer screen. Ultimately the technology could be used to read your mind with enough fidelity to create a video of your thoughts or dreams.
As the article in New Scientist points out, all of this raises ethical concerns should the tech work from a distance. Do you want marketers to read your mind? What would Google do if they could put contextual ads in your life? Can you upload your brain to Flickr?
Of course, this is a long way off. Not only does the software need a lot of refinement, the hardware challenges of reading brainwaves with enough fidelity to recreate an image is a giant hurdle. In the meanwhile, keep buying Lightspeed Briefs to match your tin foil hats.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jimmy the Chip said 5:28PM on 2-04-2009
Victoria! Please, some more consideration in your reporting of scientific endeavours!
"It makes sense that if you know how to read brainwaves you'd be able to reconstruct what the eyes are seeing, right?" - Really?
The main point here is that the image is reconstructed in the simpler parts of the visual cortex. In essence, blood flow to areas of the brain corresponding to specific areas of your retina is related to the light falling on it. This is before any complex processing is done by the brain. A dream, obviously, does not work in the same way.
You use for your headline "software that records your dreams?", yet the only reference to dreams in the article is;
"The research also hints that scientists might one day be able to access dreams, memories and imagery ... providing the brain processes dreams in a way that is analogous to visual stimuli."
Hmmmn. Well, as you take hints so seriously, might I possibly hint that you don't know what you are talking about and are desperate to abuse scientific reporting to draw readers attention?
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Jimmy the Chip said 5:35PM on 2-04-2009
However, Victor, I am sorry I called you Victoria :s
aidsgrenades said 7:50PM on 2-04-2009
OH MAN WHAT MOVIE IS THAT PICTURE FROM?
That scared the crap out of me when I was a kid and I've been trying to find it for years!!
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Bewar Maronsi said 10:19PM on 2-04-2009
Brainstorms - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085271/ =)