UC Berkeley scientists have developed a system to capture visual activity in human brains and reconstruct it as digital video clips. Eventually, this process will allow you to record and reconstruct your own dreams on a computer screen.
But in the long term, similar methods could be used to communicate with stroke patients or coma patients living in a "locked-in" state, said study researcher Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley. "The idea is that they would be able to visualize a movie of what they want to talk about, and you would be able to decode that," Gallant told LiveScience.
The mind-reading method is limited only to the basic visual areas of the brain, not the higher-functioning centers of thought and reason such as the frontal cortex. In the long term, the hope is that such technology could be used to build brain-machine interfaces that would allow people with brain damage to communicate by thinking and having those thoughts translated through a computer, Gallant said. Potentially, you could measure brain activity during dreams or hallucinations and then watch these fanciful states on the big screen.
If those predictions come true, Gallant said, there could be ethical issues involved.
Not only that, but reading thoughts, memories and dreams may not be as simple as decoding simple visual experiences, Gallant said. The link between how our brain processes what we see and how it processes what we imagine isn't clear.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
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