[Hplusroadmap] Fwd: [tt] Celebrity neuron firing read by EEG helmets

[Bryan Bishop]

The following is of some interest for BCIs and DNIs. I am reminded of an 
email from the AGI mailing list today that quoted Hawkins from his book 
_On Intelligence_ reminding his readers that most computations in the 
brain are done within a chain of 100 neurons (but with massive 
parallelism, of course), so this somewhat makes sense. The trick with 
DNIs (via MEAs) is in figuring out where the right neurons are. It'd be 
a shame to have to always think of "Jeniffer Aniston" to activate 
the "Jeniffer Aniston neuron" in your particular brainal configuration 
to do some function on the MEA.

- Bryan

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [tt] Celebrity neuron firing read by EEG helmets
Date: Friday 07 December 2007
From: "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu>
To: tt at postbiota.org


http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=116155837 

Researchers can read thoughts to decipher what a person is actually
seeing

Following ground-breaking research showing that neurons in the human
brain respond in an abstract manner to particular individuals or
objects, University of Leicester researchers have now discovered that,
from the firing of this type of neuron, they can tell what a person is
actually seeing.

The original research by Dr R Quian Quiroga, of the University's
Department of Engineering, showed that one neuron fired to, for
instance, Jennifer Aniston, another one to Halle Berry, another one to
the Sydney Opera House, etc.

The responses were abstract. For example, the neuron firing to Halle
Berry responded to several different pictures of her and even to the
letters of her name, but not to other people or names.

This result, published in Nature in 2005 and selected as one of the top
100 scientific stories of the year by Discover Magazine, came from data
from patients suffering from epilepsy. As candidates for epilepsy
surgery, they are implanted with intracranial electrodes to determine as
accurately as possible the area where the seizures originate. From that,
clinicians can evaluate the potential outcome of curative surgery.

Dr Quian Quiroga's latest research, which has appeared in the Journal of
Neurophysiology, follows on from this.

Dr Quian Quiroga explained: "For example, if the 'Jennifer Aniston
neuron' increases its firing then we can predict that the subject is
seeing Jennifer Aniston. If the 'Halle Berry neuron' fires, then we can
predict that the subject is seeing Halle Berry, and so on.

"To do this, we used and optimised a 'decoding algorithms', which is a
mathematical method to infer the stimulus from the neuronal firing. We
also needed to optimise our recording and data processing tools to
record simultaneously from as many neurons as possible. Currently we are
able to record simultaneously from up to 100 neurons in the human brain.

"In these experiments we presented a large database of pictures, and
discovered that we can predict what picture the subject is seeing far
above chance. So, in simple words, we can read the human thought from
the neuronal activity.

"Once we reached this point, we then asked what are the most fundamental
features of the neuronal firing that allowed us to make this
predictions. This gave us the chance of studying basic principles of
neural coding; i.e. how information is stored by neurons in the brain.

"For example, we found that there is a very limited time window in the
neuronal firing that contains most of the information used for such
predictions. Interestingly, neurons fired only 4 spikes in average
during this time window. So, in another words, only 4 spikes of a few
neurons are already telling us what the patient is seeing."

Potential applications of this discovery include the development of
Neural Prosthetic devices to be used by paralysed patients or amputees.
A patient with a lesion in the spinal cord (as with the late Christopher
Reeves), can still think about reaching a cup of tea with his arm, but
this order is not transmitted to the muscles.

The idea of Neural Prostheses is to read these commands directly from
the brain and transmit them to bionic devices such as a robotic arm that
the patient could control directly from the brain.

Dr Quian Quiroga's work showing that it is possible to read signals from
the brain is a good step forward in this direction. But there are still
clinical and ethical issues that have to be resolved before Neural
Prosthetic devices can be applied in humans.

In particular, these would involve invasive surgery, which would have to
be justified by a clear improvement for the patient before it could be
undertaken.

Source: University of Leicester
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