Philosophy
Okay, a great way to gather data...those facts and figures most of us have forgotten. But, you cannot replace real experience. And, most importantly, how does wisdom fit into this idea?
For the first time, researchers have been able to hack into the process of learning in the brain, using induced brain patterns to create a learned behavior. It’s not quite as advanced as an instant kung-fu download, and it’s not as sleek as cognitive inception, but it’s still an important finding that could lead to new teaching and rehabilitation techniques.
Future therapies could decode the brain activity patterns of an athlete or a musician, and use them as a benchmark for teaching another person a new activity, according to the researchers.
Scientists from Boston University and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to study the learning process. They were examining the adult brain’s aptitude for visual perceptual learning, or VPL, in which repetitive training improves a person’s performance on a particular task. Whether adults can do this as well as young people has been an ongoing debate in neuroscience.
Led by BU neuroscientist Takeo Watanabe, researchers used a method called decoded fMRI neurofeedback to stimulate the visual cortex. First they showed participants circles at different orientations. Then they used fMRI to watch the participants’ brain activity. The researchers were then able to train the participants to recreate this visual cortex activity.
The volunteers were again placed in MRI machines and asked to visualize shapes of certain colors. The participants were asked to “somehow regulate activity in the posterior part of the brain” to make a solid green disc as large as they could. They were told they would get a paid bonus proportional to the size of this disc, but they weren’t told anything about what the disc meant. The researchers watched the participants’ brain activity and monitored the activation patterns in their visual cortices.
“Participants can be trained to control the overall mean activation of an entire brain region,” the study authors write, “or the activation in one region relative to that in another region.”
This worked even when test subjects were not aware of what they were learning, the researchers said.
“The most surprising thing in this study is that mere inductions of neural activation patterns corresponding to a specific visual feature led to visual performance improvement on the visual feature, without presenting the feature or subjects' awareness of what was to be learned,” Watanabe said in a statement.
Watanabe and colleagues said this method can be a powerful tool.
“It can ‘incept’ a person to acquire new learning, skills, or memory, or possibly to restore skills or knowledge that has been damaged through accident, disease, or aging, without a person’s awareness of what is learned or memorized,” they write.
The paper appears in the journal Science.
Thanks to POSP stringer Tim.
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Philosophy
Knowledge downloading via a machine?
Okay, a great way to gather data...those facts and figures most of us have forgotten. But, you cannot replace real experience. And, most importantly, how does wisdom fit into this idea?
"Download Knowledge Directly to Your Brain, Matrix-Style"
by
Rebecca Boyle
December 12th, 2011
POPSCI
by
Rebecca Boyle
December 12th, 2011
POPSCI
For the first time, researchers have been able to hack into the process of learning in the brain, using induced brain patterns to create a learned behavior. It’s not quite as advanced as an instant kung-fu download, and it’s not as sleek as cognitive inception, but it’s still an important finding that could lead to new teaching and rehabilitation techniques.
Future therapies could decode the brain activity patterns of an athlete or a musician, and use them as a benchmark for teaching another person a new activity, according to the researchers.
Scientists from Boston University and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to study the learning process. They were examining the adult brain’s aptitude for visual perceptual learning, or VPL, in which repetitive training improves a person’s performance on a particular task. Whether adults can do this as well as young people has been an ongoing debate in neuroscience.
Led by BU neuroscientist Takeo Watanabe, researchers used a method called decoded fMRI neurofeedback to stimulate the visual cortex. First they showed participants circles at different orientations. Then they used fMRI to watch the participants’ brain activity. The researchers were then able to train the participants to recreate this visual cortex activity.
The volunteers were again placed in MRI machines and asked to visualize shapes of certain colors. The participants were asked to “somehow regulate activity in the posterior part of the brain” to make a solid green disc as large as they could. They were told they would get a paid bonus proportional to the size of this disc, but they weren’t told anything about what the disc meant. The researchers watched the participants’ brain activity and monitored the activation patterns in their visual cortices.
“Participants can be trained to control the overall mean activation of an entire brain region,” the study authors write, “or the activation in one region relative to that in another region.”
This worked even when test subjects were not aware of what they were learning, the researchers said.
“The most surprising thing in this study is that mere inductions of neural activation patterns corresponding to a specific visual feature led to visual performance improvement on the visual feature, without presenting the feature or subjects' awareness of what was to be learned,” Watanabe said in a statement.
Watanabe and colleagues said this method can be a powerful tool.
“It can ‘incept’ a person to acquire new learning, skills, or memory, or possibly to restore skills or knowledge that has been damaged through accident, disease, or aging, without a person’s awareness of what is learned or memorized,” they write.
The paper appears in the journal Science.
Thanks to POSP stringer Tim.
- “pad Kid Poured Curd Pulled Cod” X 10
"MIT Researchers Say They Have Created The Trickiest Tongue Twister To Date" Try and say “pad kid poured curd pulled cod” 10 times fast. by Steve Annear December 5th, 2013 Boston Daily The old saying “Sally sold seashells by...
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"Humans feel empathy for robots" April 28th, 2013 SpaceDaily From the T-101 to Data from Star Trek, humans have been presented with the fictional dilemma of how we empathize with robots. Robots now infiltrate our lives, toys like Furbies or robot...
- Grumpiness And Those Pesky Moral Decisions
"How Your Moral Decisions are Shaped by a Bad Mood" Weighty choices can be shifted by surprising factors by Travis Riddle March 12th, 2013 Scientific American Imagine you’re standing on a footbridge over some trolley tracks. Below you, an out-of-control...
- The Fine Art Of Critiquing An Academic Paper
"Researchers don't mean to exaggerate, but lots of things can distort findings" It's possible people are not bothering to report a negative result alongside positive ones they found by Ben Goldacre August 12th, 2011 guardian.co.uk ...
- "genius/creativity" Poll
Is genius/creativity in an individual... Inherent...2 Environmental...0 Both...3 Humm, would the genius or creative person have better opportunities to cultivate same if the environment were more conducive than an environment of few opportunities or...