Hypothetical Question about the brain Options

[teamzerosc]

So, I am a new user and I have been thinking that is why I found this website.

If a technology is created that can read brainwaves and process the human conscious so that human thoughts can be read etc. would it be possible to see their same thoughts when they died?

What I mean is that someone dies but their brain still works for a little while afterwords. I know someone that has "died" and saw a white light but they came back.

Would it be possible to still see that with a new technology?

Sorry for the confusing post jumping back and forth.

[lucid_dream]

teamzerosc, I doubt you'll be seeing that technology anytime soon. Current uses of EEG/MEG/fMRI/SQUID to record brain activity noninvasively in humans and to attempt to "read the persons's mind" are crude at best, and will remain that way until a technological breakthrough occurs in monitoring brain activity noninvasively at much higher spatiotemporal resolutions. That being said, with the right technology, anything is possible.

[Rick]

The right technology may not be possible. Technology is subject to physical law, which sets limits.

[Yocttar]

The right technology may not be possible. Technology is subject to physical law, which sets limits.

Tough technology has its limits, Imagination has none

Just a couple thoughts:
- Use bioinformatics to insert radiative proteins \ anziems into our cells and scan for them
- Use nanobots to scan the brain

[Wafa..]

a question came into my mind while reading the topic..

How possible (even theoretically) is the decoding of the information being processed in the brain?



What I mean is "every brain is unique and different from the other because of experience" how is that possible to make a general method for decoding?
There must be something that is constantly stable upon which one can sets the decoding process..but as far as i know that
experience and plasticity decreases the availability for such stablility

is that really possible?

[Phi]

Well, has any work been done on a comparison of brain response to help map out stimulus activity?

[Wafa..]

Well, has any work been done on a comparison of brain response to help map out stimulus activity?

I read about some in the Scientific american an article named "seeking the neural code"
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=seeking-the-neural-code

the article talks about the neural ensambles and how it change with experience..also how naive is to think about the brain representation as a switch board, thats what i can remember actually.

I also read about some hope in rehabilitation of motor disabilities by simulating the neural response of the motor cortex after training the simulating set..but actually I can not be so informative about that..i can not exactly remember where I read about that.

[Phi]

Right, so I wonder if one would be able to track experience and take a look at what occurs or grows? I know it sounds similar, but I just wonder if it seems impossible just because of how the information is applied and looked at.

[Yocttar]

a question came into my mind while reading the topic..

How possible (even theoretically) is the decoding of the information being processed in the brain?



What I mean is "every brain is unique and different from the other because of experience" how is that possible to make a general method for decoding?
There must be something that is constantly stable upon which one can sets the decoding process..but as far as i know that
experience and plasticity decreases the availability for such stablility

is that really possible?

Indeed, the brain is constantly changing, it has random neuron routes all over it, but this routes eventually trace to the sensory input\output.
Now lets say you wish to read a person's mind and see if he murdured some one, you show him that someone, then you show him a gun or a knife (what ever possible weapon he used to murder the poor fella) and see if those two items routes in the brain interconnect.

btw, I'm lazy to write more then that, but I belive you'll understand my tought.

[Chronman]

We're a bit far off from reading thoughts...

Since our experiences are subjective, it requires extensive individual evaluation/screening to even begin to understand the thought-patterns -as they correlate to neurons- of an individual.

Its possible to distinguish between active areas compared to non-active and make judgements as to the context of the thought, but the explicit thought is something completely different; especially if there isn't a prior screening to measure brain activity during the same thought you're going to test whether or not you can code.

And what if you think of the same thought differently another time, as our brains are constantly changing, how would the tech account for these changes in perception?

I persnally think the tech is essentially uneconmical in its application, but the persuit and development of the ability would represent marked advancement in the field.

I also think the tech would be inefficacious in law, as it would be easier to bypass; simply overload your brain with information and thoughts would equate to test error.

[Destruction Preventer]

I saw an article recently about using integrated fMRI to retrieve retinotopic photos of visual representations in the brain.

I can't post a link yet, but google "viewing visual cortex thoughts", click the first link, and you get a blog summarizing the article.

I can't remember where I saw the initial article, but imaging has progressed to retrieving crude representations of visual stimuli with fMRI. Top down visual processing is processed in many similar ways, and imaging visual thoughts could be just around the corner.

However I'm pretty sure most functional brain imaging currently requires the subject to be alive
Otherwise we'd have to start getting into the nitty gritty neural structure of memories and how they're represented, and that is a deep dark hole, unfortunately