Advertisement
www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25...5brain.html
By peering not into the eyes but into the brain, an improved scanning technique has enabled scientists to figure out what people are looking at - even, in some cases, when they are not aware of what they have seen.
The advance, reported today, shows that the scanners may be better able than previously supposed to probe the border between conscious and unconscious thought and even, in certain circumstances, to read people's state of mind.
The scanning technique, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, is a more powerful version of a technique widely used in hospitals. It can show which regions of the brain are actively performing some task, but until now has lacked the resolution to track specific groups of neurons, as the functional units of the brain are called.
By peering not into the eyes but into the brain, an improved scanning technique has enabled scientists to figure out what people are looking at - even, in some cases, when they are not aware of what they have seen.
The advance, reported today, shows that the scanners may be better able than previously supposed to probe the border between conscious and unconscious thought and even, in certain circumstances, to read people's state of mind.
The scanning technique, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, is a more powerful version of a technique widely used in hospitals. It can show which regions of the brain are actively performing some task, but until now has lacked the resolution to track specific groups of neurons, as the functional units of the brain are called.
posted by:
|
Unsubscribed |
Advertisement
Advertisement
-
Re: Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought
Tue, April 26, 2005 - 11:39 AMVery exciting news. -
-
Re: Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought
Tue, April 26, 2005 - 12:55 PMBecause the NY Times will close the link soon we do store some of their relevant articles in our archives for later analysis and discussion. So here is a link to it and a New Scientist article on the same topic.
www.imminst.org/forum/index.php -
-
Unsu...
Re: Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought
Tue, April 26, 2005 - 5:21 PMI think it is interesting to note that you don't necessarily have to foveate (look directly at) something, to be able to attend to it. We can look at something out of the "corner of our eye" and activate areas of IT, which are involved with object recognition. I haven't read the article. Perhaps that's mentioned.
-
-
-
Unsu...
Re: Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought
Fri, May 6, 2005 - 6:50 AMThe University of Pennsylvania has been using the fMRI for numerous studies. They also utilize PET (positron emission tomography) scans to reord brain activity. Dr. Anna Rose Childress uses the fMRI to investigate the role of drug cues on addiction relapse. Basically, they'll put an opiate addict, for example, in the magnet and then show them a movie of someone shooting up (craving cue). While inducing craving they scan the brain to see which areas are becoming most activated in efforts to pin-point where craving originates. Another Penn Doctor, Daniel Langlaben, is funded by the government to conduct studies with the fMRI on lie detection. They concept is that a lie, being an purposeful inhibition of the truth, creates more brain activity. Forget the polygraph, they will and are already looking inside our heads for the truth. In the post 911 world, they were more than happy to fund his research.
Check out their research, its very intersting
www.uphs.upenn.edu/trc/cond...dies.html
