Minds Eye

Blogger Ref http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Multi-Dimensional_Science






The phrase "mind's eye" refers to the human ability to visualize, i.e., to experience visual mental imagery; in other words, one's ability to "see" things with the mind.

Contents

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• 1 Physical basis
• 2 Philosophy
• 3 References
• 4 See also

Physical basis[edit]

The biological foundation of the mind's eye is not fully understood. Studies using fMRI have shown that the lateral geniculate nucleus and the V1 area of the visual cortex are activated during mental imagery tasks.^[1] Ratey writes:

The visual pathway is not a one-way street. Higher areas of the brain can also send visual input back to neurons in lower areas of the visual cortex. [...] As humans, we have the ability to see with the mind's eye – to have a perceptual experience in the absence of visual input. For example, PET scans have shown that when subjects, seated in a room, imagine they are at their front door starting to walk either to the left or right, activation begins in the visual association cortex, the parietal cortex, and the prefrontal cortex - all higher cognitive processing centers of the brain.^[2]

The rudiments of a biological basis for the mind's eye is found in the deeper portions of the brain below the neocortex, or where the center of perception exists. The thalamus has been found to be discrete to other components in that it processes all forms of perceptional data relayed from both lower and higher components of the brain. Damage to this component can produce permanent perceptual damage, however when damage is inflicted upon the cerebral cortex, the brain adapts to neuroplasticity to amend any occlusions for perception. It can be thought that the neocortex is a sophisticated memory storage warehouse in which data received as an input from sensory systems are compartmentalized via the cerebral cortex. This would essentially allow for shapes to be identified, although given the lack of filtering input produced internally, one may as a consequence, hallucinate - essentially seeing something that isn't received as an input externally but rather internal (i.e. an error in the filtering of segmented sensory data from the cerebral cortex may result in one seeing, feeling, hearing or experiencing something that is inconsistent with reality).
Not all people have the same internal perceptual ability. For many, when the eyes are closed, the perception of darkness prevails. However, some people are able to perceive colorful, dynamic imagery. The use of hallucinogenic drugs increases the subject's ability to consciously access visual (and auditory, and other sense) percepts. The Mental Imagery article goes into more detail.
Furthermore, the pineal gland is a hypothetical candidate for producing a mind's eye; Rick Strassman and others have postulated that during near-death experiences (NDE's) and dreaming, the gland might secrete a hallucinogenic chemical N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) to produce internal visuals when external sensory data is occluded.^[3] However, this hypothesis has yet to be fully supported with neurochemical evidence and plausible mechanism for DMT production.
The hypothesized condition where a person lacks a mind's eye is called Aphantasia. The term was first suggested in a 2015 study.^[4]

Philosophy[edit]

The use of the phrase mind's eye does not imply that there is a single or unitary place in the mind or brain where visual consciousness occurs. Philosophers such as Daniel Dennett have critiqued this view.^[5] However, others, such as Johnjoe McFadden of the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom and the New Zealand-based neurobiologist Susan Pockett, propose that the brain's electromagnetic field is consciousness itself, thus causing the perception of a unitary location.^[6][7]

References[edit]

1. Jump up ^ Imagery of famous faces: effects of memory and attention revealed by fMRI, A. Ishai, J. V. Haxby and L. G. Ungerleider, NeuroImage 17 (2002), pp. 1729-1741.
2. Jump up ^ A User's Guide to the Brain, John J. Ratey, ISBN 0-375-70107-9, at p. 107.
3. Jump up ^ Rick Strassman, DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, 320 pages, Park Street Press, 2001, ISBN 0-89281-927-8
4. Jump up ^ Zeman, Adam; Dewar, Michaela; Della Sala, Sergio. "Lives without imagery – Congenital aphantasia". Cortex. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2015.05.019. ISSN 0010-9452. Retrieved 2015-06-24. 
5. Jump up ^ Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991. ISBN 0-316-18065-3.
6. Jump up ^ Our Conscious Mind Could Be An Electromagnetic Field, UniSci.
7. Jump up ^ Synchronous Firing and Its Influence on the Brain's Electromagnetic Field: Evidence for an Electromagnetic Field Theory of Consciousness, J. McFadden, Journal of Consciousness Studies 9 (2002), part 4, pp. 23–50.

Prince Hamlet says, he sees his dead father "In my mind's eye, Horatio" (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2.191, 193, Folger's Edition).

See also[edit]

• Mental image
• Philosophy of perception
• Subjective character of experience
• Third eye
• Binding problem
• Visual perception
• Visual space
• Nous

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mind%27s_eye&oldid=668442849"

Categories:

• Perception

Scientists see what’s in your mind and reproduce it on screen

Kathleen Miles | Patt Morrison | September 29th, 2011, 12:00pm /Southern California Public Radio/ Blogger Ref Link http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Multi-Dimensional_Science

Shinji Nishimoto

A result from the study. Researchers watched movie clips and a computer program pieced together data from their brain activity to form an image.

Have you ever wanted to see inside someone else’s mind? Researchers at U.C. Berkeley have developed a technology that allows them to reproduce the moving images a person is looking at by tracking their brain activity. The hope is to be able to then reproduce the moving images that a person isn’t seeing, but rather thinking—say, in a dream, thought or memory.

To develop this technology, researchers James Gallant, Shinji Nishimoto and two others served as their own subjects, sitting inside an MRI scanner for hours at a time watching movie trailers. The brain activity that the MRI machine tracked was recorded into a computer program that learned, second by second, the brain activity that corresponds to each visual image. Next, the program was tested by having the subjects watch videos and seeing if it could determine the moving images the person was seeing. By putting together the 100 images most similar to what the subject was seeing, the program produced eerily blurry, yet recognizable images of the video that was watched.

The implications of this technology could mean eventually being able to read the minds of people who have thoughts but are unable to communicate them, such as stroke victims, coma patients and people with neurodegenerative diseases. Even further, there’s hope that it could lead to enabling people with cerebral palsy or paralysis to guide a computer with their minds.

The study’s coauthor, Jack Gallant, joins us to answer our questions; Martin Monti joins us to discuss application to comatose patients.

WEIGH IN:

If you could watch your own memory, fantasy or dream on YouTube, would you want to? If visually producing memories, thoughts and dreams becomes a reality, could there be practical implications in the field of psychology or criminology?

Guests:

Jack Gallant, neuroscientist and professor of psychology, UC Berkeley; co-author of brain imaging study

Martin Monti, Ph.D., assistant professor, cognitive psychology, UCLA; researches consciousness and cognition in coma, vegetative and minimally conscious state

Brain "Movies".......

Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind

By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations | September 22, 2011

Psychology and neuroscience professor Jack Gallant displays videos and brain images used in his research. Video produced by Roxanne Makasdjian, Media Relations.

BERKELEY — Imagine tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching one’s own dream on YouTube. With a cutting-edge blend of brain imaging and computer simulation, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are bringing these futuristic scenarios within reach.

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences – in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.

As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. However, the breakthrough paves the way for reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories, according to researchers.

Eventually, practical applications of the technology could include a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of people who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims, coma patients and people with neurodegenerative diseases.“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery,” said Professor Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the study published online today (Sept. 22) in the journal Current Biology. “We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”

It may also lay the groundwork for brain-machine interface so that people with cerebral palsy or paralysis, for example, can guide computers with their minds.

However, researchers point out that the technology is decades from allowing users to read others’ thoughts and intentions, as portrayed in such sci-fi classics as “Brainstorm,” in which scientists recorded a person’s sensations so that others could experience them.

Previously, Gallant and fellow researchers recorded brain activity in the visual cortex while a subject viewed black-and-white photographs. They then built a computational model that enabled them to predict with overwhelming accuracy which picture the subject was looking at.

In their latest experiment, researchers say they have solved a much more difficult problem by actually decoding brain signals generated by moving pictures.

“Our natural visual experience is like watching a movie,” said Shinji Nishimoto, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher in Gallant’s lab. “In order for this technology to have wide applicability, we must understand how the brain processes these dynamic visual experiences.”  

Mind-reading through brain imaging technology is a common sci-fi theme

Nishimoto and two other research team members served as subjects for the experiment, because the procedure requires volunteers to remain still inside the MRI scanner for hours at a time.

They watched two separate sets of Hollywood movie trailers, while fMRI was used to measure blood flow through the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information. On the computer, the brain was divided into small, three-dimensional cubes known as volumetric pixels, or “voxels.”

“We built a model for each voxel that describes how shape and motion information in the movie is mapped into brain activity,” Nishimoto said.

The brain activity recorded while subjects viewed the first set of clips was fed into a computer program that learned, second by second, to associate visual patterns in the movie with the corresponding brain activity.

Brain activity evoked by the second set of clips was used to test the movie reconstruction algorithm. This was done by feeding 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos into the computer program so that it could predict the brain activity that each film clip would most likely evoke in each subject.

Finally, the 100 clips that the computer program decided were most similar to the clip that the subject had probably seen were merged to produce a blurry yet continuous reconstruction of the original movie.

Reconstructing movies using brain scans has been challenging because the blood flow signals measured using fMRI change much more slowly than the neural signals that encode dynamic information in movies, researchers said. For this reason, most previous attempts to decode brain activity have focused on static images.

“We addressed this problem by developing a two-stage model that separately describes the underlying neural population and blood flow signals,” Nishimoto said.

Ultimately, Nishimoto said, scientists need to understand how the brain processes dynamic visual events that we experience in everyday life.

“We need to know how the brain works in naturalistic conditions,” he said. “For that, we need to first understand how the brain works while we are watching movies.”

Other coauthors of the study are Thomas Naselaris with UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute; An T. Vu with UC Berkeley’s Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering; and Yuval Benjamini and Professor Bin Yu with the UC Berkeley Department of Statistics.

RELATED INFORMATION

• Gallant Lab website, with more details about the study

Ref http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/