Brain imaging spots our abstract choices before we do

Brain imaging spots our abstract choices before we do:  Kreiman discovered that electrical activity in the supplementary motor area, involved in initiating movement, and in the anterior cingulate cortex, which controls attention and motivation, appeared up to 5 seconds before a volunteer was aware of deciding to press the button (Neuron, doi.org/btkcpz). This backed up earlier fMRI studies by John-Dylan Haynes of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, Germany, that had traced the origins of decisions to the prefrontal cortex a whopping 10 seconds before awareness...

If this kind of "mind-reading" is possible, a new study by Haynes, published this week and also presented at the meeting, suggests that it may not be restricted to decisions about moving a finger. Using fMRI, Haynes has found that the very brain areas involved in deciding to move are also active several seconds before a more abstract decision, like whether to add or subtract a series of numbers.

A Near-Whole Brain Activity Map in Fish

A Near-Whole Brain Activity Map in Fish:  The zebrafish larvae, whose bodies are transparent and brains are tiny, were genetically engineered to produce a protein in their neurons that glows in response to the chemical changes that occur when that neuron fires...

With the modified fish and microscopy methods, the researchers were able to capture the activity of at least 80 percent of the baby fish’s 100,000 neurons over a time period of just 1.3 seconds.  

Download Knowledge Directly to Your Brain, Matrix-Style

Download Knowledge Directly to Your Brain, Matrix-Style: 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.

New Scientist TV: Mind-reading movies reconstruct what you see

New Scientist TV: Mind-reading movies reconstruct what you see: The team first measured brain activity produced while a person watched hours of movies. They used this data to create a model that can predict the neural activity that would be elicited by any given movie.

Then brain activity was recorded while a volunteer watched a new set of videos and the model was used to select the clips they were most likely viewing. Combining the model's best guesses produced a blurry but reasonable approximation of the original clip.