How does the brain perceive images? And could scientists predict what people are seeing in real time just by analyzing their brains?
After peeking inside people’s brains while they looked at images of houses and people, researchers at the UW were able to predict almost immediately and with a high level of accuracy which of the images people saw, according to GeekWire. Two UW researchers — computational neuroscientist Rajesh Rao and UW Medicine neurosurgeon Jess Ojemann — took part in the study along with researchers from Stanford and the Wadsworth Institute in New York.
The study looked at the brains of seven epilepsy patients undergoing treatment at Harborview Medical Center. For treatment purposes, each patient had been implanted with an electrode in the temporal cortex, the part of the brain that processes sensory input. That gave the researchers a chance to conduct their experiment while the patients waited around.
The patients were randomly shown brief, blink-of-an-eye images of either houses or people’s faces, separated by gray screen. A computer analyzed their brain activity and fed it into an algorithm, which researchers used to predict the type of image people had seen. The algorithm was successful 96 percent of the time in guessing whether patients were seeing the faces or houses.
Rao thinks the study provides a macro view of the way the brain perceives vision, and the study might one day help create a way for people who are paralyzed to communicate with the outside world.
