fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
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Re: fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
#2Techniques like this give me hope that some day we will be able to objectively diagnose mental illness, and monitor the efficacy of treatment.
Re: fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
#3Awesome, predicting words from fMRI has been around for a while and visual cortex can be mapped well.
That said, and coming from a background in neuroimaging 20 years ago, what’s the applicability? MRI hasn’t gotten that much more cost effective for more widespread uses. Magnets are expensive.
Re: fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
#4This is SO COOL. I'd guess (I did analysis for an fMRI lab for a year so I'm not a pro but not totally talking out of my orifice) that detecting images like this is among the easier things you could do (it probably wouldn't be so easy to do things like "guess the words I'm thinking of") and I suspect other sensory stuff might be harder but I have little knowledge there.
One of the biggest issues with any attempt to extract information from an fMRI scan is resolution, both spatial and temporal - this study used 1.8mm voxels which is a TON of neurons (also recall that fMRIs scan blood flow, not neuron activity - we just count on those things being correlated). Temporally, fMRI sample frequency are often Also, not all brain functions are as clearly localized as vision - the visual cortex areas in the back of the brain map pretty directly to certain kinds of visual stimulus, while other kinds of stimulus and activity are much less localize (there isn't a clear "lighting up" of an area). You can get better resolution if you only scan part of the brain (i.e. the visual cortex) (I don't know if that's what they did for this study), but that's obviously only useful for activity happening in a small part of the brain.
ANYWAY SO COOL!!! I wonder if you could use this to draw people's faces with a subject who is imagining looking at a face? fMRI police sketch? How do brains even work!?
Re: fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
#5Awesome, predicting words from fMRI has been around for a while and visual cortex can be mapped well. That said, and coming from a background in neuroimaging 20 years ago, what’s the applicability? MRI hasn’t gotten that much more cost effective for more widespread uses. Magnets are expensive.
People with disabilities could benefit greatly from this.
Re: fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
#6Human communication will change dramatically once useful invasive brain-computer interfaces are available.
People will suddenly realize that the reason language is primarily serial is simply due to the fact that it must be conveyed by a series of sounds. There will likely be a new type of visual language used via BCI "telepathy". It may have some ordering but will not rely so heavily on serializing information, since the world is quite multidimensional.
Re: fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
#7Aside from helping those with disabilities, what is stopping authorities using this as a lie detector? I assume the tech isn’t quite there yet.
Re: fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
#8This is mind reading, we are in the future.
Re: fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
#9Aside from helping those with disabilities, what is stopping authorities using this as a lie detector? I assume the tech isn’t quite there yet.
Not yet.
> Models were trained separately for every participant and are not generalizable across people.
Re: fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
#10Human communication will change dramatically once useful invasive brain-computer interfaces are available. People will suddenly realize that the reason language is primarily serial is simply due to the fact that it must be conveyed by a series of sounds. There will likely be a new type of visual language used via BCI "telepathy". It may have some ordering but will not rely so heavily on serializing information, since…
In a popular sci-fi (avoiding spoliers), the alien race has transparent skulls, and their visible thoughts are broadcast to anyone within visual range.
It does seem more efficient than sound.