Neuroscience: "I Can Read Your Mind" (BBC Future)

From the BBC Future blog, this is an interesting article on new efforts in neuroscience to read minds (sort of), or least to identify images received through sensory channels as well as those experienced in dreams. All of this part of the European Human Brain Project.

This article looks at a little bit of the research currently being conducted and how it fits into bigger projects.

Neuroscience: ‘I can read your mind’

Rose Eveleth | 18 July 2014


(Getty Images)

What are you looking at? Scientist Jack Gallant can find out by decoding your thoughts, as Rose Eveleth discovers.
After leaders of the billion-euro Human Brain Project hit back at critics, six top neuroscientists have expressed "dismay" at their public response

Jack Gallant can read your mind. Or at least, he can figure out what you’re seeing if you’re in his machine watching a movie he’s playing for you.

Gallant, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, has a brain decoding machine – a device that uses brain scanning to peer into people’s minds and reconstruct what they’re seeing. If mind-reading technology like this becomes more common, should we be concerned? Ask Gallant this question, and he gives a rather unexpected answer.

In Gallant’s experiment, people were shown movies while the team measured their brain patterns. An algorithm then used those signals to reconstruct a fuzzy, composite image, drawing on a massive database of YouTube videos. In other words, they took brain activity and turned it into pictures, revealing what a person was seeing.

For Gallant and his lab, this was just another demonstration of their technology. While his device has made plenty of headlines, he never actually set out to build a brain decoder. “It was one of the coolest things we ever did,” he says, “but it’s not science.” Gallant’s research focuses on figuring out how the visual system works, creating models of how the brain processes visual information. The brain reader was a side project, a coincidental offshoot of his actual scientific research. “It just so happens that if you build a really good model of the brain, then that turns out to be the best possible decoder.”

Science or not, the machine strokes the dystopian futurists among people who fear that the government could one day tap into our innermost thoughts. This might seem like a silly fear, but Gallant says it’s not. “I actually agree that you should be afraid,” he says, “but you don’t have to be afraid for another 50 years.” It will take that long to solve two of the big challenges in brain-reading technology: the portability, and the strength of the signal.

Decoding brain signals from scans can reveal what somebody is looking at (SPL)

Right now, in order for Gallant to read your thoughts, you have to slide into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine – a huge, expensive device that measures where the blood is flowing in the brain. While MRI is one of the best ways to measure the activity of the brain, it’s not perfect, nor is it portable. Subjects in an MRI machine can’t move, and the devices are expensive and huge. 

And while comparing the brain image and the movie image side by side makes their connection apparent, the image that Gallant’s algorithm can build from brain signals isn’t quite like peering into a window. The resolution on MRI scans simply isn’t high enough to create something that generates a clear picture. “Until somebody comes up with a method for measuring brain activity better than we can today there won’t be many portable brain-decoding devices that will be built for a general use,” he says.

Dream reader

While Gallant isn’t working on trying to build any more decoding machines, others are. One team in Japan is currently trying to make a dream reader, using the same fMRI technique. But unlike in the movie experiment, where researchers know what the person is seeing and can confirm that image in the brain readouts, dreams are far trickier.

To try and train the system, researchers put subjects in an MRI machine and let them slip into that weird state between wakefulness and dreaming. They then woke up the subject and ask what they had seen. Using that information, they could correlate the reported dream images—everything from ice picks to keys to statues – to train the algorithm.

Researchers are trying to decode dreams by studying brain activity (Thinkstock)

Using this database, the Japanese team was able to identify around 60% of the types of images dreamers saw. But there’s a key hurdle between these experiments and a universal dream decoder: each dreamer’s signals are different. Right now, the decoder has to be trained to each individual. So even if you were willing to sleep in an MRI machine, there’s no universal decoder that can reveal your nightly adventures.

Even though he’s not working on one, Gallant knows what kind of brain decoder he might build, should he chose to. “My personal opinion is that if you wanted to build the best one, you would decode covert internal speech. If you could build something that takes internal speech and translates into external speech,” he says, “then you could use it to control a car. It could be a universal translator.”

Inner speech

Some groups are edging closer to this goal; a team in the Netherlands, for instance, scanned the brains of bilingual speakers to detect the concepts each participant were forming – such as the idea of a horse or cow, correctly identifying the meaning whether the subjects were thinking in English or Dutch. Like the dream decoder, however, the system needed to be trained on each individual, so it is a far cry from a universal translator.

If nothing else, the brain reader has sparked more widespread interest in Gallant’s work. “If I go up to someone on the street and tell them how their brains work their eyes glaze over,” he says. When he shows them a video of their brains actually at work, they start to pay attention.

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The 5 Big Questions in Brain Science - Prediction, Mind Reading, Responsibility, Treatment, and Enhancement

National Geographic asked bioethicist Hank Greely, bioethics and genetics expert at Stanford University's Law School, what he sees as the five big questions in neuroscience. He offered five interesting insights: Prediction, Mind Reading, Responsibility, Treatment, and Enhancement.



This brief article comes from National Geographic News.

Q&A: The 5 Big Questions in Brain Science

A bioethicist suggests that neuroscience challenges how we view ourselves.

Dan Vergano
National Geographic
Published December 18, 2013

What moral dilemmas will arise from our newfound abilities to peer into the workings of the human mind? | Photograph by Pasieka, Science Photo Library/Corbis

Advances in our understanding of the brain have turned neuroscience into one of the hottest frontiers in research, and in ethics. (See "Beyond the Brain.")

On Wednesday, the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues met to discuss the moral implications of brain science. The bioethics experts met at the request of President Barack Obama, who earlier this year called for the start of a $100 million federal Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.

Obama asked the bioethics council to look into what sort of moral dilemmas might arise from the newfound abilities to peer into the workings of the human mind promised by his brain-mapping proposal, and by neuroscience overall.

What are the big questions? We asked Hank Greely, a bioethics and genetics expert at Stanford University's Law School, what he sees as being the five big questions in neuroscience. Here are his insights:

1. Prediction: using neuroscience to predict peoples' fate or actions.

We are spending a lot of research dollars on the question of whether Dad, or I, will get Alzheimer's. What is going to happen when we can really predict that? There will be tremendous implications for families and the medical system, in terms of intervention or treatment.

Another question is crime. What about when we can tell whose brains indicate they are more likely to commit or recommit a crime when people are released from jail? Who is going to recommend or deny a brain scan for every criminal case?

Most likely, these brain results will just be added to other evidence in criminal cases. But if neuroscience adds yet another predictive element to when releases [from prison occur] or sentences end, it will have big effects on preventive retention or preventive therapy for the incarcerated.

2. Mind reading: using neuroscience as a lie detector or to see emotional states.

When I first started saying "mind reading," I thought a lot of my neuroscientist friends would object. But many of them say, yes, that is right, it is like that. A study involving MIT undergraduates was able to tell when they were visualizing a face or a place with 85 percent accuracy, for example. That's pretty good.

Where this will really make a difference is in contacting quadriplegics with the most severe paralysis—"locked in" individuals. We will be able to put people thought to have been in a persistent vegetative state in a [brain] scanner and try to talk to them.

Lie detection raises a host of legal, ethical, and social questions. Only one company is left doing this—NoLieMRI. They are seen as problematic because they don't publish their methods or results. But there is a lot of interest in the technology from the Defense Department, which wants to move away from the polygraph to other ways to do lie detection.

In court, where you will probably first see mind reading is with disability claims—whether people are really feeling pain for Social Security disability claims for lower back pain. Hundreds of thousands of people are making these claims. Some perhaps aren't really in pain. We don't have a good way to tell the difference, but if we did, that would matter.

3. Responsibility: using neuroscience to determine whether people have free will.

I have some neuroscientists who think the effect of their science will be to make the court system disappear. It will show that people have no real "free will" and that people are not truly responsible for their actions. "My brain made me do it" … I don't know any lawyers who believe this will happen.

But there is one particular case, which took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, of a 40-year-old man who suddenly became interested in pornography and moved to child pornography and then groped his 12-year-old stepdaughter. The Tuesday before his sentencing he complained of headaches, couldn't read, he blacked out. And they took him to the emergency room.

They found a tumor the size of a chicken egg on a part of his brain called the left frontal lobe [implicated in studies as being involved with judgment and cognition]. They removed the tumor and the impulses went away.

Ten months later he tells his probation officer that the impulses are coming back. They x-ray him and find that the tumor has returned. They remove the tumor again and he hasn't been rearrested in the last two to three years.

Ironically, we may see a lot of court cases involving brain abnormalities where people claim their lawyer was ineffective. "I should have had a brain scan," they will tell the jury.

4. Treatment: using neuroscience in medical care.

We are not giving billions of dollars to neuroscientists to study whatever interests them, but for treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's. That is what is driving the funding for neuroscience.

We have to ask careful questions, however, about claims of treatment to avert or cure diseases such as opiate addiction. Could a judge order someone to get treatment based on a brain scan, or is the brain sacred? To what extent can parents force children to get treatments based on neuroscience?

As our basic medical knowledge improves, we will see dual uses spread away from cures for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's as we learn more about how to fundamentally change others.

5. Enhancement: using neuroscience to juice our capabilities.

You most often think about college kidsusing Adderall or Ritalin to give themselves a brain boost. There isn't a lot of evidence this helps, aside from keeping them awake.

But what if it does work? Is it fair to the kid who doesn't get a brain enhancement? Or what if it only works long enough to pass your medical exam—should that person be practicing medicine? Will we have to pee in a cup before finals?

I think that in memories is where we will see neuroscience matter. So much is being done on memory in connection with Alzheimer's, but also with age-appropriate memory loss. I would take a pill in an instant to have a memory as sharp as I recall it was when I was younger.

Last, we asked Greeley if neuroscience would result in ethics becoming more brain-based and moving away from the old moral questions.

No, I see neuroscience raising questions similar to any technology, although they will be fundamental ones because of the importance of the brain to our sense of self.

For any technology there are two questions you need to ask:

Does it work? It is easy to get carried away with the science-fiction scenarios and just assume it works, which may encourage giving too much credibility to a technology.

The other question is, if it does work, what now? There will be benefits and risks to any technology. It is really important to focus on both questions—not to focus on just one first—to give thought to both before it is too late to think about either one.

The interview has been edited and condensed.
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From the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA), a joint project of UC San Diego and the Salk Institute, this is an excellent series of videos (each about 20 minutes) on Theory of Mind (the understanding that what you think and feel is different from what I think and feel, and to make inferences based on that awareness).

The Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny* (CARTA) began as a collaboration between faculty at UC San Diego and at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, along with interested scientists at other institutions. CARTA became a UC San Diego recognized Organized Research Unit (ORU) in January 2008. 

As the word anthropogeny implies, the primary goal of CARTA is to “explore and explain the origins of the human phenomenon.” In other words, finding the answers to the two age-old questions regarding humans:

• Where did we come from?

• How did we get here?

CARTA is a virtual organization formed in order to promote transdisciplinary research into human origins, drawing on methods from a number of traditional disciplines spanning the humanities, social, biomedical, biological, computational & engineering and physical & chemical sciences. 

*Anthropogeny: The investigation of the origin of man (humans) Oxford English Dictionary, 2006. First used in 1839 edition of Hooper's Med. Dict. and defined as "the study of the generation of man."

I'm not sure I have the order correct, but they are order (and listed below) in what seems a logical progression.

Mind Reading: Human Origins and Theory of Mind

Part One:
CARTA Co-Director Ajit Varki welcomes the public and researchers to the CARTA symposium on Mind Reading: Human Origins and Theory of Mind. Recorded on 10/18/2013. Series: "CARTA: Mind Reading: Human Origins and Theory of Mind"

Part Two:
Ralph Adolphs (Caltech) provides an overview on how best to define Theory of Mind, how to relate it to other similar terms, and how to study it. He closes by speculating on what aspects of mindreading might be unique to humans.

Part Three:
For many years, Tetsuro Matsuzawa (Kyoto Univ) has studied chimpanzees both in the laboratory and in the wild. In this talk he presents several examples of "mind reading" in chimpanzees based on his research in the lab and observations in the field.

Part Four:
A key feature of human social interactions is the ability to make inferences about other individuals' mental states (e.g. others' knowledge, beliefs and desires). Juliane Kaminski (Univ of Portsmouth, UK) reviews studies which investigate whether the cognitive capacities underlying these skills are uniquely human or shared, at least to some degree, with other species.

Part Five:
Jessica Sommerville (Univ of Washington) reviews evidence to suggest that, within the first year of life, infants develop an understanding of transient mental states (such as goals and desires), enduring personal dispositions (such as preferences), and socio-moral norms (such as fairness norms), that is driven by their own actions on the world, as well as their interactions with other people.

Part Six:
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (Univ College London) discusses how the social brain, that is, the network of brain regions involved in understanding others, develops during adolescence. Adolescence is a time characterized by change -- hormonally, physically, psychologically and socially. Yet until fairly recently, this period of life was neglected by neuroscience.

Part Seven:
Over the past two decades, research investigating the neural basis of social abilities suggests that the human brain has dedicated systems for understanding other minds. Jason Mitchell (Harvard Univ) reviews this brain imaging work and discusses the implications for the unique aspects of human social cognition.

Part Eight:
Wrap-Up: Terry Sejnowski

Here are three brief talks (about 20 minutes each) on Theory of Mind (the ability to ascribe mental states to another person and then use one's sense of those states to explain and predict the actions of the other person). Theory of Mind (ToM) is is also referred to as mindreading, mentalizing, or mentalistic abilities. ToM is one of the key skills necessary for intersubjectivity and empathy - most children begin to develop the skill around age 3.

CARTA: What is Theory of Mind? - Theory of Mind in Human Babies - The Social Brain in Adolescence

Published on Nov 26, 2013


(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv) This CARTA series explores the evolution of "Theory of Mind" (ToM), the ability to impute mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions to oneself and others, and how ToM makes us uniquely human.

• Ralph Adolphs (Caltech) begins with a discussion about the definition of ToM
• Jessica Sommerville (Univ of Washington) speaks on the Emergence of Theory of Mind in Human Babies
• Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (University College London) speaks on The Social Brain in Adolescence

Recorded on 10/18/2013. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [12/2013].

Speakers

Ralph Adolphs is the Bren Professor of Pychology and Neuroscience, as well as a professor of biology at the California Institute for Technology (Caltech). Dr. Adolphs received his bachelor's degree from Stanford University, and his Ph.D. in neurobiology from Caltech. He did post-doctoral work with Antonio Damasio at the University of Iowa, beginning his studies in human neuropsychology, with a focus on the recognition of emotional facial expressions. Dr. Adolphs also holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa.

Jessica Sommerville is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, and associate director of the Center for Child and Family Wellbeing, at the University of Washington. She completed her B.Sc. at the University of Toronto in 1997 and her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2002. Following a post-doctoral fellowship, she took her first faculty position in 2003. In 2007, Sommerville was named a Kavli Foundation Fellow. Her research focuses on the origins of social cognition in infancy and early childhood. Sommerville currently receives funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Development and the John Templeton Foundation.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and professor in cognitive neuroscience at University College London (UCL). She is leader of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Group, which focuses on brain development in human adolescence. She studied experimental psychology at Oxford University (1993-1996) and received her Ph.D. (1996-2000) at UCL, investigating self-monitoring in schizophrenia. She co-authored The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), with Professor Uta Frith, and sits on the Royal Society Vision Committee for Science and Mathematics Education. Blakemore is editor-in-chief of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.

Mathieu Arminjon - Is Psychoanalysis a Folk Psychology?

From Frontiers in Psychoanalysis and Neuropsychoanalysis, Mathieu Arminjon looks at Fruedian psychoanalysis from an epistemological and naturalist point of view, considering it an extension of folk psychology.

Here is a definition of folk psychology from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

The concept of folk psychology has played a significant role in philosophy of mind and cognitive science over the last half century. However, even a cursory examination of the literature reveals that there are at least three distinct senses in which the term “folk psychology” is used. (1) Sometimes “folk psychology” is used to refer to a particular set of cognitive capacities which include—but are not exhausted by—the capacities to predict and explain behavior. (2) The term “folk psychology” is also used to refer to a theory of behavior represented in the brain. According to many philosophers and cognitive scientists, the set of cognitive capacities identified above are underpinned by folk psychology in this second sense. (3) The final sense of “folk psychology” is closely associated with the work of David Lewis. On this view, folk psychology is a psychological theory constituted by the platitudes about the mind ordinary people are inclined to endorse.

Certainly, traditional Freudian psychoanalysis is easily seen as a folk psychology, but the contemporary practice of psychoanalytic therapy, as informed by relational theory and intersubjective systems theory, is far from folk psychology.

Is psychoanalysis a folk psychology?

Mathieu Arminjon1,2

(1) Département Universitaire de Psychiatrie, Faculté de Médecine, Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland (2) Agalma Foundation, Genève, Switzerland

Even as the neuro-psychoanalytic field has matured, from a naturalist point of view, the epistemological status of Freudian interpretations still remains problematic at a naturalist point of view. As a result of the resurgence of hermeneutics, the claim has been made that psychoanalysis is an extension of folk psychology. For these “extensionists,” asking psychoanalysis to prove its interpretations would be as absurd as demanding the proofs of the scientific accuracy of folk psychology. I propose to show how Dennett’s theory of the intentional stance allows us to defend an extensionist position while sparing us certain hermeneutic difficulties. In conclusion, I will consider how Shevrin et al. (1996) experiments could turn extensionist conceptual considerations into experimentally testable issues.

Full Citation: 

Arminjon, M. (2013). Is psychoanalysis a folk psychology? Frontiers in Psychology. 4:135. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00135

Introduction

In spite of the recent data that neuropsychoanalysis has brought forward in favor of some aspects of the Freudian theory (Arminjon, 2011), the status of interpretations in psychoanalysis, their accuracy and scientific vindication, remains problematic. Grünbaum’s (1984, 1986) critique of Freud’s tally argument, calling for extra-clinical proofs, still governs the shape of the debate. Nonetheless, a few decades ago we began to witness a renewed interest in commonsense or folk psychology. Several theorists in the field saw it as a means to pursue the hermeneutics defense of the autonomous scientific status of psychoanalysis. In a broad outline, the rationale consists of claiming that no one would deny the accuracy of our daily folk psychological explanations of our own and others’ mental states. We spontaneously attribute reasons to them to causally explain their behaviors and mental states. In the same vein, psychoanalysis could be nothing more than an extension of folk psychology. In which case, asking to prove how accurate psychoanalytic interpretation would be as absurd as asking people to give proofs of the scientific reliability of folk psychology.

My aim here consists in specifying to what extent we can conceptually say that psychoanalysis is an extension of folk psychology. To reach that goal, I will try to uncover the way in which the hermeneutic reading of psychoanalysis put the debate in terms of a defense of the distinction between causes and reasons in an effort to free psychoanalysis from the burden of having to prove itself. After having considered Grünbaum’s main arguments against this position, and especially against the hermeneutic reading that would be acausal, I will show how extensionism referred to folk psychology in order to return Grünbaum’s rationale against his own arguments. I will defend the claim that both Grünbaum’s and the extensionists’ positions are misleading. I will do so by referring to Dennett’s intentional stance, since it provides a theory of interpretation that allows determining in what extent folk psychology can be scientifically used. From a naturalist1point of view, I will generally defend the idea that the intentional stance thus can be said to be a causal-hermeneutics. On this basis, I will lastly expose how the seminal experiments performed byShevrin et al. (1996) may allow turning these conceptual considerations into a testable issue.

The Hermeneuticized Freud

In the twentieth century, hermeneutics2 emancipated itself from its exclusive location in the field of biblical exegesis and became the designation for the general study of the theory and practice of interpretation. Dilthey posited hermeneutics as the salient epistemic boundary that divided the method of the natural science explainingphenomena in terms of blind natural causes and the Humanities, which give us an understanding of human actions by reconstituting their inner reasons throughout an empathic process. The latter would determine the scientifically acceptable way it would be possible to experiment in the fields of history, sociology, or psychology. 

In line with the hermeneutics tradition, modern hermeneuts (Jasper, Ricoeur, Habermas…) considered psychoanalysis, contra experimental psychology, as the interpretative science par excellence. To Ricoeur (1970), for instance, There is no observational fact in psychoanalysis, only interpretations! If experimental psychology gives the causes of actions, thus misses their intentional or motivational dimension, psychoanalysis gives a “deep” understanding of their reasons. The causes and reasons distinction would firstly vindicate psychoanalysis as an autonomous science. Secondly, it would justify Ricoeur’s claim that attempting to ground psychoanalysis on a natural science basis is a priori useless, not to say an epistemological nonsense! As a matter of fact, the hermeneutical tradition is tied with the idea that the interpretation of a text, an action, a thought, etc., depends on the encounter between an interpreter and a text, a historical event or an action. Interpretation is not the literal reconstruction of a genuine intention, but the attempt to make an intention comprehensible at the light of the interpreter’s historical and idiosyncratic expectancies. In other words, an interpretation is a never-ending negotiation process intervening between the interpreter and the interpretans’ situated perspectives, as a “fusion of their horizons,” as Gadamer (1997) would put it. In a sense, hermeneutics is in line with the Quine (1960) inscrutability of the interpretation’s referent. No deep or hidden meaning would constitute an objective fact that would foreclose on any further conflict of interpretation. Thus several interpretations, even contradictory ones, might relevantly and practically account for the same texts, actions, etc. 

The French psychoanalyst Viderman (1970) applied the hermeneutical program and the indeterminacy of the interpretation at its heart to the difficulties inherent to Freudian interpretations. Indeed, most of the Freudian interpretations are not only determined by the “psychic material” provided by patients, but also by Freud’s modification of the patients’ narrative, by which Viderman meant the inversions or inventions of meanings that Freud introduced. If this is so, why then would Freud claim that he was only reconstructing objective causes of symptoms? To Viderman, Freud’s position would have been more warranted if he had claimed that psychoanalysis was simply about constructing healing fictions or narratives. If nothing really counts as an objective fact of interpretation, then the final analyst’s interpretation “does not have reconstructed a historical scene, but builds a hypothetical scene, perfectly consistent, where historical elements constitute magnetizing points that yield cohesion to the posterior fantasy” (Viderman, 1970, my translation). In other words, interpretations rightness would not be indexed on its accuracy, i.e., its capacity to enlighten mental objective referents, yet on its curative efficacy.

Read the whole article.