Subject:  Perhaps it will be called a Catmac? (Maisch)..
Date:     Tue, 12 Oct 1999 171434 -0500 (CDT)
From:     "Roy L. Beavers" 
To:       emfguru 
--------------------------------------------------



.......I want to know if they were able to "see" better at night???

Roy Beavers (EMFguru)......
rbeavers@llion.org.......
.....It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.....
EMF-L web-site can be found at: 
EMF-L archives can be found at: 
..................PEOPLE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROFITS..................

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 07:11:17 +1000
From: Don Maisch 
To: rbeavers@mail.llion.org
Subject: Perhaps it will be called a Catmac?

>Subject: [earthchanges] BBC News: Computer uses cat's brain to see  (fwd)
>
>
>Friday, October 8, 1999 Published at 20:57 GMT 21:57 UK
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_468000/468857.stm
>Sci/Tech
>
>Computer uses cat's brain to see
>By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse
>
>In what is bound to become a much debated and highly controversial
>experiment, a team of US scientists have wired a computer to a cat's brain
>and created videos of what the animal was seeing.
>
>According to a paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Yang Dan,
>Garret Stanley and Fei Li of the University of California at Berkeley have
>been able to "reconstruct natural scenes with recognizable moving objects."
>
>The researchers attached electrodes to 177 cells in the so-called thalamus
>region of the cat's brain and monitored their activity.
>
>The thalamus is connected directly to the cat's eyes via the optic nerve.
>Each of its cells is programmed to respond to certain features in the cat's
>field of view. Some cells "fire" when they record an edge in the cat's
>vision, others when they see lines at certain angles, etc. This way the
>cat's brain acquires the information it needs to reconstruct an image.
>
>Recognisable objects
>
>The scientists recorded the patterns of firing from the cells in a computer.
>They then used a technique they describe as a "linear decoding technique" to
>reconstruct an image.
>
>To their amazement they say they saw natural scenes with recognisable
>objects such as people's faces. They had literally seen the world through
>cat's eyes.
>
>Other scientists have hailed this as an important step in our understanding
>of how signals are represented and processed in the brain.
>
>It is research that has enormous implications.
>
>Artificial brain extensions
>
>It could prove a breakthrough in the hoped-for ability to wire artificial
>limbs directly into the brain. More amazingly, it could lead to artificial
>brain extensions.
>
>By understanding how information can be presented to the brain, some day,
>scientists may be able to build devices that interface directly with the
>brain, providing access to extra data storage or processing power or the
>ability to control devices just by thinking about them.
>
>One of the scientists behind this current breakthrough, Garret Stanley, now
>working at Harvard University, has already predicted machines with brain
>interfaces.
>
>Such revolutionary devices should not be expected in the very near future.
>They will require decoding information from elsewhere in the brain looking
>at signals that are far more complicated than those decoded from the cat's
>thalamus but, in a way, the principle has been demonstrated.
>



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