Support the fact-based journalism you rely on with a donation to Marketplace today. Give Now!
Final Note

Computer can reconstruct the movie in your mind

Bob Moon Sep 22, 2011

This final note, from the Marketplace “this just sounds way too weird” file.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley sat some volunteers down, had them watch movie clips, and scanned their brain activity. And then, from those impulses, a computer was able to make rough reconstructions of what they saw.

Only crude shapes and movements, mind you — nothing as identifiable as a face, for example. And no, they weren’t trying to find a way to make cheap movies. But one day, they suggest, this might help, say, stroke victims, who have no other way to communicate.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.