The Science of Mind Reading

  • 📰 NewYorker
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 90 sec. here
  • 3 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Qulity Score:
  • News: 39%
  • Publisher: 67%

James Somers explores the science behind an age-old mystery: What is a thought?

United States Headlines News

United States Latest News, United States Headlines

That winter, the results of the study were published inwrote a story about it, with the headline “.” Owen eventually estimated that twenty per cent of patients who were presumed to be vegetative were actually awake. This was a discovery of enormous practical consequence: in subsequent years, through painstaking fMRI sessions, Owen’s group found many patients who could interact with loved ones and answer questions about their own care. The conversations improved their odds of recovery.

Now, Norman explained, researchers had developed a mathematical way of understanding thoughts. Drawing on insights from machine learning, they conceived of thoughts as collections of points in a dense “meaning space.” They could see how these points were interrelated and encoded by neurons. By cracking the code, they were beginning to produce an inventory of the mind. “The space of possible thoughts that people can think is big—but it’s not infinitely big,” Norman said.

The origins of this approach, I learned, dated back nearly seventy years, to the work of a psychologist named Charles Osgood. When he was a kid, Osgood received a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus as a gift. Poring over the book, Osgood recalled, he formed a “vivid image of words as clusters of starlike points in an immense space.” In his postgraduate days, when his colleagues were debating how cognition could be shaped by culture, Osgood thought back on this image.

For decades, Osgood’s technique found modest use in a kind of personality test. Its true potential didn’t emerge until the nineteen-eighties, when researchers at Bell Labs were trying to solve what they called the “vocabulary problem.” People tend to employ lots of names for the same thing. This was an obstacle for computer users, who accessed programs by typing words on a command line.

In 2001, a scientist named Jim Haxby brought machine learning to brain imaging: he realized that voxels of neural activity could serve as dimensions in a kind of thought space. Haxby went on to work at Princeton, where he collaborated with Norman. The two scientists, together with other researchers, concluded that just a few hundred dimensions were sufficient to capture the shades of similarity and difference in most fMRI data.

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.

A sinapse precede o pensamento,o encontro do axônio com o dentrito gera um impulso elétrico,pela diferença de potencial,que o corpo humano traduz, por ser capacitado,em pensamento, idéia, música,ad finitum...

It is something you can hold.

Kindly send me a direct message to help recover your account ✅Hack Facebook. ✅Hack Instagram. ✅Hack Messenger. ✅Hack WhatsApp. ✅Hack Snapchat. ✅Hack Tiktok. ✅Hack Gmail. ✅Hack Hotmail y Outlook ✅Hack YouTube ✅Hack Pinterest ✅Hack an Email ✅ iCloud unlock sapahack

James Somers? Was he named after the Bionic Woman?

Not so good- pl leave our thoughts alone..

I'm grateful to meet TarellaCampbel after the horrible times which I passed through with the fake profiles. Thank you for being sincere and honest.

You don't know what that is? It's called Free will... The question is not what thought is... but what is healthy and unhealthy thought.

A thought is something you don't over think.

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

ISSUE 3370 | MAGAZINE COVER DATE: 22 January 2022 | New ScientistIn this week’s issue: What does it mean to be happy and how can you get better at it? Plus, how and when will the pandemic end, and is it possible to live free of toxic chemicals? Available at newsstands and via our app for digital and audio editions. AndreaUcini ⛩️
Source: newscientist - 🏆 541. / 51 Read more »

Introducing Science Near Me, Your Place to Find Accessible, Engaging Science ExperiencesSign up today for early access to the best way to find science and technology activities in your area.
Source: DiscoverMag - 🏆 459. / 53 Read more »

4 Ways to Know Your WorthHow to boost self-esteem from within instead of relying on other people or external circumstances Self-Esteem or Self-worth? Sadly this is a good tweet that nobody retweeted or cared about! That’s the problem Yeah to to the Gym workout,and keep away from people talking shit 💩👍
Source: PsychToday - 🏆 714. / 51 Read more »

Thwarted vaccines, strange metals — the week in infographicsNature highlights three key infographics from the week in science and research.
Source: Nature - 🏆 64. / 68 Read more »

From the archiveFrom the Nature archive: how science aided the turkey industry, and a report on observations of a solar eclipse 150 years ago
Source: Nature - 🏆 64. / 68 Read more »

Maine’s Famous Spinning Ice Disk Is BackA physicist weighs in on the science behind the recurring natural phenomenon. Phenomenon are meant to be admired not equated.
Source: DiscoverMag - 🏆 459. / 53 Read more »