Short films made from brain activity of mice aim to show how they see world
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Short films made from brain activity of mice aim to show how they see world
"The brief movie clips are grainy and pixellated, but provide a glimpse of how mice processed footage that featured people taking part in various sports from gymnastics to horse riding and wrestling. The work is in its infancy, but as technology advances, scientists hope to eavesdrop on a richer suite of animal perceptions and ultimately gain fresh insights into their experiences and how brains more broadly respond to their surroundings."
"Central to the work was an artificial intelligence program that won a recent scientific competition to predict how electrical activity in the visual cortex of the mouse brain changes depending on what the animals are seeing. The visual cortex receives raw input from the retina and turns it into a coherent view of the world."
"To reconstruct what mice were watching, the scientists first used an infrared laser to record how neurons were firing in the visual cortex as the rodents watched 10-second-long movie clips. They then fed blank video data into the AI program and steadily altered the imagery until the AI predicted the same patterns of brain activity as those seen in the mice."
Researchers used artificial intelligence to reconstruct short video clips from the brain activity of mice watching sports footage. By recording electrical activity in the visual cortex using infrared lasers while mice viewed 10-second videos, scientists fed blank video data into an AI program that had won a scientific competition for predicting visual cortex responses. The AI iteratively modified imagery until it matched the observed neural patterns. The resulting reconstructed videos are grainy and pixelated but reveal how mice process visual information. Since mice have poor eyesight compared to humans, the reconstructed footage could potentially be improved sevenfold. This work represents early progress toward understanding animal perception and gaining insights into how brains respond to their environment.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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