Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
CSCA-lezing: Decoding conscious and unconscious mental states from brain
activity in humans
14 oktober 2009 16.00 - 17.00 uur
Doelenzaal (UB), Singel 425, Amsterdam
Prof. dr. John-Dylan Haynes
Professor at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in
Berlin, Germany
Recent advances in human neuroimaging have shown that it is possible
to accurately read out a person's conscious experience based only on
non-invasive fMRI measurements of their brain activity. This "brain
reading" is possible because each thought is associated with a unique
pattern of brain activity that can serve as a "fingerprint" of this
thought in the brain. By training a computer to recognize these fMRI
"thought patterns" it is possible to read out what someone is
currently thinking with high accuracy. Here several studies from our
lab will be presented that show how to use decoding to investigate
conscious and unconscious neural processing. This includes comparisons
of neural and perceptual information, unconscious visual processing
and decoding of high-level decisions. It will be shown that it is even
possible to read out a person's concealed intentions and to predict
how someone is going to decide a few seconds later. The talk will also
discuss fundamental challenges and ethical aspects of such "brain
reading".
Elk jaar organiseert het Cognitive Science Center Amsterdam (CSCA) met
steun van NWO de CSCA Lecture series. Deze lezingen worden gegeven
door gerenommeerde onderzoekers, die vanuit verschillende invalshoeken
- waaronder psychologie, neurobiologie, taalwetenschap, informatica en
filosofie - te maken hebben met de cognitiewetenschappen. Door middel
van deze lezingen hoopt het CSCA de cognitiewetenschappen, inclusief
de structuur en functies ervan en de relatie tussen cognitie en
hersenen en machines, toegankelijk te maken voor een breder publiek.
Meer informatie is te vinden op de CSCA-website.
* Maatschappij- en Gedragswetenschappen