Watch the video: Researchers decode the thoughts of mice – why this raises great hopes in medicine.
How can data processed by a brain be captured and reproduced? Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, EPFL for short, have investigated this question. And with success. But what do mice have to do with it? Sequentially. A new program, an algorithm called CEBRA, is able to decode the brain signals – in this case a mouse – and to map what the animal is currently visually perceiving. To do this, it creates artificial neural network models that capture the dynamics of the brain with high accuracy, according to a study recently published in the journal Nature. Mackenzie Mathis, Neuroscientist and Assistant Professor at EPFL “As a neuroscientist, I’m very interested in understanding complex structures, such as the brain. That’s why we want to decipher the causes of behavior and understand how it occurs. That’s what our algorithm does.” The researchers showed a mouse a black and white film – and were able to reconstruct what they saw. The algorithm “learns” the hidden structures in the neural network and makes its prediction based on this. Using data from less than one percent of the neurons, CEBRA can show what the mouse sees. “We took data taken from the brains of mice at the Allen Institute in Seattle, Washington. The mice were shown a classic movie in which a person walks down a corridor to get to a car. The mouse looks just passively, like you or I would sit in a movie theater.” The brain signals were obtained either directly by measuring brain activity via electrode probes inserted into the visual cortex area of the mouse brain, or by optical probes using genetically engineered mice manipulated so that activated neurons glow green. “The production of the movies had an accuracy of over 95%. So we think this could be a kind of first demonstration of brain-machine interface style decoding.” Although it is not yet possible to fully reconstruct what a human sees using brain signals alone, CEBRA is a step in precisely that direction. “If we can use these more powerful tools in the clinic, say in visual neuroprosthetics, it might be possible to restore vision.” One day, paralyzed patients could possibly regain some of their lost abilities.