Now, but still, what can be done with these machines, some beautiful things. I want to give you just one example of brain reading, so to speak, using this functional MRI technology. And so this is a work by Semir Zeki and his, collaborate, collaborators in, in University College, London. Where they tried to examine something very interesting. May, maybe there was, yeah something very interesting, they looked at the neural correlates of beauty. Is there some region or regions in the brain that are particularly active when you like a particular painting? So they used this machine that I just mentioned and they really wanted to do the following, Kawabata and Zeki. In a very beautiful paper called, Neural Correlates of Beauty. They wanted to ask, are the brain areas that are consistently active across subjects, all subjects. Will they perceive a painting as beautiful? Or in all subjects. Are there regions that are active when you think or when you feel that this is ugly. So in order to do that, they use the following procedure, experimental procedure. They took students for both sexes, and a lot of controls, I'm not going to be able to repeat. But you can read the paper itself. And they used four categories of paintings, abstract painting, still life, portraits, and landscapes. Many, many, many repetitions of different portraits, different still life, and so forth. And each of the of the students, the participants of this experiment, had to quantify their liking of the paintings. So I can look at this and say, this is very beautiful. This is before going into the magnet, so just a psychological test. So, this is very beautiful, I give it 10. My grade, my grading of this is 10. I look at this, Mona Lisa, I like it very much, maybe not 10, 8. this, I don't like at all, 5. So, I grade, personally, each one of the students grade the different paintings but many, many of them. So Semir Zeki and his team already knew that this particular student like this, no doesn't like this and so on. So you have it in advance, then he put the patients into the magne. And he was looking at the brains of these people using the magnet. So again the magnet an now you start to show the same paintings before. But now each painting is marked per, per student, that he likes this or doesn't like it she likes it doesn't like it and so on. So one clear things, one obvious thing as I just mentioned before that for a particular category, you will get different brain region active. So, for example, if you look at the activity of the brain activity in the magnet, the functional MRI signal, what we call the, bald signal. When you look at the brain, of all people, when they see portrait minus the activity of all other categories. because you take the difference between the activity of the brain seeing portrait minus the activity of the brain for all other categories. So portrait versus non-portrait. You see the particular region that is specializing portraits. So you see these regions are active, face regions for example that we just showed before. You look at landscape versus everything that is not landscape. You see other regions in the brain. So this is not a surprise. So, as I said before, for all of us, all of us, when we look to, as a, to a face, there is a particular region in all our brains. A, all the brain of all of us is active in this particular region here. And if you look at landscape, this is similar to us. So I can read your brain, looking at your brain. And seeing that this is active, I say now you experience landscape. You dream about landscape. You image landscape. This I can do. So that's not surprising. One interesting point I want to emphasize here is, this one, is that when you do abstract, so you took an abstract painting. And you show an abstract painting to a, to the student or to you. And I look at abstract versus non-abstract. I see there is no particular region in your brain that deals with abstract. There is no abstract region in your brain. So how do you know that it's abstract? You know that this is an abstract. You know that this is an abstract painting. How do you know that this is an abstract painting? There is no region in your brain that deals with abstract. How do you know that it's abstract? You know that it's nothing else that you know. It's not portrait. It's not landscape. It's not still life. So it must be abstract. So, that's what you see here. So, abstract versus non-abstract, no brain activity. So that means that if. It's something that is not this, not this and not this. It must be abstract. So, that's interesting and that's beautiful. Apparently, there is no reason for our brain to develop regions for abstract. There are abstract things in the world. There are faces. There are trees but, no abstract. So, but still there are abstract because our brain generate abstract things. So this is how we know it's abstract. That's nice. But that is not, was not the question of Semir Zeki. The question was not whether you have different brain regions for portraits or for landscapes. This is clear. The question are the regions that responds specifically to your liking or disliking. To your personal preference of whether this is ugly or beautiful. Beyond the category, beyond the particular category. And here is the finding, which is really amazing, and, and very interesting. Very controversial as well. Still, but still, this is a, this is a finding and this is the finding as follows. So beyond the category, now correlating your personal preference for this particular picture, whether portrait or still life suppose you liked this picture. And somebody else did not like this picture, but he liked another picture. So if you like the picture, and you do what you felt is beautiful, and what you felt is ugly. One minus the other. You see a particular region, the medial orbital frontal cortex that is being lighted up, okay, very particular. So for all of us, independent of your specific liking, whether you like abstract or Picasso or Mona Lisa or whatever. If you like it, then there is a particular region being lighted up. And when you don't like it, there is a particular other region, the mortar cortex that lights up. But let me point out two things, several things. So first of all, this is a general phenomena. And again, it's not a matter of whether this is a particular category, it's a matter whether you like it or not that's the issue. [COUGH] And so let me emphasize through this paper, few things. So, so, whenever you see something that is, either you like it or you feel it's ugly Both regions are activated. It's not that this only this region is activated when you like it and only the mortar cortex is activated when you don't like it. Both regions are activated. But one is activated more than the pother. So both engage the same areas, both ugliness and beautifulness. Engage the same region, but to different proportions. So changing the relative activity in the orbital frontal cortex here. When it is more active than the other. So, increase in the activity of this region. Correlates with judgement of beauty. Okay? Beauty is stronger than ugliness so, this region becomes strongly activated when you feel this is beautiful. But, also the other region is active but less, and vice versa for ugliness. So, okay? So changes in the relative activity of the motor cortex, of the motor cortex. So this, this now becomes more active. But this other region is also active, but less. So one is becoming more active. The other one becomes less active, then it is correlated with ugliness. So this is interesting. There are two major regions that respond to your private feeling of ugliness or beautifulness. And both are active but to different proportions so it's a continuum thing. This is more or this is less. This is a little bit less and this is a little bit more. Or then it switches and this becomes more and this becomes less. So now it's ugly. So now it's beautiful, according to your personal preference. That's very interesting. One thing that is interesting and that I think people would not probably maybe in advance predict. That when you feel that something is ugly, that the painting is ugly, that you don't like this painting. Your model cortex which is usually used for movement. Why is it active? One hypothesis, one possibility is that this painting is aversive. You don't like this painting. You want to escape. You want to run. You want to run from the painting. Maybe you don't do it in the museum, because you are polite but you're nervous system wants to escape, the mortar system is active. It wants to move away from this ugly painting, aversive painting, maybe you don't do it. So that's an interesting use of the function MRI to read your brain. In some sense to rid your preferences. So even at that level, whether you like something or don't like something, after a little of calibration and af-, after knowing what you like and don't, and so on, you can see different regions that are commonly to all of us. None expert in, none expert in art, its not that because you're expert it is like that. Jyst because you have a preference, whether it depends on art or anything that you like or don't like, that's another issue, is it an artistic aspect that you like art or not. Or is it liking something else as well. These are issues that I don't want to discuss now, but just, just to show you what can be done with this machine. How can I probe into your brain, looking not only whether you see faces, or whether you see still life. Or whether you see a tree, but also whether you like what you see, or whether you feel it's ugly. So this is really going into your brain to a, to a limited degree. As I said, it's not particular face, it's not particular aspect of the world that you look at. But it is saying quite a lot about your brain. So, so this is very interesting but I think the more interesting thing that one wants to look at is looking at the case where you cannot interact with the brain otherwise, so the person cannot talk to you. At all, the locked in syndrome. So, you can use the same machine that I just mentioned. The same technology, the functional MRI to interact with the brain in a vegetative state. There is a lot of interest now, especially recently in Israel. you may know that our previous prime minister is in a coma for more than five years now. Can not interact with him in a direct way, he can not speak, but you can may be look at his brain, and see whether his brain is conscious. Can it respond to things? So this is a very interesting paper, headed by Martin Monty, a professor now in Berkeley. Then in University College London. All of the leaders of the field of, looking at the brain. Of locked in person, that's the term, you are locked in, you cannot interact. Looking at the brain of this patient asking whether they are conscious. Can they respond consciously? Do they understand, so to speak? Something about the word. So this is using the same technology. By the way, the same person Marty Monty was recently, two months ago, visiting Israel and scanning the brain of Showell, with yet unknown results but some of them are really surprising. Not completed but still. So, what can you do? What can you do with this machine in this case? So some of these patients, not all of them, but some of these patients including Showell apparently. [COUGH] can respond willfully and specifically to a particular question. In a particular, using particular brain region. So, very briefly what you try to do, what they try to do, the researcher, is to teach the person, the locked in person. To teach him to respond, to activate, willing fully, different brain regions. Depending on whether the question is, the answer to the question is correct or not. For example, you can ask, this is a patient now. You can ask the patient and scan his brain, ask the patient, is your father's name Alexander? And you instruct the patient, you teach the patient to activate the motor region if it's yes or another region if it's no. So you can teach the person to willing-fully image something, let's say image tennis playing. When the answer is yes. Okay? Or, image something else. Let's say image a tree. When it's no. So, you image when it's yes, you use the motor cortex to convey the fact that this is yes. And when it's no, when the answer is no, you use a region in the brain that involves dealing with trees. So this is how you dichotomize the response. Yes, meaning that you will activate motor cortex. No, meaning that you will activate another region. So that's how I can interact with you, because I can ask, is your father named Alexander? Let's say that it's yes. Then, I should be able to see activity in the motor cortex. If your father is not Alexander. Let's say something else. then, you, you say no by activating another region. So I can start to interact with you. And this is amazing. You must admit that this is something really touching. Some of these people, for years and years could not interact. You didn't even know whether they even realized something about what happens around. And suddenly you can see that some of these brain, not all of them. Some are in a coma state, where there are no interactions. And so the brain is, in some sense, dead. But this is a case. This patient, you can see, that very specifically, these patients can activate the motor system, the motor imagery system, so, image and motor movement. And it activates this region. You can see the same control for a healthy person. So if I'm asking you now to close your eyes and think about tennis. This region will be activated, the motor region, so you'll see how similar the patient, motor imagery, and the control person, non patient person. The imagery here are very similar. So this person is conscious, and he can activate by will. This region or this other region for special, for scenery imagery, image a forest. You'll see a normal person, you see. So this is a way, a new way, a new method, very recent to interact with locked in person. This is a fantastic tool. It raises a lot of ethical issues, now that he's locked in, how do you interact with him, at what level what to do with him, what about suffering. And all these other issues that, that are not beyond, beyond, beyond what I want to say. But just want to show you what can you do with these fantastic tools. It's a brain reading. You read the brain after teaching the brain how to respond and so on. This is beautiful, and this raises, and I want to finish with this aspect, the issue of brain polygraphs. So from what I told you, it sounds maybe that I can look at the brain and say things about the brain, which I can. by the way i can use other techniques like EEG, electroencephalograms or function an MRI and other techniques that are not invasive but still i can look at your brain. So, you know, people are very afraid. Here i have a brain, I can look at your brain. I know all your secrets, I know all your thoughts. I know everything, very frightening. Eh, is it really frightening? Okay, is it really frightening? This is for future discussions, but I want also to say eh, just to relax all of us from this frightening because i already mentioned a few points for discussion. First of all, you want to ask what's the success rate of what i showed you before. I told you that there is this issue of calibrating per person Unless you want to say something very general about, is it the faces that you deal with? Or is it the forest that you deal with? These are very general issues and this we can look at your brain without much calibration. Still you need to calibrate, each brain has its own level of activity. And so, you have to calibrate, you have to do a lot of things. Before you come to a conclusion, you have to average many responses because this machines are very noisy. And the brain is very noisy so you have to average again and again. Very rarely you can take one shot, one look and say something about the brain. You have to average a lot of signals. In order to see the average signal, which should reflect something about your brain. So there is the issue of noise and variability. The brain is very variable, and there is the issue of personal variability. So each person has slightly different way, origin. And if you want to go into the details of what you now process, you need to go to a personal level which means that as I said before, like polygraphs. You have to sit there enough time and lie and lie and lie and lie until you get the calibration for how your blood pressure and other parameters relate to you lying. And then you have to say the truth, the truth, the truth, the truth and then you calibrate the machine for you and calibrate the photograph for you. And so I need to calibrate my brain photograph for you if I need to read your brain. So, this issue of calibration, personal calibration is of course reducing the capability of the machine to say particular things about yourself. You have to cooperate and it has to go enough times in order to calibrate. After calibration, you may say more specific things about yourself because I calibrated to your liking. When you look at the particular face of your wife, of your husband then I can say something that now you are thinking about your husband. But I need to look at it a lot times so this is the issue. And the question eventually is you think that because I look at my brain, the source of everything. Then, I go directly to your thoughts. But apparently, at least today, the success rate, the success rate of looking, using brain polygraphs. If we want to call it this way, MRI, or EEG, looking at your brain with, directly at your brain, so to speak. With these techniques and looking at a regular polygraph which his remote from your brain. It's your blood pressure, it's your eh, other parameter your, your finger pressures. And other, other aspects of measuring things from the periphery in the machine can tell you about the same after calibration. After calibration, it's about the same as this machine. So it's not a big improvement. Some of it's because the machine is crude, you look at the scan you look at blood flow. It's not at the level of cells or networks, but still even if I could look at yourself in network, I would need to calibrate it personally. Because your spike here says something else then my spike here. It's a personal representation. So there is the issue of personality, individuality, that makes life sort of a bit difficult for this machine. So you should worry much much less than in all these science fiction movies. They will look at your brain. They will read your brain. They will know exactly what you want to do, exactly. This is not going to happen unless you give your brain, so to speak, enough times to the experimenter. Then he study your brain. Then he can say something more specific. Including what letter you look now. What is the sentence that you look now, at, at now, just by looking at your brain. But this has to go through a lot of calibration and lot of averaging again and again and again and again. So this is the state of thing today in terms of using these technologies for brain reading. So I wanted to give you a basis for what can be done and beautiful things could be done. For example, reading yes, no. Binary. Or maybe a little bit more for locked in patients. It tells you a lot about if his brain is conscious or semi-conscious and so on. Which is very important. But reading your thoughts to the level that know which person are you now thinking about. What exactly is your plan for the next hour, and who are you going to meet? Not with these machines.
