It sounds like pure science fiction, but researchers have figured out how to tap into the visual cortex of a living mouse and see exactly what the animal is seeing. In a major breakthrough, a team at University College London (UCL) has successfully reconstructed 10-second video clips purely by decoding the activity of the animal’s brain cells.
The findings, published in the journal eLife, demonstrate a powerful new way to decode how the brain processes visual information on a pixel-by-pixel basis.
While previous research has used fMRI machines to attempt to decode human brain activity, the UCL team utilised single-cell recordings in mice to achieve unprecedented precision. By analysing data from approximately 8,000 individual neurons in the mouse visual cortex, the researchers reconstructed the high-quality movie clips at 30 frames per second.
The findings, published in the journal eLife, demonstrate a powerful new way to decode how the brain processes visual information on a pixel-by-pixel basis.
While previous research has used fMRI machines to attempt to decode human brain activity, the UCL team utilised single-cell recordings in mice to achieve unprecedented precision. By analysing data from approximately 8,000 individual neurons in the mouse visual cortex, the researchers reconstructed the high-quality movie clips at 30 frames per second.