Positive Technology Journal

Via Pasta and Vinegar

Using cats selected for their sharp vision, in 1999 Garret Stanley and his team recorded signals from a total of 177 cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus - a part of the brain's thalamus (the thalamus integrates all of the brains sensory input and forms the base of the seven-layered thalamocortical loop with the six layered neocortex) - as they played 16 second digitized (64 by 64 pixels) movies of indoor and outdoor scenes.

Using simple mathematical filters, Dr. Stanley and his colleagues decoded the signals to generate movies of what the cats actually saw. This finding has enormous implications in the fields of neurorehabilitation and neural repair. For example, it could allow to wire artificial limbs directly into the brain, or to develop artificial brain extensions.

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Garrett B. Stanley, Fei F. Li, and Yang Dan, Reconstruction of Natural Scenes from Ensemble Responses in the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus. Journal of Neuroscience, 1999; 19: 8036 - 8042 Link to the full-text PDF