What if it were possible to explore your brain in virtual reality, watching your thoughts flashing before your eyes? A team of neuroscientists and software developers have created a way to do precisely that, LiveScience reported.
To allow a user to journey through a person's brain in real-time, a new system combines brain scanning, brain recording and virtual reality.
The "glass brain" system, demonstrated at the South by Southwest Interactive festival on March 10, was developed by computational neuroscientists Tim Mullen and Christian Kothe of the University of California, San Diego, in collaboration with the lab of Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, using a virtual reality headset made by the gaming company Oculus Rift, according to LiveScience.
"We've never been able to step inside the structures [of the brain] and see it in this way," Gazzaley said. "It's biofeedback on the next level."
Independently, Gazzaley has been collaborating with Philip Rosedale, creator of the game Second Life, on using virtual reality to improve neuroscience, and vice versa, LiveScience reported.
"The brain in the demo actually belonged to Rosedale's wife Yvette, who was wearing a cap studded with electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes that measure differences in electric potential in order to record brain activity," LiveScience reported. "Gazzaley's team had previously scanned Yvette's brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to reveal its underlying structure and tangle of neural fibers."
LiveScience continued, "During the demo, Rosedale wore a virtual reality headset through which he could explore his wife's brain in 3D, as flashes of light displayed her brain activity from the EEG. A projection screen showed a similar view to the audience. When the brain came on the screen, the buzz of excitement in the room was audible."
Although the glass brain didn't actually show what Yvette was thinking, the EEG signals painted a picture of her brain activity more broadly. However, using the virtual reality system, the researchers ultimately hope to get closer to decoding brain signals and displaying them.
So far, the team has focused on visualizing one brain at a time. But Philip Rosedale foresees a day when two people could interact virtually in a way that telegraphs their inner state, LiveScience reported.
People often speak of interactions in virtual reality as being impoverished compared with those in the real world, Rosedale said. But, he asked, what if you could communicate in virtual reality in a way that makes real life impoverished?
