Monday, March 26, 2007

Brain logs subliminal images

Subliminal images register in the brain, UK researchers report. Keep in mind that while it was banned in the UK, it's still legal in the United States.

from the BBC:

Dr Bahador Bahrami, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: "What's interesting here is that your brain does log things that you aren't even aware of and can't ever become aware of.
"The brain is open to what's around it. So if there is 'spare capacity', in terms of attention, the brain will allocate that resource to subliminal activity.
"These findings point to the sort of impact that subliminal advertising may have on the brain.
"What this study doesn't address is whether this would then influence you to go out and buy a product."
Dr Bahrami is set to carry out more research to evaluate the further impact of subliminal words and images.

Digital Immortals

A new research project between the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Central Florida in Orlando are aiming to create historical archives of people's knowledge combined with lifelike representations.

From PhysOrg.com:

"The goal is to combine artificial intelligence with the latest advanced graphics and video game-type technology to enable us to create historical archives of people beyond what can be achieved using traditional technologies such as text, audio and video footage," said Jason Leigh, associate professor of computer science and director of UIC's Electronic Visualization Laboratory. Leigh is UIC's lead principal investigator.

EVL will build a state-of-the-art motion-capture studio to digitalize the image and movement of real people who will go on to live a virtual eternity in virtual reality. Knowledge will be archived into databases. Voices will be analyzed to create synthesized but natural-sounding "virtual" voices. Mannerisms will be studied and used in creating the 3-D virtual forms, known technically as avatars.


At the moment the project sounds a lot like a library with a hologram man talking to you. Though I could see this getting interesting as time goes on. Imagine: Everyone signing up for immortal digitization! Heads of state! Religious leaders! Ex-Girlfriends! Z-List Celebrities! Pets!

Can we use this for fictional people perhaps?

About Me

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I'm Troy Doney. I'm on the internet. I'm the writer of the blog "Off the Reservation" at New West. I also write a blog at Reznet. My personal blog is Man Bites Dog. I post my pictures at Flickr and I write short sentences at Twitter.