Professor Jack Gallant and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley have published a new paper ‘Natural speech reveals the semantic maps that tile human cerebral cortex‘ in the journal Nature. Readers may recall another impressive paper by Gallant’s lab in which visual experiences were ‘reverse engineered’ as subjects watched film clips whilst being scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The construction of a semantic map was also discussed back in 2012.
In the new paper, whilst subjects were watching film clips and listening to words, fMRI was used to map the active areas in the brain. What was really interesting was that the resulting brain maps of semantic concepts were similar between subjects. This is pioneering research and shows just how predictive fMRI data can be. This is likely to have applications at the clinical interface and it will be interesting to see how other clinicians respond to these latest findings.
The Gallant Lab have made the brain viewer available and there are two videos below. The first is produced by Nature and the second by the National Science Foundation.
Index: There are indices for the TAWOP site here and here
Twitter: You can follow ‘The Amazing World of Psychiatry’ Twitter by clicking on this link.
TAWOP Channel: You can follow the TAWOP Channel on YouTube by clicking on this link.
Responses: If you have any comments, you can leave them below or alternatively e-mail justinmarley17@yahoo.co.uk.
Disclaimer: The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.
Conflicts of Interest: *For potential conflicts of interest please see the About section.
The Amazing World of Psychiatry: A Psychiatry Blog 