Duncan Greene in Wired (UK):

Neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have figured out a way of recreating visual activity taking place in the brain and reconstructing it using YouTube clips.

The team used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models to decode and reconstruct visual experiences in the minds of test subjects. So far, it's only been used to reconstruct movie trailers, but it could, it is hoped, eventually yield equipment to reconstruct dreams on a computer screen.

The participants, who were members of the research team (as they had to stay still inside the scanner for hours at a time), watched two sets of movie trailers while the fMRI machine measured blood flow in their visual cortex.

Those measurements were used to come up with a computer model of how the visual cortex in each subject reacted to different types of image. “We built a model…that describes how shape and motion information in the movie is mapped into brain activity,” said Shinji Nishimoto, lead author of the study.

After associating the brain activity with what was happening on the screen in the first set of trailers, the second set of clips was then used to test the theory. It was asked to predict the brain activity that would be generated based on the visual patterns on-screen. To give it some ammunition for that task, it was fed 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos.

Then, the 100 YouTube clips that were found to be most similar to the clip (embedded below) were merged together, forming a blurry but reasonably accurate representation of what was going on on-screen.

Police overreaction, often unprovoked brutality, seems to be one of the searing images of the Occupy movements. At UC Davis:

Nathan Brown to his Chacellor:

I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

You are not.

I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:

1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today

2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality

3) to demand your immediate resignation

Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. These were protesters who participated in a rally speaking out against tuition increases and police brutality on UC campuses on Tuesday—a rally that I organized, and which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week. In the highest tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, those protesters had linked arms and held their ground in defense of tents they set up beside Sproul Hall. In a gesture of solidarity with those students and faculty, and in solidarity with the national Occupy movement, students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police outfitted with riot helmets, brandishing batons and teargas guns to remove their tents today, those students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.

What happened next?

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.