<p>We don't have a well tested or accepted model of how specific items are encoded in the cortex, so text to brain is still far off. However, it is possible to send information to the brain.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6144/387.full" rel="nofollow">Ramirez et al. 2013. Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus</a></p>

<p>This study (in mice) involved creating a false sense of fear associated with a particular context. This implanted information is much higher level than just text, but it is still information.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-12T22:50:33.073Z
i wouldn't really call that experiment "implanting" information.  it's more like artificially reactivating a memory in a different context.
honi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-19T00:44:52.897Z
it is creating an association that didn't exist before. A human equivalent would be implanting the knowledge that french fries taste good with mayo.
K A
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-08T00:16:15.437Z
2016-01-08T00:16:15.437Z
K A
<p>pretty simple: through direct electromagnetic stimulation of photoreceptors in the retina in patterns corresponding to letter shapes, transduced through layers of processing there, passed through the optic nerve to the lgn of the thalamus and from there to visual cortex, eventually you get a complete neural representation of the text. alternatively, you could use direct stimulation of the chochlea via pressure waves in the ear canal transduced by the bones of the inner ear. the auditory cortex will then do most of the heavy lifting. </p>

<p>seriously, though, that paper's achievement was pretty limited: "With 10 words in the dictionary, 75% of all words are recognized correctly." That is just over 3 bits of information being conveyed. And that is after training the classifier. </p>

<p>Training the brain to classify direct inputs is at about the same level of a few bits. www.nature.com/articles/srep01319 </p>

<p>see <a href="https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/9951/what-research-has-been-done-on-brain-to-brain-interfaces?rq=1">What research has been done on brain-to-brain interfaces?</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-07T17:34:42.287Z
"use direct stimulation of the chochlea via pressure waves in the ear canal ..." sure sounds like the simple act of speaking to the subject or playing a sound
dwkd
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-07T19:52:20.160Z
My background is in CS, but your approach sounds like you're piggybacking the "pathways" used by the eyes and ears, opposed to stimulating whatever areas of the brain are responsible for natural language understanding. Is that a fair assessment?
GEL
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-07T20:01:18.467Z
yeah it was a joke.  the easiest way to get text-to-brain is by showing a person written words or by saying words out loud to someone.
honi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-07T20:04:02.197Z
the serious answer is that we can't do text-to-brain or brain-to-text because we have next to no idea how the brain represents text.
honi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-07T20:05:03.680Z
current state of the art in brain-computer interfaces is limited to a few bits of bandwidth no matter the modality of the information.
honi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-07T16:46:59.233Z
2016-01-07T16:46:59.233Z
2017-04-13T12:56:16.417Z
honi
<p>Herff et. al. demonstrate in "<a href="http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2015.00217/full" rel="nofollow">Brain-to-text: decoding spoken phrases from phone representations in the brain</a>" a brain-to-text system to map intracranial electrocorticographic recordings to text. </p>

<p>I've been looking for literature attempting to go the other direction, text-to-brain, but have not had much luck finding anything on Springer, Google Scholar, and related services. </p>

<p>For someone in the know, what's the current state of the text-to-brain problem?</p>

<reference-request><brain-computer-interface><language-processing>
Text-to-brain literature?
GEL
# Text-to-brain literature?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-01-07)

Herff et. al. demonstrate in "[Brain-to-text: decoding spoken phrases from phone representations in the brain](http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2015.00217/full)" a brain-to-text system to map intracranial electrocorticographic recordings to text.

I've been looking for literature attempting to go the other direction, text-to-brain, but have not had much luck finding anything on Springer, Google Scholar, and related services.

For someone in the know, what's the current state of the text-to-brain problem?

**Tags:** reference-request, brain-computer-interface, language-processing


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2016-01-08. Score: 2

We don't have a well tested or accepted model of how specific items are encoded in the cortex, so text to brain is still far off. However, it is possible to send information to the brain.

[Ramirez et al. 2013. Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6144/387.full)

This study (in mice) involved creating a false sense of fear associated with a particular context. This implanted information is much higher level than just text, but it is still information.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: i wouldn't really call that experiment "implanting" information.  it's more like artificially reactivating a memory in a different context.  
> **username_1**: it is creating an association that didn't exist before. A human equivalent would be implanting the knowledge that french fries taste good with mayo.  

---

### Answer by username_2 on 2016-01-07. Score: 1

pretty simple: through direct electromagnetic stimulation of photoreceptors in the retina in patterns corresponding to letter shapes, transduced through layers of processing there, passed through the optic nerve to the lgn of the thalamus and from there to visual cortex, eventually you get a complete neural representation of the text. alternatively, you could use direct stimulation of the chochlea via pressure waves in the ear canal transduced by the bones of the inner ear. the auditory cortex will then do most of the heavy lifting.

seriously, though, that paper's achievement was pretty limited: "With 10 words in the dictionary, 75% of all words are recognized correctly." That is just over 3 bits of information being conveyed. And that is after training the classifier.

Training the brain to classify direct inputs is at about the same level of a few bits. www.nature.com/articles/srep01319

see [What research has been done on brain-to-brain interfaces?](https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/9951/what-research-has-been-done-on-brain-to-brain-interfaces?rq=1)

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: "use direct stimulation of the chochlea via pressure waves in the ear canal ..." sure sounds like the simple act of speaking to the subject or playing a sound  
> **username_0**: My background is in CS, but your approach sounds like you're piggybacking the "pathways" used by the eyes and ears, opposed to stimulating whatever areas of the brain are responsible for natural language understanding. Is that a fair assessment?  
> **username_2**: yeah it was a joke.  the easiest way to get text-to-brain is by showing a person written words or by saying words out loud to someone.  
> **username_2**: the serious answer is that we can't do text-to-brain or brain-to-text because we have next to no idea how the brain represents text.  
> **username_2**: current state of the art in brain-computer interfaces is limited to a few bits of bandwidth no matter the modality of the information.  

---

