Watanabe’s experiment had two parts. First, subjects had their brains scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine as they stared at a computer screen. On the screen was a simple image: a series of diagonal lines. Merely studying those lines produced a very specific activation pattern in the visual cortex, which the fMRI decoded and stored.

The second part of the study took place the following day. Again, subjects looked at a computer screen while being scanned by an fMRI machine, but this time instead of the lines, a small disk appeared on the screen. Whereas the previous day’s work just required the subject to stare at the image, the goal today was to mentally make the disk bigger. But there was a catch: No one told the subjects how to enlarge the disk.

The solution was far from obvious. The only way to increase the disk size was for subjects to get their brain to reproduce the pattern that it produced when they stared at the previous day’s diagonal lines. The equipment had been set up to recognize that initial pattern and make the disk on the screen bigger as soon as the pattern was replayed. “The more similar the brain activation pattern was,” Watanabe says, “the bigger the disk became.”

In fact, the task might seem impossible to the uninitiated, but it was not. In attempting to solve an apparently unsolvable problem (how does one mentally make a circle grow?), the brain automatically replays recently learned perception patterns, which in the subjects’ case included the pattern produced by those diagonal lines. When they hit upon the pattern, the disk started to expand—automatically, no training required. 


From Dots to Data

But here is where things get really interesting: That first activation pattern—the baseline sequence produced by staring at those diagonal lines—was just meaningless information. Hypothetically, that doesn’t have to be the case. In theory, if the target acquisition sequence produced by staring at those first lines had actually contained meaningful information (like a series of kung fu training programs, for example), then the subject would automatically repeat that pattern, essentially practicing it every time the brain tried to enlarge the disk. Genuine skill acquisition would take place.
 
It is still a long way from that kind of advance to automatic learning. Matrix-style knowledge downloads will require much more than just recording and replaying visual cortex activation patterns. Nobody knows if this kind of phenomenon also arises in places like the motor cortex or auditory cortex, which would be useful in mastery of physical or linguistic skills.

“I think we could use 
the technique to erase memories, 
like removing 12 months from a person’s life.”

But Watanabe thinks this method can be used to cure depression. “I think we could easily train people to be happy,” he says. “Just show subjects pictures of babies and kittens and other images known to elevate mood, and record and use this pattern as the trigger for disk enlargement. Then, when subjects perform this task, they’ll be making themselves happy as well.”
 
Equally fantastic, though much less Matrix than Manchurian Candidate, is another possibility: “I think we could use the technique to erase memories, like removing 12 months from a person’s life,” Watanabe says. “If a memory is associated with some cue, we could make a subject induce a pattern that has nothing to do with the memory while the cue is being presented. In that way, when the cue is given, the subject would remember the implanted memory rather then the real memory.” It might come in handy for people with post-traumatic stress disorder, though it is easy to see how the power to erase a person’s memory could also be abused.

As Reeves’s Neo might say, “Whoa.”