"We present a computational model that predicts the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neural activation associated with words for which fMRI data are not yet available. This model is trained with a combination of data from a trillion-word text corpus and observed fMRI data associated with viewing several dozen concrete nouns. Once trained, the model predicts fMRI activation for thousands of other concrete nouns in the text corpus,with highly significant accuracies over the 60 nouns for which we currently have fMRI data."
on the other hand - I can't imagine I'm the only person to have been getting quite a few "come work for us" emails from Amazon via LinkedIn recently (two in the last month, six in the last year). The solicitations do not appear to be very carefully targeted - they seem to mention everything from machine learning to mobile app development.
Sony prototype "13 x 27-cm device packs a stereoscopic, 24-bit color image measuring just 96 × 128 pixels viewable at 360-degrees without special glasses."
More via Google translator of Japanese Sony press:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...
There's a lot going on in that "tiny reptilian brain" for sure. Paleocortex seems to drive 99% of human behavior as well - consciousness may just be along for the ride as an afterthought. (Maybe even when coding, sometimes at least!)
I have a python named Sid. A beautiful and surprisingly affectionate critter. Low maintenance and a great conversation starter ... "my kids came back from school with it one day, they were all like: it followed us home Dad can we keep it!?"
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/pubs/science2008.pdf -- "Predicting Human Brain Activity Associated with the Meanings of Nouns"
"We present a computational model that predicts the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neural activation associated with words for which fMRI data are not yet available. This model is trained with a combination of data from a trillion-word text corpus and observed fMRI data associated with viewing several dozen concrete nouns. Once trained, the model predicts fMRI activation for thousands of other concrete nouns in the text corpus,with highly significant accuracies over the 60 nouns for which we currently have fMRI data."
This is a frequently cited paper - I stumbled across it recently as a drive-by mention in this blog post about word embeddings: http://www.offconvex.org/2015/12/12/word-embeddings-1/
Anyway - totally tangential to the topic of the OP. But maybe some interesting food for thought.