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Hey there! Welcome to Life Noggin!
大家好！欢迎来到脑洞大开的生命奇想！
The ability to control or see into someone else's mind seems like a feat of the distant future.
能够控制或洞察别人的思想，似乎是遥远未来才能实现的壮举。
It's up there with flying cars, inhabiting different planets, and me getting a date.
那里汽车能飞，人们可以住到不同的星球，而我开始约会了。
It seems like something out of a sci-fi movie. But actually, it's being done in real life scientific research already.
看起来像是科幻电影里的情节。但实际上，现实生活中的科学研究已经实现了这一点。
Now, it hasn't exactly gotten to the level of Jedi mind tricks, but it's still pretty astonishing.
现在，它还没有达到绝地思维的水平，但仍然是相当惊人的。
In 2012, a graduate student and a researcher at MIT conducted a study in which they implanted false memories into the brains of mice.
2012年，麻省理工学院(MIT)的一名研究生和一名研究员进行了一项研究，他们将假记忆植入老鼠的大脑。
In their study, they would place a mouse into a metal box.
在研究中，他们把一只老鼠放进一个金属盒子里。
The expected response from a mouse in this situation would be to explore its new environment, but some of the mice reacted very differently.
在这种情况下，老鼠的反应应该是探索新环境，但是有些老鼠的反应非常不同。
The mice froze up, as if being inside the box had invoked a negative memory.
它们都僵住了，好像呆在盒子里唤起了一种消极的记忆。
In fact, before being placed in the box, these mice had essentially been given a fake memory of receiving an electric shock inside that box.
事实上，在被放进盒子之前，这些老鼠被赋予了假的记忆：在盒子里受到电击。
They froze up in fear because they remembered being shocked in that same box earlier, even though that had never happened!
他们害怕得僵住了，因为他们记得早些时候在同一个盒子里被电击过，尽管那从未发生过！
They injected a mixture of chemicals into a part of the mice's brain involved in memory formation called the dentate gyrus.
他们将一种混合的化学物质注入老鼠大脑中与记忆形成有关的部分：齿状回。
Among the chemicals was a gene for a protein called channelrhodopsin-2, which reacts to light.
在这些化学物质中，有一种叫做通道视紫红-2的蛋白质的基因，这种蛋白质对光线敏感。
After being injected, the cells in the dentate gyrus would begin to produce channelrhodopsin-2, making the cells themselves sensitive to light as well.
注射后，齿状回的细胞开始产生通道视紫红质-2，使得细胞本身对光线也敏感。
The idea behind the light sensitivity was that the memory formed by these cells could be reactivated by the light of a laser, causing the mouse to recall the memory.
采用光灵敏度背后的想法是，这些细胞形成的记忆可以被激光重新激活，唤起老鼠的回忆。
To create the false memory, the researchers started by putting the mice in box A, where they were allowed to explore, and form a memory of the box's particular shape and scent.
要创造假记忆，研究人员首先把老鼠放在A盒子里，在那里他们可以随意探索，并对盒子的特殊形状和气味形成记忆。
Later, the mice were placed in box B, but during their exploration they received a shock to the foot, and at the exact same time, the laser was used to activate their memory of box A.
后来，老鼠被放在B盒子里，但是在探索过程中，他们的脚受到了电击，同时，研究人员用激光来激活他们对A盒子的记忆。
Finally, the next day they were put back into box A, where the false memory of a shock occurring in that box made them freeze in fear.
最后，第二天他们又被放回了A盒子里，在另一个盒子里发生的，也就是假的电击记忆使他们害怕到僵住。
Follow-up studies have been done in the past few years too, from changing a negative memory to be positive to erasing a memory completely.
在过去的几年中，研究人员也进行了后续研究，包括把消极的记忆变成积极的记忆，以及彻底消除记忆。
These studies have been groundbreaking for a lot of reasons, including that they've shown that a pinpointed group of cells can be responsible for forming a memory, something that scientists had been struggling to prove.
这些研究具有开创性，原因有很多，其中包括他们已经证明，一组精选的细胞能够形成记忆，这是科学家一直在努力证明的。
But what if you wanted to go beyond seeing where in the brain a memory is created, and actually see the memory itself?
但是，如果你想更进一步，观察大脑中记忆产生的地方，真正地看到记忆本身，那该怎么办呢？
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have found a way to do almost exactly that.
加州大学伯克利分校(University of California, Berkeley)的科学家们找到了一种方法，几乎可以做到这一点。
The team played movie trailers for their subjects while a functioning fMRI, measured blood flow through the subjects' visual cortex, the part of the brain dedicated to processing visual information.
研究小组为实验对象播放电影预告片，同时使用功能核磁共振成像(fMRI)测量实验对象视觉皮层的血流，视觉皮层是大脑处理视觉信息的部分。
The blood flow information was put into a computer program that matched the brains' reactions with specific visual information in the movie trailers.
血流信息被输入一个计算机程序，该程序将大脑的反应与电影预告片中的特定视觉信息进行匹配。
The computer program then analyzed 300,000 minutes of random YouTube videos, I hope I was in one of them, and then it created its own set of hypothetical brain activity for each YouTube clip, based on the brain activity it saw in response to the movie trailers.
然后电脑程序随机分析了30万分钟的YouTube视频（我希望我在其中一个视频中），然后根据它看到的实验对象观看电影预告片时的大脑活动，为每个YouTube视频创建了一组假设的大脑活动。
The program then combined some of the many clips to reproduce brain activity most similar to what it had previously observed.
然后，该程序将其中的一些片段组合在一起，再现了与之前观察到的最相似的大脑活动。
And that's what made up the clips that are supposed to represent what the subjects saw in the movie trailers.
这些组成了这些视频片段，应该可以重现实验对象在电影预告片中看到的东西。
The ability to tap into someone else's mind and watch their memories hasn't quite been perfected.
进入别人的大脑并观察其记忆的能力还有待完善。
The computer program didn't recreate every image the subjects saw with great accuracy, but the potential is clearly big.
计算机程序并没有精确地再现实验对象看到的每一张图像，但可能性显然很大。
So would you let someone see your memories? Should this even be allowed?
你会让别人看到你的记忆吗？这应该被允许吗？
Let's have a discussion in the comments section below and if you want to watch more videos related to the brain then you should definitely check out our video we did on synesthesia.
让我们在下面的评论部分进行讨论。如果你想看更多关于大脑的视频，那么你一定要看看我们做的这一期关于联觉的视频。
Synaesthesia is when the stimulation of one sense causes the stimulation of a different sense at the same time.
联觉是指一种感觉的刺激同时引发另一种感觉的刺激。
For example, someone with synaesthesia might be able to hear colors or taste letters.
例如，有联觉的人可能会听到颜色或尝到字母的味道。
My name is Blocko. This has been Life Noggin. Don't forget to keep on thinking!
我是宝高，这里是脑洞大开的生命奇想！思考不要停！
