While not directly related to Microsoft, I thought this was incredible. Scientists in Japan have extracted images from the brain. It’s not super high resolution, but it is a strong beginning in understanding how the brain works. It could lead the path to helping the blind see, the deaf hear, and Skynet taking over the world!

The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.