Artificial intelligence will help people get rid of phobias and fears

Well hello, arachnophobe. How are you not afraid of me?

Fear has a different nature. One thing is to be afraid of falling from a great height, and another is a fear of meeting a wild animal in the forest. But there are still various phobias, which now simply can not be considered. Scientists know that at the moment when a person is afraid of something, a certain area of ​​the brain is activated. Fear of falling from a height activates a different area of ​​the brain than the fear of darkness and wild animals. In general, every fear or phobia leaves different “imprints” of the activity of the nervous system.

Neuroscientist Hakwan Lau and his colleagues from various institutes, including Columbia University and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (Japan), decided to study exactly which areas of the brain are activated when different fears appear in the same person. Perhaps, scientists believe, this will help rid a person of phobias or phobias that torment him for a long time and affect his personal life and work.

Moreover, “programming phobias” does not imply ridding a person of a feeling of fear in general - after all, it is an integral part of the psyche of any of us. The method of studying fear is based on a technology called neural decoding. " All work was carried out by scientists with the participation of volunteers. In one of the experiments, participants were frightened by electric discharge while simultaneously displaying a colored vertical line. This line, the demonstration of which caused the activity of the same brain area, was fixed and “fed” to the neural network by all flaxity color photos MRI .
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After that, the experts tried to eliminate the already developed reflex. So, he was shown the same line. As soon as the AI ​​recorded the appearance of a “fingerprint of fear” in a person’s brain, the experiment participant was no longer shocked, but, for example, showed the inscription “congratulations, you won 10 cents”. "And subsequently, the volunteers experienced only positive or neutral feelings while demonstrating the same stimulus." According to Hakvan Lau, all this suggests the possibility of “treating” fear and phobias. Moreover, the demonstration of the red line caused the activation of the same part of the brain as the electric shock with the red line.

It all sounds like an ordinary psychological device, but a weak form of artificial intelligence is used here. The algorithm defines a "fragment of fear" and then uses the trigger to "reconfigure" the thoughts and reflexes of the person. According to scientists, in this experiment, all participants managed to "cure" from the fear of an electric discharge, so they no longer feared the red vertical line, experiencing pleasant feelings instead. For what you can use the methods of specialists in everyday life? For example, to get rid of people suffering from arachnophobia or other types of phobias.

In order to be able to "reprogram" phobias, specialists must create a card file of brain signals for AI. For example, arachnophobia activates approximately the same parts of the brain in different people. The pattern, the “sample of arachnophobia,” obtained from one person, will help the AI ​​to deal with a similar fear from another person. How? In the same way as in the case of a shock with a discharge of current and a demonstration of a colored line.

The person is shown a spider and, for example, the same colored vertical line. After the reflex to the line is developed, the patient is transferred to the second stage. Here he is shown the same line, which forms the “imprint of arachnophobia,” and after that - something pleasant for him personally. For example, an orange, cat or butterfly. Over time, the person forms the corresponding reaction to these new stimuli. But they cause the patient to have positive feelings, not negative ones. Activation of all the same areas of the brain now causes not a feeling of fear, but something else, a pleasant or neutral emotion. And after that, a person can look at the spiders without any fear - the fear simply disappears.

It is impossible to do without AI here - the neural network should be familiar with a clear “imprint of fear” and only when it appears can a person demonstrate stimuli for “reprogramming”.

Interestingly, the reverse method does not work. That is, it is impossible to develop a negative emotion for something that caused a person to have pleasant feelings. Substitution in this case for some reason does not work. For example, if you show a sweet tooth a cake, and then the same line, then after fixing the reflex a person cannot instill a feeling of disgust for the cake, for some time showing the same stimulus and something unpleasant. Fear using this method can be cured, but not instilled.

Researchers say they would like to use their method in clinics, but for now this is not possible. First, it is not clear how much time it takes to “reprogram” a person in each particular case. It all depends on the individual. In addition, this method is not applicable to all types of phobias and fears.

But this does not mean that the neural networks do not know what scares us. For example, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology <a href=ru nightmare.mit.edu'> developed the "Nightmare Machine". The system in this case creates gloomy urban landscapes and frightening portraits of celebrities.


And IBM has created a trailer for one of the films about AI using the same weak form of artificial intelligence. In the near future, projects like the one shown in one of the Black Mirror series are also likely to be possible.