Your thoughts are no longer private: scientists can already tell what you’ve seen just by scanning your brain

I’ve never denied being a nerd. Just now, I was scanning down the Nature weekly, and saw this paper, by Kay et al. It’s just been published, and it describes how they’re using functional MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) - fMRI - to ‘read’ your brain as you see an image - and to decifer from your brain activity, what it was you just saw (by seeing how your brain categorises it)!

Here’s the (gobsmacking) last line from the intro:

Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone.

Think through what that means. Your thoughts can be scanned. Further down this line of research, we will eventually get to a point where police could get accurate IdentiKit pictures of your assailant, by scanning you; great! But the government could scan your brain to see what you really think about certain religious or political symbols. Are you racist? A commie? A fascist? Do you not like your leader? The government could find out by scanning you. Advertisers (and politicians) could find out the exact effect a message has on a person - using this, they could find out the very best, most powerful wording, the best way to influence you. Techniques for spin, advertising, and their ugliest sister, brainwashing, will come on leaps and bounds. A little worrying… but scientifically amazing.

del.icio.us Tags: neuroscience,science,brain

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