Your boss and/or spouse will no longer have to guess what
you're thinking. All they will have to do
in the
future is fire up their computers and find out! Is this
ominous?
(It's an incredible world out there!)
By combining fMRI brain scans with pattern-detection
software, neuroscientists think they will be able to find out
what people are thinking. So far, using this software, they've
successfully predicted what pictures people are looking at
and what decisions they're getting ready to make.
Researchers Jack Gallant and Shinji Nishimoto recently
demonstrated that they can create a crude film adaptation of
a movie that someone was watching just by viewing their
brain activity.
But their science is still at an elementary stage. In New
Scientist, Ewen Callaway reports that "When one lab member
was watching a clip of the actor Steve Martin in a white
shirt, the computer program produced a clip that looked like a
moving, human-shaped smudge, with a white 'torso,' but the
blob bears little resemblance to Martin, with nothing
corresponding to the moustache he was sporting."
Mind reading is getting closer to reality because scientists
now say they can tell, with 50-70% accuracy, if you are
imaging a word that has a vowel in it. In Technology Review,
Emily Singer quotes researcher Gerwin Schalk as saying, "If
we can boost accuracy to 90%, we'll have a genuine thought-
translation device."
The most humane use for this would be to help patients who
have lost the ability to speak to communicate. But if this
technology is ever used by the government (in a program like
Homeland Security) or the military, there is great potential for
misuse.
The hundreds of thousands of people who have been in
contact with
aliens
say that they "spoke inside their heads." New Scientist
quotes neuroscientist Gallant as admitting that if this
technology is ever perfected, the same machine that reads
the thoughts of patients in order to diagnose their brain
disease may well find more "nefarious applications."
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