The reality of a machine that can mind-read just became a bit closer.
Previous work with fMRI has allowed researchers to predict what a participant was looking at in very broad strokes, such as faces versus landscapes. Now, however, a UC Berkeley team can predict what a person is looking at with much more detail than before.
Initially, researchers measured brain activity while participants viewed about 1000 photographs. Next, 100 never-seen photographs were presented. Comparisons between brain activity while viewing the two sets allowed the researchers to predict what was contained in the second set of photographs.
The implications of this research, and increases in precision that are sure to follow, are many and interesting. On one hand, researchers might be able to figure out the content of our dreams. However, the obvious commercial application is to use the new technology as a lie detector. The privacy issues involved in such practices are sure to encourage debate for many years to come.
8 Comments
rnadams · March 6, 2008 at 6:47 pm
This type of research is so interesting and so scary. It would be awesome to apply this to dreams, like mentioned, but I think using it for certain other things might not be such a good idea. I’d like to try my hand at some mind reading, but if this type of knowledge fell into the wrong hands it wouldn’t be pretty, and obviously privacy would become a huge issue. There would certainly be at least some applications of this technology that could arguably become quite unethical. I’m undecided as to whether I think it is worth the problems it may cause or not. Anyone else think it may not be?
bhidahl · March 7, 2008 at 12:50 pm
The scary thing about this research is that you can’t control your thoughts. It’s creepy to think that we could one day end up with “Thought Police” as in Orwell’s 1984. While these studies would be interesting, I can’t see too much practical application to them that isn’t crossing a line. It would be interesting to know the content of dreams, but not necessary. It could be used in lie detection, but it’s not guaranteed to be any more accurate than current methods. You could be thinking about the crime but not actually have committed it. This will definitely be an interesting and controversial topic to follow as the research continues to progress.
Swedish55 · March 9, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I think that as with most top of the line technology, it can be used in a good way, and in a bad way. Obviously it is a clear invasion of privacy, and this kind of mind reading should only be used in extreme circumstances, such as murder trials, or other serious crimes where the extreme punishment would justify getting more scientific evidence for or against the verdict. But before anything like this is used, it is clear that the technology needs some more refinement. It is a scary thought though, because in a world with so much technology, our personal privacy can be invaded much more than ever before, and being able to “read” people’s minds seems to be the most invasive of all. All bears the question, did we not get along just fine before all of this technology?
biopsych · March 9, 2008 at 9:01 pm
This reminds me of the movie, What Women Want. In this film one of the characters has the ability to read the minds of all women. This is a dangerous ability that has pros and cons. This improvement in technology would be better than the current technology at accurately assessing criminals. However, there are many ethical issues that need to be considered. Most of our thoughts are kept personal and private. The idea of others being able to know exactly what we are thinking about is worrisome.
ccallag · March 12, 2008 at 10:38 am
That is so cool! I find it fascinating that we can figure out what a person is looking at based on what area of the brain is being activated. I think this technology would be most useful on criminal investigations because it would be more effective then the lie detector test. Yet it should be used for the right reasons because I could see it being abused to find out personal information.
kenmorrison · March 13, 2008 at 1:05 pm
It reminds me of the movie the matrix; where they are looking at the screen of green codes running down the screen like rain. We can now look at a brain image and know what image is being presented. Our technology is so scary how fast it is progressing. I don’t think we will ever know when to stop, or even more, if we should ever stop.
Abeneven · March 14, 2008 at 7:58 pm
This research is so crazy to think about, that we are actually getting to that place in the future, where technology is so advanced, that we can actually start to do things such as this. I think that it would be very interesting to have people’s dreams looked at, because I know many times we do not remember our dreams, and it would be interesting to see what we are actually dreaming about. Dreams are interesting to me, so that aspect would be interesting. On the other hand I see how the technology could be abused, but I feel like we keep advancing and going forward, and people keep adapting, so I feel as though they would just adapt to it. It seems as though it could do some good, for people with psychological disorders perhaps, so if it could do some good, then more power to it!
rcrowley · March 15, 2008 at 1:44 am
That is an incredibly interesting development. I see that because it is so intriguing people would want to research it more, but I have to wonder what the true benefits are. Why do we need to know the content of our dreams? Is it medically useful? We seem to be doing okay without the technology, yes? And as previously stated, implications of using mind reading technology in criminology is a very sticky subject. On one hand, we want to be convicting the right people, but on the other hand, there is so much privacy involved, would one have to give consent? That is a lot like incriminating oneself, and obviously there is little research to back up its accuracy at this point.
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