Brain Science

The breakthroughs that neuroscientists are making into understanding the human brain are quite fascinating. Just recently, I read about a type of brain scanning technology that can look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act. The scan is done using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which uses the rate of blood flow to measure neural activity. Once patterns of activity are identified, they are translated into meaningful thoughts using specially-designed software, and a person's intentions can then be revealed before they have been acted upon.

Sound familiar? Steven Spielberg's 2002 movie, Minority Report, dealt with the kinds of problems that may arise with widespread use of such an advanced technology. Neuroscientists are aware of the serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future, and the recent rapid advances have forced those in the field to set up their own neuroethics society.

Barbara Sahakian, a professor of neuro-psychology at Cambridge University in England, said: "Do we want to become a 'Minority Report' society where we're preventing crimes that might not happen? For some of these techniques, it's just a matter of time. It is just another new technology that society has to come to terms with and use for the good, but we should discuss and debate it now because what we don't want is for it to leak into use in court willy nilly without people having thought about the consequences."

Professor Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist and director of the Medical Research Council, said: "We shouldn't go overboard about the power of these techniques at the moment, but what you can be absolutely sure of is that these will continue to roll out and we will have more and more ability to probe people's intentions, minds, background thoughts, hopes and emotions."

Neuroscience is still far from developing a scanner that could easily read random thoughts. Currently, the scanning technique can read simple intentions, attitudes or emotional states. The computer learns unique patterns of brain activity or signatures that correspond to different thoughts. It then scans the brain to look for these signatures and predicts what the person is thinking. During a study, the researchers asked volunteers to decide whether to add or subtract two numbers they were later shown on a screen. The volunteers' brain imaging revealed signatures of activity in a marble-sized part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex that changed depending on their intention to add the numbers or subtract them. The software was able to predict the volunteers' intentions with 70% accuracy.

This score is obviously better than random guessing, yet it shows that the system still has a way to go before it is able to genuinely deduce what patterns are associated with which thoughts.

John-Dylan Haynes, the neuroscientist who led the study, has estimated that research into unspoken intentions could yield simple applications within the next 5 to 10 years, such as reading a person's attitude to a company during a job interview or testing consumer preferences through "neuromarketing".

There are already companies trying to use brain scanners to build a more accurate lie detector. Several recent studies have also used brain imaging to identify tell-tale activity linked to violent behaviour and racial prejudice. Lie detection is more complex, says Haynes, because it can violate mental privacy but also prove innocence. In some cases, refusing to use it to uphold a right to mental privacy could end up denying an accused person's right to self-defence.

Those most excited about this technology will be disabled people, as it has the potential to improve their quality of life. Being able to read thoughts as they arise in a person's mind could lead to computers that allow people to operate email and the internet using thought alone, and write with word processors that can predict which word or sentence you want to type. The technology is also expected to lead to improvements in thought-controlled wheelchairs and artificial limbs that respond when a person imagines moving.

As for using brain scanners to eavesdrop on people's thoughts for the purpose of judging whether they are likely to commit crimes, a crime is only a crime once it's been committed. If governments of the world really want to stop potential law-breakers, they'll need to rewrite the laws so that thinking about crimes is a crime. And then of course they'll have to create a new division in the police force, known as the "Thought Police". Need I say more?