Brain scan can read people's thoughts: researchers

Brain scan can read people's thoughts: researchers

news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A scan of brain activity can effectively read a person's mind, researchers said Thursday.

British scientists from University College London found they could differentiate brain activity linked to different memories and thereby identify thought patterns by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The evidence suggests researchers can tell which memory of a past event a person is recalling from the pattern of their brain activity alone.

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[edit on 11-3-2010 by seattletruth]

Looks like scientists are getting 1 step closer to actually reading out thoughts. This goes hand in hand with the FAST deployment of mobile brain scanners from homeland security:



It's a real scary thought, and the deployment of Orwellian thought police is rather startling that it could actually occur.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 11-3-2010 by seattletruth]

reply to post by seattletruth

It's a real scary thought, and the deployment of Orwellian thought police is rather startling that it could actually occur.

Yeah, it gives me goose bumps.

Any such device would be amazing, but could it ever be used for good?

Perhaps medical uses?

Surely, there are instances when police could use it, but I doubt such uses would be lawful and rightly so.

It kind of upsets me, how much funding we’re willing to put into something that will mainly be used for war, when we could really use some funding for things that don’t have the same, uh, “benefits”.