Brain scanner reads human intentions (Video)

[Lord Zentei]

From CNN:

Select the video with the same title as the thread from the "other news" section in the right hand column (I haven't been able to find a written article).

For those with slow connections: researchers in Berlin have developed an advanced brainscanner that can determine what people think before they become conciously aware of it. Apparently, the brain makes its descisions prior to letting the concious mind "in on it". So far, only simple descisions such as whether to "add" or "subtract" is going to be undertaken, but they claim that they will be able to scan deeper thoughts such as whether a person has been in such and such a location in a couple of years.

Potential utility: helping disabled people write emails, helping supermarkets determine consumer preferences, identifying terrorists, etc. Still a while to go to the Minority Report, they say, but the time has come for debate on the moral ramifications of such technologies.

[Sturmfalke]

Potential utility: helping disabled people write emails, helping supermarkets determine consumer preferences, identifying terrorists, etc.

Out of those examples, I only find the first one valid and the second and third rather worrisome...
This possibilty (even if you only can read the answers to yes/no questions) can become really dangerous in the wrong hands. It could make running a police state far easier...

Still a while to go to the Minority Report, they say, but the time has come for debate on the moral ramifications of such technologies.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, they surely won't stop research.

[Starglider]

Now that the cat is out of the bag, they surely won't stop research.

No. If anything it will be intensified. 'Moral debates' can only limit the extent to which it is deployed, and I doubt you will have much luck getting the general public interested at this time. After all, worrying about mind control is for wacko conspiracy theorists.

[Lord Zentei]

Potential utility: helping disabled people write emails, helping supermarkets determine consumer preferences, identifying terrorists, etc.

Out of those examples, I only find the first one valid and the second and third rather worrisome...
This possibilty (even if you only can read the answers to yes/no questions) can become really dangerous in the wrong hands. It could make running a police state far easier...

I was merely summarising the video, not evaluating the possibilities raised there.

However: if deep seated memories can be scanned it would improve the accuracy of trials considerably. As it is, the accuracy thereof entails an error rate of about 5-10% (as seen in a previous thread on capital punishment), so its not as if it couldn't be used to improve human society. The potential for a police state is all in the implementation.

[Lord Zentei]

Now that the cat is out of the bag, they surely won't stop research.

No. If anything it will be intensified. 'Moral debates' can only limit the extent to which it is deployed, and I doubt you will have much luck getting the general public interested at this time. After all, worrying about mind control is for wacko conspiracy theorists.

Mind reading, you mean. We're not intol control just yet.

[Sturmfalke]

I was merely summarising the video, not evaluating the possibilities raised there.

I didn't want to imply you were advocating these three applications, sorry if it came across like that.

However: if deep seated memories can be scanned it would improve the accuracy of trials considerably. As it is, the accuracy thereof entails an error rate of about 5-10% (as seen in a previous thread on capital punishment), so its not as if it couldn't be used to improve human society. The potential for a police state is all in the implementation.

As with the reasearch, it is all a question of how good it can be controlled. But that would require a broad public debate (or someone who isn't a fearmonger in the home office and the ministry of justice) - unlikely at the moment.

It will be interesting to see what the BVerfG (the Constitutional Court) has to say about this, when it becomes ready for operation.

[Durandal]

Heh, it's like gdb for the brain.

[Starglider]

Mind reading, you mean. We're not intol control just yet.

Mind control, mind reading, it's all wacko conspiracy nut stuff. Or so the average person would tell you. R&D on the cranial nanoprobes continues unabated.

[Spin Echo]

The technology is not exactly even a mind-reader. You're not going to be able to use it to pull out memories like movies from a persons head. What it measures is brain activation. You could, for example, show a person pictures of places or people and see whether the parts of the brain responsible for recoginition activate.

As for a lie detector, fMRI is good at that. Different parts of the brain activate depending on whether a person is telling the truth or lying. There's a paper somewhere that even shows that different parts of the brain activate when recalling real memories versus false memories.

[Starglider]

The technology is not exactly even a mind-reader. You're not going to be able to use it to pull out memories like movies from a persons head. What it measures is brain activation. You could, for example, show a person pictures of places or people and see whether the parts of the brain responsible for recoginition activate.

Right. But hardware progress has been very rapid recently. Reading memories straight out of LTM is going to take a major theoretical breakthrough (which no one has a solid time scale for, though there are plenty of optimists); we wouldn't know how to even start to decode the information right now even if we had a full synaptic map. But anything that evokes a strong visual image (like a face or a map) or audible sound (particularly names) creates a weak projection onto the higher visual or auditory areas respectively. The structure of these areas is much simpler and better understood, to the extent that implanted electrode arrays can already read and write visual imagery (people with implanted 'camera eyes' and a recent experiment reading out a cat's visual field). Getting images and names out by putting the subject in a dark room and asking leading questions is within the realm of feasibility given another couple of decades of incremental advances in scanner resolution.

[Spin Echo]

Right. But hardware progress has been very rapid recently. Reading memories straight out of LTM is going to take a major theoretical breakthrough (which no one has a solid time scale for, though there are plenty of optimists); we wouldn't know how to even start to decode the information right now even if we had a full synaptic map. But anything that evokes a strong visual image (like a face or a map) or audible sound (particularly names) creates a weak projection onto the higher visual or auditory areas respectively. The structure of these areas is much simpler and better understood, to the extent that implanted electrode arrays can already read and write visual imagery (people with implanted 'camera eyes' and a recent experiment reading out a cat's visual field). Getting images and names out by putting the subject in a dark room and asking leading questions is within the realm of feasibility given another couple of decades of incremental advances in scanner resolution.

Do you have a link for this? The only papers I've been able to find involves using implanted electrode arrays to give visual signals to the brain, not getting visuals from the brain.