When someone enters my room without permission, it irritates me.. They’re trying to invade my Privacy.. I’m sure all of us feel the same way.. Imagine someone trying to barge into your brain!!! Your emotions, your thoughts, your perceptions… EVERYTHING!! Scary?? Very! And mega annoying too. And of course, really dangerous.
But that’s precisely what some American researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University are trying to do. They conducted some studies and found that with the aid of a sophisticated scanner and computer programs, they were able to determine how the brain lights up when it’s thinking about different subjects. Using an advanced form of MRI(Magnetic Resonance Imaging ) scan, they analyzed how the brain reacted to 10 different drawings of tools and buildings.They monitored visual cortex activity while the subjects switched their attention between the two images. The patterns led to brain activity specific enough that the researchers were then able to use the data to reliably predict which image the volunteers were looking at.
One particular study, published in the journal Plos One, shows that different people think about the same thing in the same way. Work is in progress to identify thoughts associated with words and sentences. And the analysis of researchers is around 97% accurate. So while some experts are pretty skeptic about the thought identifying process, scientists claim that some day they are going to do it!!
This technology will make it possible to build infallible lie detectors. Well for one, President Bush might love to lay his hands on one and find out abt Mr. Musharaf’s true intentions. And the FBIs and CBIs would love them too. BUT imagine someone sticking a machine into you and reading all your thoughts.. I think that’s downright annoying!
You can argue your head off about it being useful for crime detection, but I feel strongly about people’s privacy.
I’m totally supportive about science and technology, but this “mind reading” thing, I hope it fails!!
for more information on this check out..
news.bbc.co.uk
