Mind Reading

Mind Reading can be done today.  Sure, it's crude and expensive.  Experimental.  Not ready for prime time.  But it does exist.  The path from the laboratory to the electronics store is a simple matter of engineering.

That's a theme I'll return to often on this blog--the difference between fundamental science and engineering.  Not to belittle engineers (I am one), engineering is much more straightforward and predictable, compared to basic science.  We have an extensive track record being able to evolve technologies to be better, cheaper, and more reliable.  TV, cell phones, and computers all started out as esoteric toys for industry and academic researchers.  Now even poor families have at least the first two, and there are over one billion personal computers worldwide.

Basic science, on the other hand, is not guaranteed (or even likely) to happen at a particular, predictable pace.  Scientific discoveries are quite often made by accident.  And without the basic discoveries, there's nothing for the engineers to work with.  If neuroscience hadn't already discovered that the brain is an electric organ whose electric fields extend beyond the skull, no type of (external, non-invasive) mind reading would be possible. 

Today's mind reading can be exemplified by two examples.  First, there's quadriplegic Matthew Nagle, who plays a mean game of pong, using only a controller that reads his brain waves.  As described by Wired Magazine, Nagle imagines carrying out the movements necessary to play the game, and the computer reads the firings of his motor cortex, which is still intact.  

Mind reading is not limited to motor instructions.  Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have run an experiment in which test subjects were shown pictures of five different household tools, and asked to think about their uses.  As reported in Newsweek, the activity pattern evoked by each object was so distinctive that the computer could tell with 78 percent accuracy when someone was thinking about a hammer and not, say, pliers.

The two examples given above rely on different technologies.  The activity of Nagle's motor cortex is read by an array of electrodes placed on his scalp. OK, it's actually in his scalp, slightly penetrating his brain.  But other researchers are working to understand the weaker, more muddled signals that can be read from outside the skull.  I think only non-invasive technologies will catch on in the long run.  The subjects in the Carnegie Mellon experiment were observed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a non-medical use of the familiar MRI imaging machines.  The fMRI scan gives a much more detailed, 3-D picture of brain activity, and thus is probably more suitable for reading complex, abstract thoughts.

Mind reading makes everyone uncomfortable, but the biggest impact would be felt in the courts, if mind reading data was ever allowed to serve as evidence. I'm guessing we're decades away from that (if it ever happens), but the success of fingerprints and DNA evidence suggest that many people will accept a tool which provides geniune value and is reliable. All I say is, if thought crimes are now possible, we'd better hurry up thoughts that will make the world a more tolerant and tolerable place, where freedom of thought is cherished.