Posted on 03/06/2008 11:12:03 AM PST by Red Badger
Scientists have developed a computerised mind-reading technique which lets them accurately predict the images that people are looking at by using scanners to study brain activity. The breakthrough by American scientists took MRI scanning equipment normally used in hospital diagnosis to observe patterns of brain activity when a subject examined a range of black and white photographs. Then a computer was able to correctly predict in nine out of 10 cases which image people were focused on. Guesswork would have been accurate only eight times in every 1,000 attempts. The study raises the possibility in the future of the technology being harnessed to visualise scenes from a person's dreams or memory. Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists, led by Dr Jack Gallant from the University of California at Berkeley, said: "Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience at any moment in time." It will inevitably also raise fears that a suspect's brain could be interrogated against their will, raising the nightmarish possibility of interrogation for "thought crimes".
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Women already knew what men were looking at more than 90% of the time.
No doubt in my mind politicians and lawyers will get this outlawed.
Brave New World
I dunno, politicians might want to use it for political reasons. The LEOs would want it for criminal interrogations and lawyers would love to bring suits over all for everything!............
This reminds me of the “Brainstormer” device from the GoBots cartoon series in the 80’s. Who says that life doesn’t imitate art, no matter how bad it was?
Our rulers will outlaw its use on themselves, no doubt. But, do you think they will not impose its use on the ruled? Only, I think, if there is intense ‘extracurricular activity’ applied.
Where’s the FEMALE version?.........
But if you have the image of a queer in your mind at one particular instant (ugh!), does that mean you are one of them or you are a good Christian person despising what they do? (The latter would probably be the one prosecuted in the thought control state) Guess they need to scan the limbic system also for emotional content. No end to the interpretation problems that would arise from this, not to mention the legal and ethical problems.
Issac Asimov had a Brain Scanner type device in many of his novels back in the 50’s and 60’s. It could only be used by court order, because of a danger of scrambling the person brain.............
The headline is sensational and misleading. The machine cant read your mind or tell “what you are looking at”. Different parts of the brain are stimulated when looking at different things. They record the pattern of activity seen when looking at a hot girl and can predict when you are looking at a hot girl when they see the same regions light up. The pattern is diffent when looking at violent images etc.
Thank you, we must be “fair and balanced”.........
It's from the UK Guardian, what do you expect?........
“Women already knew what men were looking at more than 90% of the time.Other women and/or certain parts of the female anatomy?”
Women look at men too at the same rate.
Seems to me humans are not monogamous.
Yes, it was wonderful......
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.