A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful
technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and
read their intentions before they act.The research breaks
controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds
and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over
how brain-reading technology may be used in the future. The team
used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity
before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a
person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time
scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way. "Using
the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and
read out something that from the outside there's no way you could
possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking
for writing on a wall," said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck
Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led
the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford
University. The research builds on a series of recent studies in
which brain imaging has been used to identify tell-tale activity linked
to lying, violent behaviour and racial prejudice. The latest work
reveals the dramatic pace at which neuroscience is progressing,
prompting the researchers to call for an urgent debate into the ethical
issues surrounding future uses for the technology. If brain-reading can
be refined, it could quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of
criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a "Minority Report" era (as
portrayed in the Steven Spielberg science fiction film of that name),
where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the
strength of an incriminating brain scan. "These techniques are
emerging and we need an ethical debate about the implications, so that
one day we're not surprised and overwhelmed and caught on the wrong
foot by what they can do. These things are going to come to us in the
next few years and we should really be prepared," Professor Haynes told
the Guardian. The use of brain scanners to judge whether people
are likely to commit crimes is a contentious issue that society should
tackle now, according to Prof Haynes. "We see the danger that this
might become compulsory one day, but we have to be aware that if we
prohibit it, we are also denying people who aren't going to commit any
crime the possibility of proving their innocence."
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