Can a machine read your mind?
NSA TORTURE TECHNOLOGY, NEWS and RESEARCH
February 28, 2009
Can a machine read your mind?
It sounds like science fiction, but politicians, lawyers and advertisers are
falling over themselves to buy into the latest scientific discovery:
brainjacking. Soon our secret desires and not so innocent thoughts could
become public knowledge. John Naish investigates an uncomfortable trend
I'm sitting in a Sussex cottage, wearing a rubber swimming cap dotted with
wires and electrodes. On a laptop in front of me, a constantly shifting wash
of coloured graphics portrays the activity in my brain. It's a neat party
trick, but it is also a Pandora's box: across the world, scientists are
using this kind of technology to prise open our minds, to fathom our voting
preferences, our guilty thoughts, our shopping desires, even the words we
are thinking. Already their activities are stealthily changing our world.
I'm the guest of Dr David Lewis, a British neuropsychologist who uses
electronic brain-scanning to help brands see which of their marketing
strategies best snare our interest. His Sussex University-based company, the
Mind Lab, uses equipment that monitors electrical activity in the brain, and
is currently investigating how to refine people's enjoyment of video games.
This is definitely the least contentious end of the market.
Amid all the scientific gadgetry and research, sceptics argue that
brain-reading systems are not yet sufficiently developed to be of real use
in any field. But in fact, that doesn't matter: the prospects are far too
tantalising. Companies are already marketing the technology as a way to
penetrate the last frontier of exploration - the space between our ears.
Lawyers, military chiefs, advertisers and politicians are eagerly buying.
Welcome to the world of brainjacking, where science fiction is happening
now.
Last spring, for example, an Indian court found a young woman guilty of
murder based, in part, on evidence of "guilty knowledge" revealed by her
brain waves. Aditi Sharma, 24, a Pune-based MBA student, was interrogated
while wearing an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap similar to the one I used.
It monitored her brain activity while she heard statements that were either
neutral or described the killing of her former lover. Prosecutors claimed
that the "brain fingerprinting" test showed how memory areas of her brain
activated when she heard incriminating details.
Although an Indian government panel of scientists says this technique, Brain
Electrical Oscillation Signature profiling (BEOS), should be ignored, its
use in India is spreading. In January, Ravindra Kantrole, a Mumbai petty
criminal, was convicted of being "the Beer Man", a serial killer of seven
victims, largely on brain-mapping evidence. Earlier this month, two priests
and a nun were freed on bail in a murder case after BEOS tests showed "no
memory of the killing".
Having your brain electronically scanned is not in itself the most
encouraging experience. On Dr Lewis's screen, my inner world resembles
nothing more intelligent than a duff television screen. But he says that he
can use this squiggly data, along with measurements of heart rate,
temperature and gaze, to gauge what is attracting my mind's attention. That's
enough to win serious funds from media companies and car manufacturers.
Rapid developments in medical brain-imaging, most crucially in the use of
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners, mean that we are just
starting to see much more of our mental workings. British neuroscientist
John-Dylan Haynes, of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, has found how our
intentions leave telltale traces in the brain. He is about to publish a
study that shows how, by scanning the prefrontal cortex with an fMRI
scanner, he can accurately predict in the lab what items we will want to
buy.
Last year, researchers busted the brain's "content" barrier for the first
time. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, showed people
drawings of five tools (drill, hammer, etc) and five dwellings (igloo,
castle) and asked them to consider each object. A report in the journal PLoS
One says that the fMRI-scanned brain patterns associated with each object
were so distinctive that the computer could tell with 78 per cent accuracy
which one was on a volunteer's mind. The patterns were also remarkably
similar from one person to another, so science may one day write a
mind-reading dictionary that suits most people. The Pittsburgh team is now
studying brain patterns that encode abstract ideas, to see if a dictionary
can be written covering more complicated concepts.
Politicians are latching on to brain-scanning's potential for spotting which
of their promises attract voters' approval. EmSense, a "neuromarketing"
company founded in 2004 by seven Massachusetts Institute of Technology
graduates, has developed a lightweight EEG headset resembling an Alice band
that may show how wearers react to speeches and debates. The company claims
it can "accurately and objectively evaluate how voters truly feel, what
captures their attention and how candidates can convey their platforms in
the most effective and compelling ways".
But isn't there a danger that such information might foster unfair bias?
Justin Berenbaum, a vice president at EmSense, would not discuss the
possibility, saying: "Our work in politics is confidential and we therefore
cannot participate."
The technology's military potential is also being developed. Researchers at
Honeywell Aerospace have created an EEG system that reads defence analysts'
brains as they examine spy-satellite photographs. Because our subconscious
brains run significantly faster than our conscious neocortexes, a
photo-analyst's brain can unconsciously register a visual anomaly long
before they may become aware of it. Honeywell's brain scanner issues an
alert when it detects neural signals that show the analyst has
subconsciously noticed something suspect. Bob Smith, the company's chief of
advanced technology, claims it will make spy-photo analysis up to six times
faster, "helping the military keep threats out of harm's way".
But most commercial attention is fixed on the premise that brain-scanning
can divine truth from falsehood. Dr Steven Laken, the founder of Cephos, a
company using fMRI-based lie detection, says more than 300 people have
already been tested in the company's scanner at Framingham, Massachusetts.
Laken believes that American judges are on the verge of making scanning
tests admissible - despite questions over their accuracy. "We tell people
that the test is not 100 per cent. Studies have shown that we are between 78
and 97 per cent accurate. So long as you tell a jury that, it still can be
considered as evidence."
The scans watch for giveaway brain patterns when people are under
interrogation. Five years ago, fMRI researchers at Temple University,
Philadelphia, found that we use different parts of our brains when lying:
our cingulate gyrus, in the middle of the brain, lights up if we are being
honest, but lying stimulates the limbic lobes, towards the forebrain. Lying
also requires us to use more brain power. "Virtually all our clients want to
show that they are telling the truth," Laken says. "One third are in some
private family or work matter. About a third are civil or criminal. The
other third are people who have been jailed and want to prove they are
speaking the truth about their innocence.
"There are ethical things that we have to face," he acknowledges. "We would
refuse anyone who wanted to bring their spouse in for a 'surprise' MRI scan
while they were being asked about fidelity." But what if a paying client
tests as guilty about some awful misdeed? "Not everyone who has come to us
has proved their innocence. When we communicate the results to a client,
they can say, 'Get rid of the data,' and we do. It's their data; it's up to
them what happens to it."
With the help of American technology, Professor Sean Spence of Sheffield
University has pioneered the use of brain-scan lie detection in Britain,
employing the test on Susan Hamilton, 43. The Edinburgh mother was sentenced
to four years in prison in 2003 for poisoning a child in her care with salt
overdoses, but she maintains her innocence and is campaigning for the
sentence to be repealed. Spence's study, published last year in European
Psychiatry, reported that the scan was consistent with someone telling the
truth. The results have not, however, been submitted as evidence to a
British court.
Steven Laken claims that the technology can be developed far further - into
a new discipline of "forensic brain-scanning" that examines people's
intentions, goals and feelings. "Does someone understand that what they did
was wrong, or did they intend to do it? This makes the difference between
murder and manslaughter. We may also be able to tell if someone has been in
a terrorist camp, or had certain motivations. For example, if you show
someone a place they recognise, their brain reacts differently under fMRI
than if they are seeing a picture of a place they never visited. With
eyewitnesses, false memories light up different parts of the brain than true
memories, which could be very useful for asking witnesses to identify
criminals."
How soon can all this happen? "It depends on whether people want to commit
money and resources," says Laken. "It could be done in 12 to 16 months if
there were the government will. After all, we developed the atom bomb in
less than four years."
The technology is constantly developing. A new superconducting material,
doped rare earth iron oxyarsenides, may enable scientists to boost the
magnetic fields that create an fMRI scan's sharpness and shrink the giant
scanning machines to a portable size. Another imaging system under
development, near-infrared spectroscopy, uses lasers to measure blood flow
in the brain. It is non-invasive and may be carried in a suitcase, enabling
investigators to interrogate people at home.
Joel Huizenga, chief executive of the boldly named No Lie MRI, says he has
already applied for patents in America and Britain to use both fMRI and
near-infrared scanning. He is negotiating to open facilities with UK
companies that use scanners for medical applications. Huizenga's product
does not stop at lie detection: "People want clarity over three topics: sex,
power and money. We are using our systems to do 'Are you going to buy?'
detection for advertisers, 'Do you recognise a face?' for police line-ups,
and 'Are you in pain?' for compensation claims."
Despite all the bullish optimism, sceptics argue that much commercial brain
scanning may prove more akin to brain scamming. Dr Lewis has been working in
the field since the Eighties, when he says there was "commercially no
interest in it at all". Now that neuroscience's tempting potential is
becoming commonly understood, he says, entrepreneurs are offering products
that race ahead of what is currently possible. "There are companies doing
well-substantiated stuff with this technology, but there are also cowboys.
There is speculation, there is speculation squared, and then there is
neuroscience. The people who buy it are often too eager for the promises to
be true."
Indeed, a research review published last December in Perspectives on
Psychological Science condemned the scientific basis of half of the 54
peer-reviewed fMRI brain-scanning studies it covered. The review, conducted
by the University of California at San Diego, concluded that 27 of the
studies' statistical measures of brain activity were so poorly analysed that
the findings were worthless.
Lewis adds: "The amount of light we have shone on the brain merely serves to
show how much more darkness there is. You can scan the brain while it's
experiencing something and see certain areas light up, but correlation is
not causation. When you scan someone's brain while they watch a Pepsi or
Coke commercial, the conclusions you draw from the data can only be
extraordinarily speculative. In terms of technology, we are just beyond the
Wright brothers, flying around in a few flimsy biplanes. But often people
are selling and buying the products as though they were jumbo jets."
John-Dylan Haynes is in the vanguard of scientific breakthroughs using fMRI
scans to predict thoughts and actions. But he shares Lewis's fears and wants
to see a vigorous debate on the technology's applications. Real advances
continue to be made, he says, but a fundamental question remains: can they
ever cut it in the brain-swirling world outside the laboratory?
"The science is so exciting that it is being picked up by commercial people
who are vastly overselling its power," says Haynes. "There are companies
offering lie detection, but I don't believe these techniques are operating
at a level fit enough for a commercial service or a court of law. Even with
sufficient funding, it will take ten to twenty years possibly to develop
techniques that are close to a reliable universal lie detector.
"Our lab work on deciding a person's purchasing decisions has proved almost
shockingly precise," he adds. "Even when people were not consciously
thinking about what they were going to buy, we could detect the activity at
a non-conscious level. But we can't say whether you can do that in the real
world. Nevertheless, neuromarketing is being sold as a technology that is
already available."
"Neuromarketing will always have ethical problems and I would always argue
against using it," says Haynes. "In the academic world, brain-imaging
institutes are very strong on data protection. But as soon as these
practices become commercial? It's very worrying."
Hank Greely, a professor at Stanford Law School, sighs heavily as he
considers how cod brain science may increasingly distort many court
judgments. Greely is a pioneer of "neurolaw", and his faculty has been
awarded a $10 million grant to explore the legal and ethical implications of
neuroscientific advances. He cites the case of Aditi Sharma as a prime
example of what can go wrong. "It stinks," he says. "The non lie-detection
evidence was very weak. Then they threw in this 'science' as a trump card.
"We worry a lot that juries and judges are going to be way too impressed by
fancy pictures of brain scans. But these are not photographs: they are
computer-generated images of radio-wave information taken at a certain time
and configured or manipulated in certain ways. Studies already show that
people are more likely to give credence to a statement about the brain if it
includes a picture of a brain scan, no matter how spurious it is."
Greely is keen to stress that he's no Luddite: "There may be some really
good stuff that comes out of this technology," he says. "We just need to
make sure we use it only when we are ready, and when we have decided that it
is socially and ethically OK to use it.
"With lie detection, I think it may be OK to use it when someone wants to
undergo it to prove their innocence. It's much harder to think of forcing
someone to take a test. I don't think that your employer or your spouse
should be able to make you take a lie-detector test, or that you should be
able to subject your kids to one." He pauses, then adds, "But you know, that
parent example is a lot harder - particularly if you have teenagers who you
fear are misusing dangerous drugs. It's complicated."
Perhaps a statutory right to "mental privacy" could help to set boundaries.
This is a central aim of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, an
American organisation lobbying for laws to define the contents of a human
skull as private property. Wrye Sententia, a thirtysomething
creative-writing lecturer at the University of California, Davis, is one of
the co-founders. She fears that the time is rapidly passing when legislation
could be introduced to protect our inner selves from public scrutiny.
"In the American legal system, one benchmark for making a technology
admissible as evidence is whether it is widely used. So the kind of
'wish-fulfilment use' we are seeing is dangerous. Once it has crossed the
line and is used in court, then it is hard to step back," she says. "The
right to brain privacy will be very questionable once people have accepted
the technology."
Another challenge to mental-privacy campaigners is the "What have you got to
hide?" refrain, adds Sententia: "You may look guilty through refusal. It is
like having CCTV cameras tracking people all over the place. That is now
widely accepted and understood."
One hope is that the premature introduction of some commercial scanning
techniques may prompt safeguards that pre-empt the emergence of seriously
invasive technology. But Sententia says that public apathy and ignorance may
mean that this chance is lost. "We are trying to get ahead of the cart in
relation to the advent of these technologies, but it is very difficult to
get traction on this issue. Am I optimistic? Well, it depends if you catch
me on a good day."
................................................................
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DingDong
Spiritus
> Just give it a rest, will you? Do you even read the crap you write?
I have worked in electronics for a long time. There are magazines like
Popalar Science and others, which speculate on innovations in the
fields. Sometimes they appear far fetched and sometimes they seem
to be possible.
I did read once about an experimenter who devised a circuit which
could
intercept brainwaves, like alpha, beta or delta waves and allow him to
operate a switch .
The concept of being able to detect such complex wave patterns
generated
by intimate thoughts or emotions does appear to be Orwellian. It
could be
that the claimants to such ultra-sophisticated technology are
overstating
their case.
Another consideration is accuracy or the lack of it. After all, even
polygraph
tests are not 100% reliable.
I wonder if there may be an invasion of privacy issue here, if indeed
such
amazing science does exist.
4poster
on untested or unverified methods of mindjacking.
If the person who was convicted based on such
experimental methods were to appeal the ruling,
I believe she would have a good chance to reverse the decision.
In many courts polygraph tests are inadmissable
because of the notorious unreliability of the results.
"NSA TORTURE TECHNOLOGY, NEWS and RESEARCH"
<TortureTechn...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4ac67628$0$16492$a826...@news.titannews.com...
Hor...@net.net
<voc...@bigfoot.com> wrote this crap:
>The concept of being able to detect such complex wave patterns
>generated
> by intimate thoughts or emotions does appear to be Orwellian. It
>could be
>that the claimants to such ultra-sophisticated technology are
>I wonder if there may be an invasion of privacy issue here, if indeed
>such
>amazing science does exist.
I once heard of an amazing device that would read your mind and turn
your lights on and off. You just had to clap your hands and your
lights would come on or off. Amazing. They even had a song for it,
"Clap on, Clap off." Imagine if they could get it to play reveille.
Hor...@Horvath.net
My T-shirt says, "This shirt is the
ultimate power in the universe."
Coffee's For Closers
f1677c...@d23g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>, voc...@bigfoot.com
says...
> On Oct 4, 8:13=A0am, DingDong <ding007d...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just give it a rest, will you? Do you even read the crap you write?
> I have worked in electronics for a long time. There are magazines like
> Popalar Science and others, which speculate on innovations in the
> fields. Sometimes they appear far fetched and sometimes they seem
> to be possible.
Where's my flying jet car? Back in the '50s, those magazines
said that I would have one by now.
> I did read once about an experimenter who devised a circuit which
> could
> intercept brainwaves, like alpha, beta or delta waves and allow him to
> operate a switch .
>
> The concept of being able to detect such complex wave patterns
> generated
> by intimate thoughts or emotions does appear to be Orwellian. It
> could be
> that the claimants to such ultra-sophisticated technology are
> overstating
> their case.
The best I have heard of so far, required training the system.
Meaning that, the person looks at a certain image, and his/her
brain waves are measured. Then, another image and brain wave
reading. Etc, etc. Then, there will be a list of images and EEG
patterns corresponding to them. Then, the person chooses an
image to look at (without anyone else knowing which one), and you
can guess which image they are looking at, based on comparing the
brain waves to the earlier training data.
The problem is that, each individual's brain waves are different,
when looking at the same image. And you cannot make any guesses
without having tested the person with a specific group of images.
So you cannot just take a random person, hook them up, and know
what picture they are looking at.
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