Boys, girls, androgynes, science can now read your mind. Like for real.

[mina.magpie]

Brain scan reveals memories of where you've been

Scans of the part of the brain responsible for memory have for the first time been used to detect a person's location in a virtual environment. Using functional MRI (fMRI), researchers decoded the approximate location of several people as they navigated through virtual rooms.

This finding suggests that more detailed mind-reading, such detecting as memories of a summer holiday, might eventually be possible, says Eleanor Maguire, a neuroscientist at University College London.

Her team trained its scanner on the hippocampus, a region of the brain critical to the formation and storage of memories. It is known that in animals, specialised place cells in the hippocampus fire regularly they move from place to place.

Cool in a scarily Orwellian kinda way. 

Mina.

[Sephirah]

Here's an article in a similar vein from back last year.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/how-dream-of-reading-someones-mind-may-soon-become-a-reality-792069.html

Pretty interesting stuff alright.

[tekla]

For most people, its not like its a long book or anything.

[Nero]

For most people, its not like its a long book or anything.

that was too priceless kat! 

[imaz]

The Police are just going to love this, who isn't going to get locked up!

[RebeccaFog]

Maybe they can give you a DVD of your favorite moments to take home and relive.  Mine choice would be the X-rated ones.

[mina.magpie]

"In the matter of the State vs. Mina M->-bleeped-<-ie, you are sentenced to 20 years hard labour for the perpetration of thoughtcrime, where you did wilfully and knowingly think about overthrowing not just this but all states. You are guilty of the crime of Anarchist thought, and you must be punished."

Hmmmm. That sounded a lot lighter in my head ... 

Mina.

[Genevieve Swann]

That sounds  very interesting. If there are portable MRI scanners I could certainly use one for the house. Never again would I lose the remote or my keys. Um, let's see, where did I misplace all of those brain cells?

[Jester]

Am I the only person that had a flash of late 90s computer graphics of computer circuitry and whatnot travelling on a path?  The first part sounds like we have discovered how to make real virtual reality type stuff, and that might be used to get scientific mind control someday.

Anyways, I'm going to label that as cool, because I don't think the science will ever be funded enough to get dangerous.

[Genevieve Swann]

Jester, They already got too dangerous. Electroshock therapy. I beleive it's against the law now along with lobotomy.

[Just Kate]

Electroshock therapy is actually still practiced even in the US.  It is a plausible form of therapy for major depression when talk-therapies and drugs fail.  It works be stimulating the brain to release neurotransmitters to cause, essentially, what happens when an individual takes depression meds.  It actually works for some, but because of the ethics of it, it is used as a treatment of last resort.  I have not heard of it being used against a patient's will in this day and age as it is popularized in fiction.

[Sophie90]

Uh, the research is intended to find ways to help people with Altzeimers...


The desire to control our thoughts is, undoubtedly, there, but probably never going to actually happen.
You know, outside tin foil hat land.

Probably.

[RebeccaFog]

Electric shock is making a comeback.  Old style and new style.  New style is more elegant where a wire is inserted into the brain and a control device with a battery is planted somewhere in the body.

No kidding.

This stuff doesn't bother me.

[Jay]

Maybe they can give you a DVD of your favorite moments to take home and relive.  Mine choice would be the X-rated ones.

Mine too!

[tekla]

The desire to control our thoughts is, undoubtedly, there, but probably never going to actually happen

It goes on to a considerable degree today, and its only going to get better in the future, most stuff you think is 'freewill' is in fact pretty hardwired in, and to the degree you can control that stuff, you can control 'thoughts'.