Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley are developing technology that may one day read people’s minds.

Using fMRI scans, professor Jack Gallant recorded brain activity in three people while they watched hours of movie trailers. The participants scans were then compared to a library containing 18 million seconds of YouTube clips. The end result: a computer screen showing impressive re-creations of the videos they just watched.

So far the technology can’t read minds, per se. The computers simply duplicate what your eyes see. But according to scientist J.V. Haxby of Dartmouth College, future technologies could project mental pictures such as “imagining your mother’s face.” He also anticipates studies where participants “imagine whatever they want” and researchers use computers to guess what you imagined. If Haxby’s prediction is right, science will one day be capable of mind-reading.

Haxby’s idea sounds like science-fiction. Computers that reveal your inner-thoughts would endow scientists with the ears of God. A machine that reads all your depraved thoughts would be a mighty weapon. I imagine it being used in interrogations, replacing time-honoured methods like drowning someone till they confess. I see no reason the machine couldn’t be used to arrest criminals for thought-crimes, or even future crimes as seen in Minority Report.

Currently, we can only “read” the visual systems in our brains. Many obstacles remain for scientists hoping to read the whole mind. But Jack Gallant believes “as researchers learn more about how the brain dreams, thinks or even feels emotions, other cognitive processes could be revealed by reading our brain signals.”

It sounds preposterous: machines that show our dreams, or measure how much we love someone — but it’s possible. Brains and computers both communicate via electrical activity. Now we just need to make the two communicate with each other.

Gallant’s vision is a lofty one. Neuroscience knows far more about vision than other brain functions. Perhaps science will only visuals of our dreams and thoughts. Capturing the audio-feed in our heads could be far more difficult.

Still, Berekely imagines their research leading to communication tools for disabled people. They say computers could show “what goes on in the minds of people who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims and coma patients.” The technology may even allow paralyzed people to guide computers with their minds. For example, a paralyzed person could move a prosthetic limb just by thinking about the movement.

This movie is really boring.

Such advances would be monumental for our steadily aging populace. As greater portions of humanity develop mental and physical impairments, we’ll need more tools that allow impaired persons to function at their fullest potential. Science that can slow or bypass the decay of our bodies is a timely pursuit.

But I wonder how far science can or should cheat the natural decay of people. I don’t doubt the humanity in science that helps disabled people communicate again (or maybe for the first time). Ultimately though, this research is fighting an inevitability. Eventually, the brain and body have to deteriorate. Or do they?

On the Berkeley website, they say the technology could serve as “the computational heart of a neural prosthesis.” In layman’s terms, they are talking about creating an artificial human brain. At this point, I remembered that scientists are notorious for exaggerating their work’s potential. Largely because it can win them fame and research grants. Even I felt the need to publicize their research, simply because it sounds so wild.

In reality, this research probably won’t create cyborgs or PreCrime units a la Minority Report. But I’m certain mind-reading science will progress. It’s part of a larger trend that sees neuroscience replacing the very soft, man-made science of psychology past. Maybe one day, a computer will probe the subconscious far better than any psychiatrist could.

Research like this is turning the scientific world upside down. In the past, our subjective experience, or “qualia,” was considered immeasurable. The feeling of a headache or the taste of wine escaped scientific explanation. Physicist Erwin Schrödinger argued a difference between: our “experience” of colour and the light-waves that hit our eyes to produce colour. Mind-reading science all but antiquates this idea. One day, there may be no experience we can’t “read-out” on a computer.

There are some limitations on what this science could reveal. Human memory is notoriously bad. Human consciousness is often chaotic. And really, I’m barely comfortable looking deep inside my head. Why would I want a stranger rummaging around in there?

But it’s too early to worry about this. For the time being, mind-reading science ranks between hypnosis and alcohol in its power to reveal our innermost thoughts. So I say put away your tin-foil hats — cause no one can read your mind, yet.

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Graphic: Brianna Whitmore/The Sheaf