mindreading
NewScientist recently reported on some amazing new discoveries using advanced fMRI technologies (see also here). The team of Yukiyasu Kamitani at Japan’s ATR’s Computational Neuroscience Laboratories …
“[...] has used an image of brain activity taken in a functional MRI scanner to recreate a black-and-white image from scratch. “By analysing the brain signals when someone is seeing an image, we can reconstruct that image,” says Kamitani. This means that the mind reading isn’t limited to a selection of existing images, but could potentially be used to “read off” anything that someone was thinking of, without prior knowledge of what that might be.”
What if one could use it to communicate with people with lock-in syndrome? What if ‘design thinking’ or ‘thinking a design’ would be enough to prototype? What if future privacy laws would include the privacy of one’s mind and thoughts? It is not hard to image many uses … yet also abuses of such a technology as it matures.
Image courtesy of Neuron/Cell Press via NewScientist
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