Scientists Are Scary Close To Controlling Our Memories And Brains With Computers

Computers that meddle with our thoughts, memories and brains might not be far off, The New York Times' Nick Bilton reports. There are already thought-controlled gadgets and smart phone apps. But recently, a group of scientists at MIT took brain-computer interactions to a whole new level.

While they weren't able to create memories from scratch, they were able to associate different feelings to neutral memories in mice. In other words, they were able to turn frightening memories into indifference. When successful, the memory-altered mice didn't recognize the location where they had earlier received an electrical shock. They thought the negative memory had been created elsewhere.

Another feat scientists are getting closer to achieving is the ability to "upload" information into our brains. Learning another language, degree, or musical instrument could be as easy as falling asleep. Boston University scientists teamed up with a neuroscience lab in Japan and wrote a paper on "Decoded Neurofeedback." It's the ability to alter brain activity patterns via functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, Bilton writes. Read more >>

Brain Scans Show Who You're Thinking About

Scientists scanning the human brain can now tell whom a person is thinking of, the first time researchers have been able to identify what people are imagining from imaging technologies.

Work to visualize thought is starting to pile up successes. Recently, scientists have used brain scans to decode imagery directly from the brain, such as what number people have just seen and what memory a person is recalling.

They can now even reconstruct videos of what a person has watched based on their brain activity alone. Cornell University cognitive neuroscientist Nathan Spreng and his colleagues wanted to carry this research one step further by seeing if they could deduce the mental pictures of people that subjects conjure up in their heads.

“We are trying to understand the physical mechanisms that allow us to have an inner world, and a part of that is how we represent other people in our mind,” Spreng says. Read more >>