I have a
mindfreak for you. And it's not
Criss Angel's smacked-out version of parlor tricks. This time, it's science.
Researchers at
UC Berkley have found a way to analyze brain activity in order to predict with ninety percent accuracy what natural image was seen by the subject at a specific point in time. Where previous experiments using
MRIs failed because the computer had to be familiar with the images prior to testing, this latest approach tackles the way the brain encodes information by computer simulation. The jump from encoding to decoding is not far off.
Professor Jack Gallant believes, "one day it may even be possible to reconstruct the visual contents of dreams or visual imagery" and cautions, "it is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in, say, the 30-to 50-year time frame."
Imagine these implications. Within our lifetime, this technology's capacity to destroy the human elements of white lies that play to social graces, the true nature and internal battles of interpersonal relationships, even the potential to affect the outcomes of political interactions is staggering. Secrets of the mind, our preoccupations and fantasies, could be broadcast, perhaps even for public consumption. Our greatest and lowest humanities revealed.
Maybe to those of you who are fleet of tongue, this doesn't seem as terrifying as it does for those of us who wrap ourselves in the insulation of these private thoughts. Introverts thrive on the isolated spaces of the mind, a rich terrain simultaneously comforting and forbidden, where we find the room to breathe. The idea that the final frontier of scientific exploration is not at the point of two geographic coordinates but within the mind inspires far more than my two novels,
Chasing Midnight and
Chasing Destiny. This frontier has enough feet to fill a career.
While browsing the
photo shop creations of
Time Travel Celebrities (10 galleries worth-
Squee!), I found this haunting image. At the risk of breaching some posting rule, I wanted to credit the artist who created it,
HDoyer. It fit my paranoid thoughts today.
Check out more about the
UC-Berkley
study. The article is dated May 3, 2008. Some kind of omen from the future?
Hmm.
Were it possible today, whose mind would you decode?
For 2010, we have the Universal Pictures release, Leap Year, starring Amy Adams as a woman with an elaborate scheme to propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day, according to some far-fetched Irish custom and Matthew Goode as a hunky Brit who annoys her to the point that any other man pales in comparison. Yes, this is recycled chick-flick plot, but we're not shooting for Shakespeare here, people. Although no respectable romance writer can land a contract for a romantic comedy these days, Hollywood is eating them up. Such is the cycle. What's hot in Romancelandia will be hot in Hollywood in, say, five years, and vice-versa. People want to laugh. Especially women, who always carry more than their fair share on their shoulders at any one time. And guys, you're all geeked-up on multiple viewings of Avatar. Am I right? The universe must have balance.
