How Technology May Soon "Read" Your Mind

60 Minutes: Incredible Research Lets Scientists Get A Glimpse At Your Thoughts

(CBS)  This story was first published on Jan. 4, 2009. It was updated on June 26, 2009.

How often have you wondered what your spouse is really thinking? Or your boss? Or the guy sitting across from you on the bus? We all take as a given that we'll never really know for sure. The content of our thoughts is our own - private, secret, and unknowable by anyone else. Until now, that is.

As 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl first reported in January, neuroscience research into how we think and what we're thinking is advancing at a stunning rate, making it possible for the first time in human history to peer directly into the brain to read out the physical make-up of our thoughts, some would say to read our minds.

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The technology that is transforming what once was science fiction into just plain science is a specialized use of MRI scanning called "functional MRI," fMRI for short. It makes it possible to see what's going on inside the brain while people are thinking.

"You know, every time I walk into that scanner room and I see the person's brain appear on the screen, when I see those patterns, it is just incredible, unthinkable," neuroscientist Marcel Just told Stahl.

He calls it "thought identification."

Whatever you want to call it, what Just and his colleague Tom Mitchell at Carnegie Mellon University have done is combine fMRI's ability to look at the brain in action with computer science's new power to sort through massive amounts of data. The goal: to see if they could identify exactly what happens in the brain when people think specific thoughts.

They did an experiment where they asked subjects to think about ten objects - five of them tools like screwdriver and hammer, and five of them dwellings, like igloo and castle. They then recorded and analyzed the activity in the subjects' brains for each.

"The computer found the place in the brain where that person was thinking 'screwdriver'?" Stahl asked.

"Screwdriver isn't one place in the brain. It's many places in the brain. When you think of a screwdriver, you think about how you hold it, how you twist it, what it looks like, what you use it for," Just explained.

He told Stahl each of those functions are in different places.

When we think "screwdriver" or "igloo" for example, Just says neurons start firing at varying levels of intensity in different areas throughout the brain. "And we found that we could identify which object they were thinking about from their brain activation patterns," he said.

"We're identifying the thought that's occurring. It's…incredible, just incredible," he added.

"Are you saying that if you think of a hammer, that your brain is identical to my brain when I think of a hammer?" Stahl asked.

"Not identical. We have idiosyncrasies. Maybe I've had a bad experience with a hammer and you haven't, but it's close enough to identify each other's thoughts. So, you know, that was never known before," Just explained.

60 Minutes asked if his team was up for a challenge: would they take associate producer Meghan Frank, whose brain had never been scanned before, and see if the computer could identify her thoughts? Just and Mitchell agreed to give it a try and see if they could do it in almost real time.

Just said nobody had ever done an instant analysis like this.

Inside the scanner, Meghan was shown a series of ten items and asked to think for a few seconds about each one.

"If it all comes out right, when she's thinking 'hammer,' the computer will know she's thinking 'hammer'?" Stahl asked.

"Right," Mitchell replied.

Within minutes, the computer, unaware of what pictures Meghan had been shown and working only from her brain activity patterns as read out by the scanner, was ready to tell us, in its own voice, what it believed was the first object Meghan had been thinking about.

The computer correctly analyzed the first three words - knife, hammer, and window, and aced the rest as well.

According to Just, this is just the beginning.

"Who knows what you're gonna be able to read," Stahl commented. "A little scary, actually."

"Well, that's our research program for the next five years," Just said. "To see what, you know - we're not satisfied with "hammer."

And neither are neuroscientists 4,000 miles away in Berlin at the Bernstein Center. John Dylan-Haynes is hard at work there using the scanner not just to identify objects people are thinking about, but to read their intentions.

Subjects were asked to make a simple decision - whether to add or subtract two numbers they would be shown later on. Haynes found he could read directly from the activity in a small part of the brain that controls intentions what they had decided to do.

"This is a kind of blown up version of the brain activity happening here. And you can see that if a person is planning to add or to subtract, the pattern of brain activity is different in these two cases," Haynes explained.

[jbarber72001]

Paul Root Wople seems to know alot more about the state of the art then he's describing on this segment. The beam of light that he's refering to is quite real and there are potential negative side effects to these kinds of scans (like blood clots and severe migraines). The real harm here is the abuse of this technology in the hands of authorities who could care less about the sanctity of our thoughts or the preservation of our constituional rights (namely the Fourth Amendment). Wealthy individuals like Jerry Jones (the owner of the Dallas Cowboys and a principal investor in this technology) could care less about the implications of the technonolgy on our lives....he stands to make alot of money from the cellular revolution that is going to occur as a result of this!
John Barber
Denver, CO

[truthislife1]

A computer should never be the deciding factor for a jury to decide guilt or innocence. Too much information can be tampered with. It's purely speculation. There can be mis-readings and it not fair to the defending party. Interesting science though.

[azure13]

Just what we need, more ways for the rich and powerful to run our lives.

Unbelievable... So many better things for scientists to be working on.

[inachu1]

I love stories like this but each and every time these mind reading technologies come out then they go hidden or surpressed or something similar.

Even in the late 1970's or early 1980's There was a TV similar to Nimoy Lenoards tv show "IN SEARCH OF" and then a pbs NOVA report on the advancement of mind reading. The machine would pop up a picture of a cat even before the man said the word noting the machine recorded the signal for the word "cat"

Also it was stated that each humans electric signal for "cat" is different in effect that is like all our brains are different operating systems and each one is unique and you can not have one machine for all minds.

[dovestar]

Maybe we'll really know if liberals think out of the left side of their brains. We already know that liberals are not in their right mind.

[dovestar]

At last! Just what medical transcriptionists need to figure out doctors' dictation. Read his mind! They already know that a doctor's speech is as bad as his penmanship. Now we'll finally know if his brain is just as scrambled.

[dovestar]

Like all technologies this one comes with a mixed bag. Imagine being able to finally communicate with a loved one who is severely mentally retarded. Imagine being able to repair those areas in their brains which caused their retardation. This is something that this technology can lead to.

And that's not all. Imagine those who have been quadrapilegic all their lives. This technology could lead to their possibly leading normal lives like the rest of us. Pretty fascinating, huh?

But as usual, we think more about the sinister possibilities, such as government using this technology to scan our brains and "reprogram" us to the ruling party's way of thinking. Sort of like that device that lets us "see" beneath a person's clothes, now being used in some airports to discover hidden weapons.
The Fifth Amendment says that a person cannot be forced to be a witness against himself. Are you being so forced if you are forced to submit to such a brain scan? Legal scholars will be arguing this one for generations.
Bottom line: we don't trust our government or anyone else for that matter that would use such technology to manipulate us. And we'd better be on our guard, for as Pogo so eloquently said, "We have met the enemy and he is us".

[atlasbuggedbyspam]

Leslie Stahl brings us an important story, yes, but also openly parades her second-rate understanding of philosophy and politics. After regaling us with evidence of how a government might use the new tool - in America, perhaps to prove innocence, and in other nations, it could as well aid murderous repression - she then shrieks: "Scary as that is, imagine a world where companies could read our minds [for marketing purposes.]" Poor Leslie - merchandisers could find out what she wants and then...offer it to her. Oh, the horror!!

[smistretta]

Everyone is over reacting. There is no chance that scientists will ever be able to use FMRI or any other technology to read people's thoughts. The scientist in the story is a materialist and materialism has been refuted.
J. B. S. Haldane said: ?If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motion of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have not reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."

[apple2pie]

Nice for people who can't read non-verbal language.

[albasasg]

OK, so the computer can read "hammer" or "window" but is it able to read "I want to smash that window with this hammer"? Think of Clockwork Orange -- is it important that Little Alex is imaging violence -- or that he may act on that imagination? Lots of people fantasize without acting on that fantasy. They say that 55% of men think about sex several times a day. I doubt very much that those same 55% of men get sex more than a couple times a week. So -- should a woman divorce a man because he had "impure thoughts?" That'd be the end of marriage and family!

[aldrich617]

It is good to see this fascinating topic surface once again, but the story given us is really just the tip of the iceburg.
Rumor has it that about 40 years ago a CBS news crew that attempted to say a lot more suffered a nasty fate.
Do the terms "evoked response" and "third degree program" still resonate with anyone? Hopefully the invisible
wars of the last few decades have finally sorted things out. It is my understanding that Britannia still rules the
(brain) waves.

[ntalaseela]

How to get Ronco thought analyser

[ntalaseela]

How to get Ronco thought analyser.

[videography]

Now this is really interesting videography that we can all appreciate. What a long way we've come since 1972 when we wrote "Videography. What Does It All Mean?". We knew at the time that it was a big time word . . . but were stunned when in 1996 Miller Freeman Publishers sold a book title "the Age of Videography". Well now, everyday we are living it.

There is a desperate need in the global society to develop some "common sense" rules of living in the analog/digital age. Watch TV. There are so many questions and so few answers. We have a position on this issue which can be helpful. ~~~~~Videography Lab

[rsohunter]

This is fascinating news. I think we should require EVERY registered *** offender to take these tests at LEAST once a year for the duration of their registration period. If they show deviant thoughts, then we should have the constitutional authority to segregate them or imprison them until they do not have the predisposition to offend.

This is probably the MOST SIGNIFICANT legal method for ensuring that RSO''s pay, pay, and pay for their crimes. I am going to forward this research to the Adam Walsh Foundation, the Jessica Lundsford supporters, and to every *** offender organization in the United States and MANDATE that ALL *** OFFENDERS submit to the testing, and to be incarcerated if findings prove...PROVE!...that they will offend again.

[akivameda]

Can the person who posted under andreast10 contact me via email at [e-mail] I am having similar problems. The person responsible actually told me he "works with the government, not for the government." I have been researching this for nine months and finally word of such technology on TV. Please respond, thank you.

[newsjunky5]

I''m OK with this. So should everyone else, unless of course they''re thinking about hammers.

[random_radar]

Santa really can know if you have been naughty or nice.

[random_radar]

Santa really can know if you have been naughty or nice.