

Reading the brain



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The word machine is similar to 'yantra' in Sanskrit. It is best to leave the similarity there for the time being and explore the world of difference. In the modern context, a machine is generally understood as a 'thingamajig' made by Man. It has moving parts. Once started, it keeps running until… it runs out of 'juice', into something or a new
model is announced.

Embedded in 'yantra' are stunning core concepts of machines. We can examine these because words can be built up from elemental forms called 'dhAtu' . The elemental form for 'yantra', the machine is 'yantRu'. This stunningly means 'restraint, and binding'!

We associate machines with freedom and ease of work. Why is 'restraint and binding' at its core? And moral and spiritual concepts. On contemplating, a bit, we can see that indeed the crux of the machine is 'how to control and stop it'. Unless you know how to control and stop a car, it can kill you. This is not a trivial matter that can be brushed away thinking, 'this is kid's stuff' and 'every body knows that'. The point is that it does not become a 'non-problem' and 'non-issue' just because there is a simple solution.

And the point, also is that problems do not manifest themselves when solutions are overriding them. That is its substance and reality. This reality was always there and will always be there. We need to be aware, understand and accept this reality. And harmoniously
integrate it with other realities to make and use machines. All this implies a lot more contemplation at the drawing board stage rather than racking brains to find solutions for problems when they come. This also implies preparedness for problems that are certain to manifest themselves again and again in different forms. We now understand the 'truth' in Murphy's Law. If anything can go wrong it will - and very very fast.


By extrapolating these advances far into the future, a pessimist could easily see a world governed by an empowered Big Brother who can invade people's minds.
This may be a bit extreme as far as prediction goes, but it seems only a matter of time before this kind of technology is incorporated into interrogation of important prisoners. In a world were torture and coercive interrogation of (political) prisoners is demonized, non-harmful and non-painful methods of interrogation are extremely attractive to governments and "peacekeeping" agencies. It won't be long before terror suspects are interviews with an MRI.


1. It is unethical, dangerous and in human, the birth right privacy of many, many children of the future is being screwed. And a threat to national/international security.
2. As a general practice researchers - ought to be self critical - am I being intelligent - how do I stop the goddamn machine probe - if it were an intelligent machine - that is out to screw Mankind.
3. Nothing spectacular about the concept anyway women and children particularly and almost everybody can read anybody else's mind. Not only that. Even take precautions for what others might think that you think they might think.... That is "pretence"
4. There ought to be an ethics committee empowered to probe the researcher's mind.
5. Responsible media and journals ought to think before hyping this.
6. This will give the researchers more time and more research before running after the quick buck and fame.


Today's technology is interesting to say the least, but more and more of a reminder of the technologies that would instill a "Big Brother" type world. This study is very interesting, even rather appalling that humans are capable of building machines to read minds, but the applications of things like these is what is questionable. Being able to control things with the mind, I believe, will come to be very useful in the future, but with "dream reading," the question is what exact application would they use, definitely not court systems or any legal issues. It's like many other technologies these days, useful if used correctly, dangerous if used incorrectly.


I remember reading another article on a study that was similar to the exposure to "the pink panther" and how it produced similar results. In their study though, they had about 7 people that they were using to preform the experiments. In each of the seven cases, they displayed the actual video, and what they saw. The results were similar to that of what is in the article.

This article talks about lucid dreaming. I'll have to look into this further and see if everyone can do it - sounds fun!


This new technology is fascinating. I am interested to see what new theories about the purpose of dreaming come from these sorts of studies. Some very interesting products could be developed using this technology. Privacy issues could also arrise from these types of discoveries. If one's thoughts are not private than what is?


This is amazing, yet scary at the same time. Mind reading like this definitely had its benefits, like how disabled people will be able to communicate and do things more easily. However, like everything else, there will be downfalls I'm sure. The brain is such a complex thing, and sometimes dreams can be completely random. I feel like until everyone learned how to control and use their entire brain, this will have some bad effects. Nonetheless, I think this is really neat and hopefully no one will abuse it.


The part of mind reading where a person can fly a helicopter while just thinking about it is pretty cool. Think about the advantages for the disabled. A disabled person would be able to have a robot connected to their brain and they could tell it to open doors, get things for them theat they not otherwise reach and so on. Now the other part of mind reading where a persons dreams are spyed on is creepy. I personally wou;d not want anyone watching my dreams as they happened, that is personal. Also Thoughts are the most private things in mankind, unless you tell someone they will not know. Well that is changing. I think that if we could read peoples thoughts without their consent, things would be taken too far. Leave a persons thought to themselves and concentrate more on the controling machines with a persons brain.


Umm...creepy. I can see where it would have its uses - for disabled people, people in comas, etc - but the implications of this emerging technology are something out of a sci-fi movie. Can you just imagine the U.S. military using this technology to creep in on the minds of terrorists? Or even the public at large?

The problem we are now running across is that our founding fathers who wrote the Constitution and Declaration of Independence could never have fathomed that humanity would reach such high levels of technology and science. Their version of technology was the printing press. And in that respect, there is no way they could have allowed the federal government's powers (or limited that power) to include spying on citizens as the government did after 9/11. I can only dream of the far-reaching implications this type of technology will have on our globalised society... slightly terrifying, to say the least.


This will take longer to come to fruition, for good or ill, than people think. Those images are pretty blurry. The image could just as easily been Jack the Ripper... We are only now at the beginnings of the global village, envisioned my McLuhan in the 60s. Took a lot longer to get here than he or we expected.


I'd really be interested in seeing the volunteers controlling a physical helicopter, albeit a smaller, radio controlled one. This also opens up the world of dream interpretation, and can really open up new doors in the world of psychology, by letting specialists see into their patients heads.


Being able to mind read and decipher people's dreams is an amazing step in technology but also is a lot of power. If/once this is completely workable than it will have to go through a lot of legal issues to cover all areas of privacy and injustice. This may have more negatives than positives. When will exploring go too far?? Some positive aspects is we will finally know what people are really thinking when they are in commas or when they are living off a machine.


Just when technology couldn't change into a more sci-fiction world, it always astonishes us. First of all, this is great to study in the psychology side of things but bad for many when it come down to retailers ad campaign(good counting on which side your on) and bad in privacy preaches by government(counting on how you look at things:privacy or ant-terrorist). This is going to be a obvious factor in the future world on how believe the mind works, and how we understand one another etc. This world is obviously changing fast and this is just one of the great revolutionizing technologies to come. As of right I can't wait for it to work and astonish people like Siri has.


The speed at which technology is advancing is astonishing. Most technology can be used to advance the world in ways not even dreamed about in the past. But, we should be concerned as to who is making these advancements and where the technology will spread to. This kind of technology, when perfected, can be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. Like all experimentation, there is no promise that object of observation will advance to where it is expected to. We just have to wait for the futre and see where it goes.


This technology is amazing but I'm not sure if I am to be excited or nervous about how this will evolve. Scientist will definitely keep working on this project so we can assume that full on brain reading will be possible, not in near future, but in young people's lifetime.
This does frighten me a bit but I guess this is inevitable.


This is a really cool article and I think the technology has a LOT of room to grow, and it will. Maybe this technology will even aid in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses?

Does this have the potential to be the new polygraph machine?


This is really amazing how technology has advanced to the point where people can actually discover what other people are thinking by diving in to the mind. I'm not exactly sure how this works but it seems really interesting because a computer can do something that we tell it to by jsut using our brian waves. It seems almost unrealistic, but its a new technology thats out there and I'm fired up to learn more about it.


This is huge deal for disabled people. If they could advance and perfect this technology so that people who are unable to walk, or even move could power machines with their brains that would be some serious progress. If they can control virtual helicopters now its gong crazy to see what they will be controlling in ten years.


If this comes through, people who were incapable of making decisions or getting their ideas across due to disability might now be able to voice their opinion. In the way of dreaming, it is an amazing idea to think that we might be able to one day study and record how we are acting in our dreams, and what it means for our subconscious but that might be alittle too invasive in some ways. Mind reading is a thing of the future but technology is getting more sophisticated everyday. How will people take it when mind reading becomes a reality?


This is a miraculous discovery and is a very big impact on the world, imagine all the things we can do with this! As people die, not everyones brain is brain dead, Only 1% are brain dead when they die. This would help solve cases, and help the juristic system. This will also help other psychologist, and many other people. Its amazing to see how much technology can do.


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