Brain-Scanning Technology Raises Ethics Quandaries
Mar 10th, 2008 • Posted in: NewsNew technology may be used to treat various diseases affecting the brain, but could it and should it be applied to marketing or law enforcement?
BERKELEY, Calif.
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley reported last week that they used brain scans and computer models to interpret visual activity in the brain — a process that holds promise for the treatment of various ailments but raises some obvious ethics issues as well.
The Washington Post reports that the process involves scanning the brain, storing images of brain scans made with a functional magnetic resonance imager, which reads brain patterns in real time, and using a computer database to recognize those patterns the next time they appear.
In other words, the computer can be trained to recognize, in a primitive way, what people are seeing and thinking.
According to a report from Scientific American, a brain-reading device would be valuable not only for medical inspections of the brain, but for research probing phenomena that are difficult to study using conventional means, such as how people perceive things differently.
But there’s a downside, reports technology publication Wired: marketing campaigns crafted for maximum mental impact or abuse of brain scanning by law enforcement. Equally disquieting is the possibility that scanners could be used in a courtroom as a sort of lie detector.
The scientists who conducted the study acknowledge the downside, according to National Geographic. “The authors believe strongly that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading process involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent,” they wrote in a statement.
Results of the study were published in the scientific journal Nature.
Sources: Wired, Mar. 5 — National Geographic, Mar. 5 — Washington Post, Mar. 5 — Scientific American, Mar. 5.
For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 12, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 8, 2007.
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