Here’s a real-life horror story: Five people have been found buried alive inside their bodies. Paralyzed by brain injuries, they lay inert for years, seemingly oblivious to the doctors and loved ones around them. Four were diagnosed as vegetative. Then a European research team scanned their brains. It turns out they’re aware; they just can’t speak or move. God knows how many more are trapped like this.
On the heels of this frightening idea comes another: The scans that exposed these patients’ thoughts could expose yours. They could read your mind. “Governments are interested in the thoughts of their citizens—whether their voting intentions or their propensities to crime,” warns Colin Blakemore, an Oxford neuroscientist. In the European scans, he sees “the possibility that brain science could bring an era of surveillance that will make the epidemic of CCTV cameras look trivial.”
Relax. The brain scans are wonderful news. The patients were trapped anyway; the scans have simply restored their ability to communicate. Better yet, that communication remains voluntary. Without the patients’ cooperation, the scans would have found nothing. That’s the most marvelous thing the scans have discovered: Human minds stripped of every other power can still control one last organ—the brain.
SOURCE: Slate.com
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