Science of Reading mind | Can we read someone's mind??

The brain is the most complex organ of our body. What if we could read someone’s brain? The are some fictional Novel, movies, anime and many more, that show devices that are able to read human mind. 

Reading mind has always been a wish for all of us. We try to guess what the other person is thinking by looking at him. We play games related to mind guessing. We do all these because we have a habit of reading mind and we do like it.

In the movie INCEPTION, the main character is able to plant new thought into the mind of his subject. In the movie Antman, Scott Lang uses a device to control ants by just using his brain. In the Thor franchise, Heimdall can know who is calling him by just concentrating, no device used. what is the science behind this? 

when we come across reading mind, we think of telepathy in the first instance. So, let’s know about telepathy…

TELEPATHY

Telepathy is the oldest known term used for mind reading. Telepathy means to read someone’s brain without, necessarily, being present nearby physically. It is just like calling using mobile phone but with an exception of no device used. In other words, communication beyond the 5 senses is known as telepathy. Is there any scientific way to do so? 

There are a number of researches going on telepathy all across the globe. The experiments conducted on telepathic subjects are difficult to recreate and tough to arrange control experiments for the same. Therefore, despite of some cases of telepathy, it is hard to verify for its authenticity. 

Moreover, we all have performed telepathy. You don’t believe me? Let me give some examples: -

• Ever happened, that you and the person sitting near you came up with the same idea? 

• Ever happened, you think of a person and he arrives or his phone call?

• Ever happened, you got your desired gift without even requesting it? 

If answer to any of the above-mentioned question is YES, then my friend you have used telepathy. There are many real-life cases where we use telepathy but we don’t have concrete scientific explanation for it. 

Let me make very clear that telepathy and hypnotism are not the same thing. Hypnotism means to control the brain. Whereas, telepathy means to read the brain. 

Before getting into some more ways to communicate directly through mind, let’s know how our brain processes information and works with thoughts…

HOW DO BRAIN WORK? 

Information is fed into our brain through 5 sensory organs (i.e. eyes, ears, tongue, skin and nose). These inputs are converted into Electro-Magnetic radiations or electrical signals. Every thought arising inside our brain results an electromagnetic signal. Brain is like a transmitter which transmits signal in the form of electric signals. These are carried by neurons to different parts of the body. 

These signals are extremely weak to detect and are indistinguishable, so it is very difficult to unscramble them. Moreover, we don’t have antennae to receive thoughts from another person’s brain. There are few ways in which we can read human brain, up to some extent. We will discuss them below…

HOW TO TRACE BRAIN’S THOUGHTS? 

There is a technique, which can be used to trace the thoughts arising in the brain. The technique is based on Quantum Mechanics. It is generally called as PET test, Positron Emission Tomography. 

Before this test, the person is injected with radioactive sugar into the blood. The sugar concentrates in the brain’s part used while thinking as energy is required by that part. The energy is provided by the blood. The radioactive sugar emits positron (anti electron), which can be detected easily by the modern instruments.

Brain Pattern as detected by PET test

Hence, tracing the positron means tracing the thoughts. There is one more widely used technique used to read brain signals up to some extent…

MRI - Magnetic Resonance Imaging. 

This is the widely used technique in the medical science. The use of MRI is in taking the detailed images of the brain and brain stems. It is also used in lie detection. A study shows that lying needs more energy than speaking the truth. This is because lying means hiding the truth and creating a false statement (a lie). This means that when a person is lying his brain activity increases in the frontal lobe (used for higher thinking), temporal lobe, 

limbic system (controlling emotions). 

The brain patterns cannot be altered. Hence, it is more reliable than other techniques used for lie detection. But it is not trustworthy as it measures the brain activity only. Even if the person is speaking the truth and he becomes anxious, his brain activity increases. So, the lie detector takes it as a lie. What if we could build a Thought Dictionary? 

UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR 

This is a device which can read a person’s thoughts and then beam it directly into another’s mind. This device is the main reason behind the fictions, in which a person easily reads brain just like reading a textbook. 

How to make it work? 

• We need to record signal from each single neuron 

• After getting the signal, noise (unwanted signals) should be reduced 

• Each signal pattern represents an individual word

• Final step is to combine all the signal information to form a THOUGHT DICTIONARY just like an English dictionary which gives simple meaning for each word.

The brain pattern for similar thoughts, of different brains (i.e. of different person), is same. So, if we are able to build a dictionary of thought patterns than we would be able to read brain up to 90% accuracy. The research is going on this topic in different parts of the world.

MRI Machine 

BRAIN CAMERA 

Just like normal camera takes the picture of our outer body, brain camera would be able to take pictures of our brain patterns. This brain camera is nothing but mobile version of MRI machine. The problems with MRI machine are: -

• They are large in size (just like a big doughnut)

• The subject needs to be shielded from any external magnetic field 

• If any metal is present nearby, it can be dangerous for the subject

With the advancement of Science, the machines are getting smaller in size. So, we can expect that within the next decade the MRI machine would also shrink. The brain camera coupled with computer program would be able to decode brain pattern waves using the thought dictionary. This is, theoretically, close to the fictional Telepathic device. 

BCI- Brain Computer Interface

This is a device that allows direct communication between the human brain and a machine. It is based on the concept, decoding brain’s neural signals into commands that can be recognized by the machine. It is in the developing stage but the tests have shown success in many activities. It was successful in moving the cursor on the screen with the mind. The advancement in deep learning and artificial intelligence, will allow more efficient decoding of neural signals and using it for more advanced jobs.

Neuralink’s thread 

Neuralink is a startup by Elon musk for the development of Brain machine interface. Its goal is to design a device which can allow us to control devices just by using our brain. It has designed a thread, smaller than human hair, which needs to be inserted inside human brain to detect the activity of brain’s neurons. This technology has been successfully tested on monkeys but human trail is yet to be done. If this is successful then it would bring a revolution in the world of technology.

Elon Musk

APPLICATION OF READING MIND

There are many applications of reading human mind. I will mention few of them below. These are: -

1.Helpful for the disabled person who can neither talk nor listen. The telepathic device would make the life easier.

2.It can be used to know the demands of newly born baby as this device would be reading brain patterns.

3.It can be used as universal translator to understand any language all around the world.

4.Can be used to communicate with non-humans. Similar to that shown in the movie Antman. 

5. It can also be very helpful for the person suffering from paralysis, coma, etc. in which the mind is conscious but is unable to respond physically. 

These are few of the many uses of telepathic device. 

Negative effects of mind reading devices 

Every invention has some positive as well as negative impacts. Similar is the case for mind reading device. There are some of the major negative effects of mind reading device: -

1.No Privacy

As anybody, having mind reading device, can read anybody’s mind, there would be no privacy. Anything you think would be publicly available. It would be easier to know the private information, like your password and lead to security threat.

2. Mind manipulation 

Mind manipulation means to convince someone according to your will which can be harmful for the other person. It would be easier with the use of mind reading device as the device-bearer can know what’s going on in the subject’s mind and can manipulate accordingly. It can be used by politicians, salesman etc.

3.New era of marketing 

What we search online is shown us everywhere, this is called digital marketing. This is today’s powerful marketing technique but this can be more powerful if the demands of our brain are known by the social media marketers directly from the brain. If you think of something, that will be shown everywhere on Instagram, on facebook, everywhere. 

This is the new marketing era. It is harmful as nothing would be kept hidden from this software. There are many negative effects of mind reading device. But is up to us how we use it. All the negatives can be removed if some targeting system is used. Like in the case of mobile phone, the person having unique mobile number can call. The similar thing can be used for mind reading devices too. 

This situation is similar to the movie INCEPTION. Though not getting into the dreams and planting an idea, but new ideas can be inserted into the other person’s brain. This is scary!!! Luckily, we can relax for few more decades as we are not that advanced to make this work. 

These are some of the possible ways to read human mind. These technologies are in their infancy. It would need few more decades to see a device like the fictions which would be able to read the human mind with ease. Till then we need to keep improving the present technology and keep on strengthening the security of everything. 

What are your thoughts on this let me know…? If you had access to such technology what would you do ??

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