Descartes would hate this. Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) held that the mind is an immaterial "substance" that interacts with the physical body. For him, consciousness is not a physical thing. Science could never get a-hold of it. It could never be observed.
Maybe he was wrong about that. There are virtually no Cartesians (Descartes proponents) left in the field of philosophy of mind. (There are still many of them in philosophy of religion, though.)
Stuff like this keeps nagging at the Cartesians. This kind of scientific news just keeps on making it look like the mind is a physical thing. The Cartesians never get any good news these days...
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Scientists Try to Predict Intentions
BERLIN Mar 5, 2007 (AP)— At a laboratory in Germany, volunteers slide into a donut-shaped MRI machine and perform simple tasks, such as deciding whether to add or subtract two numbers, or choosing which of two buttons to press. They have no inkling that scientists in the next room are trying to read their minds — using a brain scan to figure out their intention before it is turned into action.
In the past, scientists had been able to detect decisions about making physical movements before those movements appeared. But researchers at Berlin's Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience claim they have now, for the first time, identified people's decisions about how they would later do a high-level mental activity in this case, adding versus subtracting.
...outside experts say the work led by Dr. John-Dylan Haynes at the Bernstein Center is groundbreaking.
"The fact that we can determine what intention a person is holding in their mind pushes the level of our understanding of subjective thought to a whole new level," said Dr. Paul Wolpe, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not connected to the study.
The research, which began in July 2005, has been of limited scope: only 21 people have been tested so far. And the 71 percent accuracy rate is only about 20 percent more successful than random selection.
..."Haynes' experiment strikes at the heart of how good we will get at predicting behaviors," said Dr. Todd Braver, an associate professor in the department of psychology at Washington University, who was not connected with the research.
"The barriers that we assumed existed in reading our minds keep getting breached."
In one study, participants were told to decide whether to add or subtract two numbers a few seconds before the numbers were flashed on a screen. In the interim, a computer captured images of their brain waves to predict the subject's decision with one pattern suggesting addition, and another subtraction.
Haynes' team began its research by trying to identify which part of the mind was storing intentions. They discovered it was found in the prefrontal cortex region by scanning the brain to look for bursts of activity when subjects were given choices.
Then they went about studying which type of patterns were associated with different intentions.
"If you knew which thought signatures to look for, you could theoretically predict in more detail what people were going to do in the future," said Haynes.
..."These technologies, for the first time, give us a real possibility of going straight to the source to see what somebody is thinking or feeling, without them having any ability to stop us," said Dr. Hank Greely, director of Stanford University's Center for Law and the Biosciences.
"The concept of keeping your thoughts private could be profoundly altered in the future," he said.
...Despite the fears, Haynes believes his research has more benign practical applications.
For example, he says it will contribute to the development of machines already in existence that respond to brain signals and allow the paralyzed to change TV channels, surf the Internet, and operate small robotic devices.
For now, the practical applications of Haynes' research are years if not decades away.
"We are making the first steps in reading out what the specific contents of people's thoughts are by trying to understand the language of the brain," Haynes said. "But it's not like we are going to have a machine tomorrow."
See here.
