What if you could learn complicated skills without any conscious effort? Just a few moments hooked up to a machine could ‘wire’ your brain to be better at these tasks. The National Science Foundation is making breakthroughs on this. As they announced themselves
“It may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort.”
Patients are hooked up to a modified type of MRI machine. Then select brainwaves are stimulated to achieve whatever the desired effect is. Currently this can only be used on the visual cortex of the brain. Luckily this part of the brain is connected to a large amount of tasks. Researchers believe the ability to rehabilitate somebody with walking impairments by matching their brainwaves to that of an athlete is within their grasp. They also discovered that being unaware of what they’re learning has nothing to do with how well they respond to it.
“What's more, the approached worked even when test subjects were not aware of what they were learning “
I suppose my real question with all this is simply how dangerous could this be. While giving someone the joy to walk is a very noble idea, how long would it be before someone figured a corrupt use for it? I don’t want to try and sound too much like George Orwell from his novel 1984, but if someone figured out how to do this covertly how powerful would they be? To have the ability to reconfigure someone’s visual brainwaves to produce the idea of wanting to consume a certain product or vote to a certain candidate is a scary idea indeed.
Do the pros outweigh the possible cons as well the ethical standpoints? Personally I believe they do but I do understand the possible scare behind all of this. The original press release will be below for anyone who would like to read further into this. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=122523
No comments:
Post a Comment