The authors suggested that the increase in blood flow, or brain activity, for AN subjects meant “that they must make an additional effort to perform at normal levels.”  I wonder if the increased blood flow shows (possible) already increased activity due to perfectionist  anxiety on top of the workload of the working memory tasks.  I was only able to read the abstract, so I really shouldn’t posit any more theories.

As Lynch mentioned, we already have lie detector tests…why stop there?  Currently, it is probably only the price of such complex brain scans…and the obvious ethical problems.  We have the technology to view brain activity in real time, and we are close to (if we haven’t already) identifying the parts of the brain activated when we lie.  We could unequivocally determine if someone is telling the truth.  However, we also have other knowledge that could enable us to “theoretically” read people’s minds.  What if, during the scan, we inadvertently discover the guy is a serial killer. Perhaps, curiously active limbic areas of the temporal lobes, indicating a strong tendency toward violence,  prompt us to ask certain questions that lead to further suspicious activity in other violence-correlated areas which just happen to trigger personal memory retrieval.   Will we need to invent some kind of brain warrant to allow mind confession?

If we were allowed to search for the locations of a serial killer’s victims via his mind, will a limited search warrant really work for the brain?  Think about the search methods used in houses…lets say you could only search the office: there is a clear and identifiable path to the office and walls surrounding the room, blocking it off from the rest of the house.  There are no such paths and walls in the brain.  Once we go in there, I suspect, we will know much more than what we intended to find out.

This idea is reaching a little too much, but what if we had the ability to punish convicted felons for having thoughts related to their crime by implanting certain neurons with little nodes to transmit electrical jolts that would connect to pain generating neurons?  Hypothetical::::: During a real time brain scan, we could show a convicted child molester pictures of child pornography and other graphic material related to his/her offense while mapping out the cells that are activated.  Then, we could show the offender pictures, or even bring in, children in decent clothing-doing normal things, and map out the brain’s activity.  We then could eliminate all cells that were activated in both cases, making sure that he/she doesn’t get punished for simply seeing or interacting with a child.  We could then implant the nodes in the remaining neurons and install nodes that would send trigger an implanted device that would inflict pain via the sensory neurons.  (I can only guess at how this could be done)

This implanted device would act just like an electric dog collar, if the felon goes “out of bounds,” or does what he/she isn’t supposed to: anything pertaining to abusing, or viewing indecent pictures of, children (or even THINKING about these things).  Impossible, one might say-totally unethical.  However, I use the child offender as an example only because we treat them so much more harshly than other convicted felons.

(Digression) I am willing to bet that the judicial system would ultimately refuse such devices…at first.  That is, until angry mothers and similar advocates of extensive punishment for sex offenders create enough of a fuss (and believe me, they are a powerful force) to make the devices legal for only sex offenders.  They would, of course, pray on the myth that sex offenders are much more likely to offend again, which is not true-0ther criminals are more prone to recidivism than sex offenders.

My point is that even though neurotechnology will be able to help more than it will hurt, there is a potential for our society to use it for good while pushing us down a slippery slope toward Big Brother.