Last year the rumpus was over Intel believing its customers would be willing to have chips implanted in their brains to operate computers without need for keyboard or mouse using thoughts alone. The implant could also be used to operate such devices as cell phones, TVs and DVDs. As privacy experts flinched, chip advocates waxed ecstatic on the benefits. Now book and film take up the baton to explore neuroscience advances.

Christopher Nolan (left), director, writer and producer of the film Inception and the British author of Theta Head, Greg Dawe (right) explore some of these issues in their current works.

Judging by the recent Emotive commercial development, and comments from University of California Berkley neuroscience Professor, Jack Gallant, only the timing for the full rollout remains in question as well as shielding when needed.
 
Dawes explains. "I’m writing present-day science fiction.. like writing about the real world but with plug-ins..allowing me to make predictions about how technology might evolve in the near future. 

"The neuroscience technology in Theta Head does exist, it does work in the way it works in the real world, only it’s in a slightly different form and is used for a slightly different purpose.  It’s the most intimate technology you could imagine, allowing us a glimpse into the nature of our deepest selves.’
 
Neurofeedback is a technology which allows a person to monitor their own brainwaves.  Armed with this knowledge the user is then able to consciously intrude into the feedback loop and make adjustments. 

Stressed out with a head full of buzzing, logical beta?  Try a shot of theta.  Too much dreamy alpha?  Move to beta waves.  Once the brain begins to wake up to itself - the idea is to create a symphony of brainwaves that gives you the feeling when everything makes perfect, crystal clear sense; in other words, a state of complete freedom and infinite possibilities. 

It sounds great.  Why isn’t everyone doing it?  

"Right now technology is too intrusive." says Dawe.  "Those searching for that elusive spirit within are often turned off by technology because it gets in the way and distracts them.  Who wants to walk around with electrodes stuck all over their head, not to mention the practicalities of carting a hefty EEG machine around? It creates yet another layer of interference between us and the world we experience.

"What’s needed for this technology to really catch on is miniaturisation and a more consumer-focused marketing plan."

Game for the ultimate app?
Recently Emotiv, a brain computer interface company launched Epoc, its latest brainwave headgear.  This is the first of its kind to be aimed directly at the home consumer, not strictly for the lofty ideal of raising consciousness, but with  a far broader agenda. 

According to Emotiv, a few of the applications we might use  neuroscience for are to enhance thoughts, feeling, and emotions in order to dynamically create colour, music, and art: controlling an electric wheelchair, mind-keyboard, or playing a hands-free game or instrument; fantasy in controlling and influencing a virtual environment with your mind as in playing games developed specifically for the EPOC, or use the EmoKey to connect to current PC games and experience them in a completely new way; finally, and more than a little threateningly, market research and advertising 'control' and insight into how people respond and feel about material presented to them. 

‘If playing games is what brings neuroscience the mainstream cultural awareness it deserves,’ says Greg, ‘that certainly gets my thumbs up.  I just hope people will also recognise its self development potential.’

The benefits of meditation/deep relaxation are well known and consistent practice can be a life changing experience.  What’s missing is time - we simply don’t have enough.  It takes years of monk-like practise and dedication to reach those states. 

But with neurotechnology things are different - a person can learn to get themselves into ‘the zone’ after only a few hours training.  It takes longer to attain a consistent peak performance state, but once a person is armed with those skills, the neuro-equipment can be discarded, as a child discards a set of training wheels once bicycle balance is achieved.

Inception or 'inserting secrets into your mind'
In the film Inception,  written and directed by Christopher Nolan  where the main character, played by DiCaprio, centers on Dom Cobb, an "extractor", who enters the dreams of others to obtain information that is otherwise inaccessible. His abilities and questions about the death of his wife have cost him his family and his nationality, but he is promised a chance to regain his old life in exchange for planting an idea in a corporate target's mind.

This process of idea planting or "inception", is less familiar and far more difficult than Cobb's usual job of "extraction."

Can neurotechnologies perform these kinds of mind-reading too? It is intriguing just how much existing technologies can read from dreams and thinking minds. One researcher in the field  is Professor Jack Gallant, (right) a neuroscientist at UCB.

The focus of the research in his laboratory is on understanding the structure and function of the visual system consisting of several dozen distinct modules (visual areas) arranged in highly interconnected, hierarchical and parallel networks.

The visual system is tightly integrated with other sensory subsystems and systems for memory and language. Because of interconnectivity, and because the brain is build on modular principles, vision research also has important implications for understanding other brain systems.

The goal of the Gallant Lab is to understand the structure and function of the human visual system at a quantitative, computational level, and to build models that accurately predict how the brain will respond during natural vision. Predictive models of brain activity are the gold standard of computational neuroscience, and are critical for the long-term advancement of neuroscience and medicine.

"Our computational models can be used to interpret human brain activity with unprecedented accuracy. The success of this effort suggests that these models may soon be good enough for practical application as clinical and BMI tools.

Gallant shows people images and movies while taking functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of their brains. He uses brain pattern analysis and computer algorithms to analyse the fMRI scans and build a model of the subject's visual system.

Using the model, Gallant can then have his subject watch a completely new movie and reproduce the images the subject has seen with very good accuracy, taking as it were, the pictures right out of a head.

Gallant says he can use the same technology to reproduce images of the dreams from a person's brain. The only problem, no way to verify the accuracy of those images, since only the dreamer 'sees' them.

Japanese approach uses blood flow analysis
A team of researchers in Japan has approached the dream-reading problem from a different direction. Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) Computational Neuroscience Laboratories also takes fMRI scans of what the subject sees.

But instead of building a model of the visual system, ATR feeds fMRI scans into a computer, which "learns" how to associate changes in brain activity with different images.

Lab scientists can reconstruct simple black-and-white images the subject is viewing by analysing the blood flow in the brain's visual cortex. ATR says reconstructing dreams is harder because the brain signals during sleep may be 'noisier' and is now researching how to get more meaningful information from a sleeper's brain.


Dream computer interface