DISCOVER Vol. 25 No. 10 | October 2004 | Mind & Brain

The Myth of Mind Control: Will anyone ever decode the human brain?
By John Horgan

All it took was a few jolts of electricity to turn ordinary rats into
roborats and for pundits to leap to the conclusion that ordinary
humans will soon be transformed into robohumans. Scientists at the
State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn
sparked a media frenzy two years ago when they demonstrated that rats
with electrodes implanted in their brains could be steered like
remote-controlled toy cars through an obstacle course. Using a laptop
equipped with a wireless transmitter, a researcher stimulated
cortical cells governing whisker sensations and reinforced those
signals by zapping the rats' pleasure centers. Presto! With this
simple setup, the team had created living robots.

Publications around the world proclaimed the imminence of those
familiar science-fiction staples, surgically implanted devices that
electronically monitor and manipulate our minds. The Economist warned
that neurotechnology may be on the verge of "overturning the
essential nature of humanity," and New York Times columnist William
Safire brooded that neural implants might allow a "controlling
organization" to hack into our brains. In a more positive vein, MIT's
artificial-intelligence maven Rodney Brooks predicted in Technology
Review that by 2020 implants will let us carry out "thought-activated
Google searches."


Continued

http://www.discover.com/issues/oct-04/cover/