Full-Mental Nudity

March 19, 2007 | Source: Slate

Until this experiment, nobody had ever tried to take a picture of free will…

John-Dylan Haynes, a brilliant researcher at Germany’s Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, is using fMRI to look for that core in the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex.

Scans have also been used to identify brain signatures of disgust, drug cravings, unconscious racism, and suppressed sexual arousal, not to mention psychopathy and propensity to kill.

FMRI is just the first stage. Electrodes, infrared spectroscopy, and subtler magnetic imaging are next. Scanners will shrink. Image resolution and pattern-recognition software will improve.