Psychology @ Wooster Blog

Okay, this is just a little scary. Apparently, some enterprising researchers in Berlin have determined how to predict someone’s intention to do high-level cognitive processes such as addition or subtraction by scanning their brain. So yes, I think we can safely say that technology has now allowed psychologists to read minds (at a greater than chance level in a forced choice task, for the moment). Let’s hope they use their powers for good instead of evil.
“If you knew which thought signatures to look for, you could theoretically predict in more detail what people were going to do in the future,” said Haynes. Apparently no official comment was immediately available from the ACLU…
Of course, this gives a whole new perspective on what finals week might look like 50 years from now…