What's on your mind?

Went out dragging the stagnant left side of the blogosphere tonight and struck gold. Swerve Left serves up a plate of science with a side of leftist paranoia: Keep your tinfoil helmets on tight, they're closing in!

Researchers in Britain and the U.S. have been able to determine the image that subjects are looking at through a brain scan when different images were displayed to the subjects' left and right eyes ... subjects watched a clip of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". The researchers said, "We were able to tell one part of a scene from another, and we could tell one type of sound from another."

Seems scientists are one step closer to reading your mind. If you're watching a spaghetti western through "special goggles," that is. (I'd be doing that right now if I hadn't lost my special goggles yesterday somewhere in the sofa cushions.) But watch out, Swerve Left warns us, "How much longer will it be before these machines are used in lie detector tests or perhaps to detect a lack of loyalty to a cause?"

The Reuters article linked in the post provides us with this helpful graphic:


"Now tell me what you see ..."

The story is even funnier the way Reuters presents it. They quote Dr. Haynes of the University College London Institute of Neurology:

"One day, someone will come up with a machine in a baseball cap. Then it really could be helpful in everyday applications."

Maybe if it gets everyone to stop wearing baseball caps.

Here's what Reuters says the American half of this scientific endeavor got out of the research:

The US team say their study proves brain scans do relate to brain cell electrical activity.

Ahhhhh, good. Glad we got that cleared up. (Is the U.S. team smoking pot?)

Anyway, don't worry. When the guys with the nightvision gear rappel down through your chimney and slap a baseball cap on your head, they'll be interested only in the left side of your brain.