Can Our Brains and Minds Be Hacked?

Will it ever be possible to hack into the Human Brain? Courtesy of Livescience. 

Will it be possible to develop the technology to one day hack into the human brain and read a person’s thoughts?

Today on Far Future Horizons we join veteran actor Morgan Freeman in another outstanding episode of the acclaimed Science Channel documentary series Through the Wormhole which explores these and other daunting possibilities on the cutting edge of applied neuroscience.

  

Our minds store our entire lives, our memories and our deepest desires. Tell no one, and our thoughts remain our own. But our brains are biological computers. Computer hackers can tamper with our email. Could brain hackers someday be able to rewrite our thoughts?

For the first time, researchers are harnessing cutting edge brain scanner technology to translate inner mental activity into pictures and words: to actually see what someone is thinking.

If our brain data can be read, could it also be reprogrammed by outside forces?

A high-tech start-up company is perfecting a device that, they claim, can turn amateurs into experts in a matter of days, by hacking into their customers' brain waves.

Other researchers believe our minds may be open to brain hackers when we sleep each night. They're using pleasing and foul odours to program visceral reactions to particular sounds, reactions that persist when their test subjects wake up.

A team at MIT has figured out how to wire on-off switches into individual cells in a living brain. This research could lead to a brain science revolution, one where we have complete control over the workings of our minds. The rewards would be momentous, it could eliminate mental illness. We could unlock the highest levels of talent.

But there is a dark side to hacking into the mind. We could be creating a future where no secret would ever be safe, and where any one of us could lose our minds to a brain hacker!

~ Courtesy of the Science Channel

This episode of Through the Wormhole hosted by Morgan Freeman can be purchased direct from Amazon Books.

Through the Wormhole - Can Our Minds Be Hacked?

Through the Wormhole S04 E06 "Can Our Minds Be... by kaanozten

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