On September 27, 2002 "Minority Report" was released in cinemas, a thriller directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise and Colin Farrell loosely based on the homonymous science fiction story by Philip K. Dick. Dick, by the way, is best known for "The android hunter" which inspired the 1982 film Blade Runner. Minority Report is set in 2054. Thanks to a system called Precrime, the city of Washington has erased the murders from six years now.
The system is based on the premonitions of three individuals with amplified extrasensory powers of precognition, called Precogs. With this tool the police manages to prevent murders before they happen and to arrest potential culprits. Therefore the fact is not punished because the prevention has avoided it, but instead the intention to commit it is punished. The precognition of the Precogs suggests an ability that they have to read people's thoughts and to select those in which their ideas can lead to the execution of criminal deeds. In recent years we are witnessing a real scientific revolution in the study of the human brain and thoughts. This happens because the advances in neuroscience with Neuroimaging have opened up a new field of research. This type of images allow you to see the brain's activities with appropriate tools such as magnetic resonance and other more sophisticated tools. In fact it has been possible to see live that some areas of the brain are sprayed more than others and in particular it has been seen that there is an area that sprays more when speaking and another when listening. On May 23, the journal Nature Neuroscience published a work that can be summarized as: a brain-computer interface can make a semantic reconstruction of continuous language obtained from non-invasive brain recordings. Semantic reconstruction means that there are areas of the brain in which words or semantic fields are recorded, such as joy (pleasure, rejoicing), or linked to a shade of colour, or even to a season (summer, winter) and so on. This interface through brain recordings is able to generate sequences of intelligible words that recover the meaning of speech.
The unfolding of the mystery of the mind is extraordinary. One can imagine being able to understand the intentions or points of view of each of us. Knowing what thoughts or actions people are about to take. It is thought to be able to understand how people orient themselves politically and whether political targeting or commercial marketing can be influenced with these techniques. It is about transforming data into information that can be read and interpreted. This information could transform the brain into a computer interface. For example, it would be a question of connecting smartphones to brain activity in such a way that thoughts would autonomously govern keyboards and touch screens. It is clear that these discoveries will have a profound effect on the cognitive freedom of each of us. But let's try to see and appreciate other aspects. The positive impact for those who have lost the use of speech who will be able to express their thoughts through an interface bridging their isolation. But in other ways these technologies in the near future through neuroimaging will be able to enter the protected areas of our brain to get to understand thoughts, intentions and our points of view. Knowledge and innovation continue to be the spice of our existence.
Antonio Barracca