Brain Privacy: Are Your Thoughts Safe?
MRIs revealing more than even you know about yourself
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Our privacy seems to be under siege on all fronts: the government, corporations, our employers, and of course even our neighbors seek to obtain more and more information about our lives, our preferences, our habits, and so on. Sometimes it seems as though our last refuge of privacy and security may be our own minds - but maybe not for long.
It is commonly assumed that our thoughts are our own and no one can have access to them. Indeed, even we ourselves are not always certain what it is that we are thinking because so much of what occurs in the brain is beyond our conscious awareness, much less our control. Things may be changing more quickly than anyone realizes, however.
The source of concern lies in the amazing development of scientists' ability to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines to map out brain structures and detect the presence or absence of brain activity in specific regions. In the past this has been used both to detect possible brain damage and to better understand what regions of the brain are used in what mental activities.
Now all of this information is being combined with improved technology to give researchers ever more information about what is going on in your brain. They know which regions "light up" when people are thinking about certain things. They know where in the brain activity increases or decreases when people experience certain emotions. They now have access to Functional MRI which not only uses magnetism like traditional medical MRI, but it also picks up changes in oxygen use that signal increased or decreased activity in particular areas.
What this means is that researchers can hook you up to a machine that could tell them more about you than even you yourself know. An experiment at Yale in 2000 suggests that people may indeed harbor unconscious racism - and that it can be detected. A group of white students who reported no conscious racism had their brains scanned while being shown both familiar and unfamiliar faces, some white and some black.
In many, the scans revealed an increase in activity in the amygdala, a region associated with emotional learning and which registers fear, when the students were shown unfamiliar black faces - an increase that did not occur with familiar black faces or unfamiliar white faces. Are these students unconsciously racists? Perhaps, if we define racism broadly enough - but at the very least, they have the seeds of racial prejudice which could become actual racism in how they treat unfamiliar black people and they aren't even be consciously aware of it.
Corporations are eager to use this technology for marketing purposes. They hope to use advanced MRI scans of potential consumers in order to gauge what sorts of products and advertisements they respond best to. With such information, they can create better marketing campaigns which appeal to our emotions and thoughts on an even more unconscious level than they are currently able to manage. The only thing preventing this from being widespread is the high cost of the equipment - but that won't last long.
Other potential uses - and misuses - abound. What if such scans could be used by the government to test a soldier for homosexuality, or even unconscious homosexual impulses, and discharge them based upon the results? What if the government could use the scans to test a potential parolee for the presence of violent impulses and either approve or deny parole based upon what they find?
Courts might find many uses for such devices - there is already work being done on whether the scanning could function as a sophisticated lie detector. Certain parts of the brain work harder when we are lying than when we are telling the truth, and advanced MRI scans will probably be able to pick up on this. It isn't a system that would be easy to fool. Might courts of the future require people to submit to scanning in order to determine if they are telling the truth - even in civil cases?
Intrusions into the privacy of our brains, just as with other intrusions into our privacy, would not be limited to the government - the private sector also has great interest in what goes on in our minds. Could an employer require people to submit to random brain scans just as they are currently required to submit to random drug testing? Perhaps they could be tested for signs of depression, or violent or dishonest behavior. Perhaps companies might develop standards for sufficient levels of creativity and concentration which are detectable through brain scans.
If any of this makes you feel uncomfortable, that's probably a good sign. People today are justifiably worried about their genetic privacy, not wanting the government or employers to misuse the genetic coding that makes us who we are. Our brains, however, are much more involved in our personal identities - the brain is where our memories, our emotions, and our personality are located. As much as someone might learn from a DNA sample, they could discover much, much more about you through brain scanning.
That's the purpose of neuroethics - a developing branch of bioethics which focuses the acquisition and use of knowledge about the human brain. Neuroethics is still a very young field and not much has been written about it. However, technology is moving very fast - much faster than most people seem to realize. We need to take the time to address questions like those suggested above, no matter how far-fetched they may appear.
They may appear to be more a topic for science fiction, but science fiction has a habit of becoming science fact when you aren't looking. We can't wait to develop ethical standards and principles for brain scanning until after it is a reality and being used on people. We need to work on them now, before it becomes a reality, in order to preserve the civil liberties and ethical autonomy of our children and grandchildren.
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