Several government projects across the world have started to work with the disconcerting concept of reading minds. The technology, seemingly from the belly of Science Fiction itself, is a lot closer to reality than you may have realized...

Dr. Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, a University of Leicester researcher, has outright proclaimed that his team "can read human thoughts from neuronal activity." Quiroga and his colleagues were able to optimize a decoding algorithm and use it to "infer the stimulus from the neuronal firing," and during tests in which patients were presented with a vast database of images, the team was seemingly able to "predict what picture the subject was seeing far above chance." Basically, al that mumbo jumbo means that we are making giant leaps towards thought prediction. Currently the team is calling for an ethical debate on the use of such technologies in fields such as interrogation and law. But perhaps most interestingly, the possible application of it with bionic limbs would allow the limb to respond to the user's thoughts as if it were the original appendage! There not the only people clamoring for a debate either.

U.S. and U.K. governments are doing their own research in the field as well, and are reporting succss in predicting which scenes the test subject was watching based on data collected from fMRI. As if this weren't creepy enough, the whole Minority Report-esque scenario just got even more real, with a group of neuroscientists this year claiming to read intentions before you act on them. Microsoft released that they planned to use the technology in a subliminal survey context, reading your thoughts of the UI to create a better user interface experience.

Why the ethical debate? Well, thoughts are not actions. Actions are the result of following impulses. If you an read the impulse, you can surely read the thought, but would knowing what you thought about doing taint some law cases? For example a man on trial for murder may have thought about killing the victim, but what if he didn't... How would this technology know the difference between an impulse and an action? Furthermore, maybe we don't want are thoughts read... Does it violate your First Amendment rights? Maybe its tme we took a look at an Amendment to what laws there should be about free thinking. It is truely scary- and we thought waterboarding was bad...