## This machine knows what you're thinking

> MIND control. That, in a nutshell is what Brain Machine Interfaces, a $US24 million ($42.2m) enterprise, hopes to achieve with the new technology it is developing.

> The Boston Globe reported that this technology could directly read thoughts from a living brain. And go one step further!

> It would be able to instil thoughts as well.

> And who's providing the funds for this research programme?

> The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defence that once bankrolled the military programme designed to gauge the chances of geopolitical developments, including terrorist attacks.

> That project led to the famous Iran-contra scandal.

> Sounds scary, but progress has already been made.

> The newspaper reported that scientists in New York announced last year that they could control the skittering motions of a rat by implanting electrodes in its brain and steer it around the lab floor as if it were a radio-controlled toy car.

> Ninety-Eighty Four come to mind? A Brave New World? A Matrix-like dystopia?

> Use some imagination and you could think chips that impose false memories, machines that scan for wayward thoughts and Big Brother watching your every move.

> Its developers however point out that the Brain Machine Interfaces programme could offer help to the paralysed rather than encourage a police state. Copyright © 2003 SPH AsiaOne Ltd. All rights reserved.