Mindreading: What goes on in your head may no longer be a secret

Richard Restak says we're getting closer to being able to read minds. A clinical professor of neurology at George Washington University's Medical Center and author of 18 books about the brain, Restak says that new imaging technology offers revolutionary ways to map the workings of the brain. In his latest book, The Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety Is Changing How We Live, Work, and Love, published last month, Restak explains how the new technology may help police detectives spot liars, politicians influence voters and companies select employees. Here, in an AARP Bulletin interview, Restak talks about the future:

On brain-imaging technology. The real advance is that the fMRI [functional magnetic resonance imaging] can show activity in real time, so you're measuring a person's brain activity as it's happening. Until very recently, we weren't able to tell what was happening in real time. It would take several minutes to get the picture. So when you say, "Let's see what the effect will be when we flash a picture of a lion on a screen," you can see...an area of the brain light up that has to do with threat.

On brain disease. In the book I mention the frontal lobes of a patient who started to become more careless, had memory problems, was no longer interested in things that once interested him. He was rude and crude. All the things that were wrong with him were the result of his having a frontal lobe dementia. Now you can diagnose that with an fMRI or a PET scan; you don't have to wait until all that unusual behavior develops. That's a good example of how the brain tests have been working in medicine—to pick up a personality problem and to diagnose a brain disease.

On jobs and careers. You could be tested according to suitability. For instance, if you're going to be doing interior decorating, there's a certain area in the right hemisphere that you'd see activated during the test. This is in the developmental stage, but it's something we'll be able to use, where people are [revealed to be] most appropriate for job situations. You're looking at ways to select out people who may be less capable.

There are some studies that I mention about police and the likelihood of someone firing on people of one racial group rather than another. What you'd really be after is a person who has the ability to use the frontal lobes of the brain—the "hey, stop a minute and let's think this out" part of the brain—as opposed to the impulsive, action-oriented part of the brain. When you're in certain positions you need people who have executive functions...which we can measure very well. Psychopaths have very little frontal function.

On law enforcement. If you're asking somebody a question or showing him a picture of someone he's seen before, the electrical activity [in the brain] will light up if he has a relationship to that person. There have already been some cases where crime scene photos are shown to criminals, and their response is different from someone who's never seen the crime scene before. It's reliable to the extent that it will tip off [police] to put a little more effort into interrogating an individual because what he's telling you and what you're seeing on the brain study are different. That doesn't mean he's guilty, but this is someone you're going to want to look at with more care.

On politics. We are learning from studies on the brain that the closer a candidate looks physically to the voter, or appears to be similar to the voter, the more likely the voter is to vote for that candidate. It would not be at all difficult to imagine a situation in which a slightly morphed picture may be sent out in a specialized mailing, so that the candidate's photo is doctored somewhat to appear more like the recipient. It can be very subtle. This is not going to take place today or tomorrow, but it's already been shown in labs that it can work.