While I applaud efforts to aid stroke victims, it strikes me that this technology is going to enable researchers to develop highly accurate maps of the human mind. Already, I’ve seen studies which say that they can do detailed brain scans on individuals within hours of recieving a dose of anti-depressants and tell how well that particular drug is going work for the patient. They can then adjust the drug and the dosage before the patient notices any effects from the medication (anti-depressants often take a week or longer to fully kick in). I’m sure that sooner or later these two technologies will begin to aid one another, which is where it gets creepy for me.
With that kind of detailed knowledge of how the brain works, they’ll be able to tailor make drugs to treat “undesirable” behaviors. Wanna quit smoking? Here’s a pill. Don’t seem to have as much faith in your God(s) as you’d like? Here’s a pill. Showing independant thought? They’ll replace your colored chalk with a pill, and so on.
not to mention i think you’re mistaking “brain” for “mind” here. as i’m reading the article, it sounds like this Alladin-whatever is probably mapping things like blood flow, obstruction sites, electrical activity. that is all concerned with brain health, damage assessment, and as the article mentioned, pinpointing the exact area of damage/compromise.
that’s all a long, LONG way from mapping exactly how the mind works. i’d crank your alarm meter down many notches for several years yet.
Actually, we don’t really have to know how intimate details of how the mind works to accomplish what I’m talking about. Already, we can localize not only where motor functions occur in the brain, but emotions, as well. We know that chemical processes control much of the brain’s functions, and I’ve seen reports that indicate some of the scanning gear is getting to the point where it can watch individual neutrons fire. There’s been studies which have been able to map many of the changes which occur inside the brain when we learn a new task, and when Prozac was first prescribed, doctors were suprised because not only did it alleviate depression in patients, but in many of them, their whole persona changed. If an anti-depressant can have that affect (and we all know the kind of affect alcohol can have on some people’s brains), then it seems to me that if you discover person A has X chemical in their brain, while person B doesn’t, that giving person B X chemical will shift them closer to person A in their mental make up.
I, for one, applaud any further steps into understanding the workings of the brain and the mind. (Though I kinda doubt that this particular technology is going to be the single key to unlocking the brain’s secrets.)
And one could look at taking “a pill” in a positive light, too, I would think.
“Got horrible, crippling clinical depression? Take a pill.”
“Post-Traumatic Stress Syndome? Take a pill.”
“Want to temporarily gain the mathematical abilities of an autistic savant? Take a pill.”
“Got a terminal illness, and want to be able to spend your last days not shot up on morphine just to bear the pain? Take a pill.”
I can imagine a lot of positives from this. I did mention in my OP that a pill would enable one to quit smoking (and I can’t believe that no one caught the Simpsons reference in the OP). Better help for Alzheimer’s patients, perhaps medications which enable faster learning in people, and other neurological disorders.