4 bizarre ways brain scans can predict the future

Quick, what are brain scans used for? Finding stuff like cancer right? Not anymore! Well, actually yes, still that — but Science has also found a whole bunch of ways to use brain scans to predict awesomely, worryingly, creepily specific things about your future! Now serious men in lab coats can slap a machine on your head and predict stuff like what products you’ll buy, which tests you’ll fail in class and even how likely you are to be a raging drunk. It’s the future!

1. Catching future terrorists … literally

Scientists at Northwestern University asked participants to think up a mock terrorist scheme. The subjects obligingly wrote down their plans, including all the details they could think of. They showed the plans to nobody until the experiment was over. The participants were then hooked up to brain scanners that measured a wave called P300, which, amongst other things, is sometimes associated with feelings of guilt and secrecy. As they scanned their EEGs, researchers showed the volunteers several names of major cities and, astoundingly, they could pinpoint which city the participant had planned on attacking — as well as a few other key details like weapon of choice — with 83 percent accuracy.

2. What makes you buy things

Neuroscientists at UCLA used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to take a peek at the medial prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain associated with things like self-reflection and motivation) of various students while they showed them a PSA for sunscreen.
After the participants finished, the researchers asked them a few questions about their plans to use sunscreen in the future. The scientists then followed up on the students a week later, asking how many had actually gone through with the whole sunscreen thing. Based on brain activity, researchers were able to predict roughly 75 percent of those who actually used sunscreen in response to the PSA. What’s even crazier is that the brain scans made more accurate predictions about the participant’s behavior than the participants themselves: Fewer than half of the students were able to accurately predict their own intentions.
The researchers developed a model based on their findings with the first group, and began testing that model on the next group, and so on. As they shuffled and reorganized; ran simulations and analyzed findings; it became clear: Their findings held up. A simple brain scan knows you 25 percent better than you could ever know yourself.

3. Predicting your problem-solving success

Federico Cirett started with the simple premise that, when stressed or fatigued, students get distracted and their performance drops. Cirett decided to test this mind-bending hypothesis by hooking up students to an EEG while they took the SAT. What he found was far more surprising than confirmation of his “not feeling well equals bad test day” suspicion.
Based solely on brain activity, the researchers were able to predict with 80 percent accuracy whether or not a student would be able to solve a problem correctly. This wasn’t like 5 minutes into solving the problem, either — well after the crying and praying stages have passed. As we mentioned, the predictions were made after a mere 20 seconds of consideration.
Twenty seconds. That’s how long it takes for a computer to tell you that you “cannot handle a problem” Cirett wants to use his scans to improve ESL tutoring programs, but imagine if they could be extrapolated out everywhere. Every tricky situation could be scanned and, in less time than it takes to watch a YouTube commercial, you could know how it all turns out. Turn on the scanner and in less time than it takes to read this sentence, you could know whether or not you’ll be building that IKEA desk successfully.
And if that’s all too impractical, Cirett’s study was partially funded by a firm that specializes in monitoring stress and fatigue in the Armed Forces.

4. Artificially generating a sixth sense

When we see things, it takes a few seconds for us to consciously understand what that thing is, exactly. There is a very short period of time between the brain receiving an image and the brain processing said image in a meaningful fashion. For the most part, it doesn’t matter. But whenever we see something dangerous, it sends out the P300 brainwave (you remember; the terrorist wave from earlier.) Tracking that wave can mean something substantially more important than spotting yogurt before some accidentally gets in your mouth. If only there was some way to speed the image-to-danger-recognition process up, our soldiers could spot threats instantly and effectively gain superpowers.
And that’s exactly what DARPA did. Meet Sentinel, which stands for “SystEm for Notification of Threats Inspired by Neurally Enabled Learning.” Sentinel is the working designation for a pair of “cognitive-neural binoculars.” This sounds like Star Trek gibberish at first, but the description is actually pretty accurate: When you put on a Sentinel rig and scan a battlefield, anything your brain registers as dangerous instantly triggers a series of flashing lights. Never again will one of our brave soldiers comically double-take over an enemy sniper pointing a barrel of death right at him. Because, technically speaking, his brain knows that threat is there well before his uh … brain … realizes it, we guess?
Whatever. All that matters is that it really works. When they tested Sentinel against regular ol’ stupid binoculars, the Sentinel soldiers found 30 percent more threats on the battlefield. That’s right: They were a full third more likely to sense imminent danger than a normal, unassisted human being.