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In the science fiction film Minority Report, it allowed police to arrest criminals before they broke the law.
Now, mind reading has come a step closer to reality with scientists finding a way of mapping people’s brains.
British experts can track a person’s movements around a computer-simulated room simply by watching the way their brain lights up.
We are approaching the realm of mind reading,’ said researcher Eleanor Maguire.
Professor Maguire, of University College London, used a sophisticated form of the MRI machines used in hospitals to scan the brains of four young men as they navigated their way around a virtual reality room.
Each man was asked to work his way round the room several times, passing the same four points each time.
The pattern of brain activity was different for each location, allowing the researchers to work out where the men were simply by looking at the brains alone.
Professor Maguire said the finding opened ‘a whole world of possibility previously thought inaccessible to brain imaging’.
She said: ‘We asked whether we could see any interesting patterns in neural activity that could tell us what the participants were thinking, or in this case, where they were.
‘Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data, we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality environment.
‘In other words, we could read their spatial memories.’This brings us ever-closer to the tantalising prospect of discovering how a person’s lifetime of experiences are coded by the neurons of the brain.
‘Co-researcher Demis Hassabis said: ‘You can predict where someone is standing by reading the patterns in their brain activity. You can track what is purely an internal thought.
‘The study focussed on the hippocampus, a small area of the brain that plays a crucial role in imagining future events, as well as memory and navigation.
Unravelling the workings of memory raises the prospect of infallible lie detector tests, while the interpretation of intentions could allow police to arrest criminals before they break the law, as seen in the 2002 film Tom Cruise movie Minority Report.
Such technology is at last 10 years away, said the researchers, who were funded by the Wellcome Trust.
The research, detailed in the journal Current Biology, could also have important medical implications.
Professor Maguire said: ‘Exploring how memories are laid down, stored, then retrieved in a healthy brain is vital if we are to understand how our memory becomes vulnerable to loss in the context of ageing, brain injury and disease.’Alzheimer’s and stroke patients are among those who could benefit, she said.
Professor Maguire’s previous work includes comparing the brains of London taxi drivers with those of bus drivers.
Scans showed the one part of the hippocampus to be bigger in the cabbies, suggesting their brains grow to cope with the detailed knowledge of London’s streets they have to accrue to get their black cab licences.
US scientists have previously used MRI scans to accurately predict which of 120 pictures a volunteer was looking at.
Researcher Dr Jack Gallant warned at the time: ‘It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications in 30 to 50 years.
‘We believe strongly that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading involuntarily, covertly, or without informed consent.’