Page - 187 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

Cyberneuroethics • 187 to mention the changes in his or her neuronal processing that will develop over time. That being said, researchers are already able to reconstruct on a screen certain images that research participants are viewing just by examining their brain data. To do this, they created a dictionary of brain activity resulting from those images, which can be decoded in subsequent viewings by match- ing patterns of brain function with patterns seen in previous viewings.400 It is also worth noting that brain scans are increasingly being used in areas other than the medical settings for which they were originally developed. For instance, the commercial use of brain scanning in lie detection is a very profitable field.401 There have even been repeated attempts to get fMRI402 lie detection into courts (with some success in India).403 This includes the ‘con- cealed information test’, which makes use of EEG and the relative strength of certain brain waves to determine whether a test subject is familiar with a particular location, weapon or plot. In the 2013 U.S. television documentary Brains on Trial, which explored the potential and the limitations of brain scans in the courtroom, an fMRI scanner was used to determine whether a person’s brain recognises photo- graphs of certain faces. Whilst the results indicated that it could, the person was also able to play the machine by pretending not to recognise them.404 It is easy to be caught up in the hype surrounding lie detection, but it does warrant more detailed investigation as it remains to be extensively tested with subjects in real-life situations. It could well be that fMRI represents a more reliable form of lie detection than the old polygraph, but this conclusion cannot be proven due to a lack of reliable data. At present, however, fMRI for lie detection have been dismissed as being so error-prone and that it would be irresponsible to use it as reliable evidence.405 But other ethical challenges exist in the realm of privacy. The American legal academic and specialist in neuroscience Nita Farahany, though recog- nising the infancy of brain scan technology, believes that it is important to begin thinking through all the eventual implications. She indicates that her goal ‘is to establish a new lens through which to view privacy issues’.406 This is because there are new questions that demand fresh legal perspectives, since brain scans may eventually undermine traditional notions of privacy. As a result, more protection may be required to guarantee freedom of thought. Questions also remain about the responsibilities of researchers if, when examining the brain of a person, they can establish that the individual has committed a murder or is thinking about it. Would they then feel obliged to report this information? Another question that may be considered is whether a brain scan can be accepted as ‘physical’ evidence, such as a fingerprint, or ‘testimonial’ evidence. Farahany describes the following thought experiment: This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.