Brain scans can reveal how you think and feel, and even how you might behave.
No wonder the CIA and big business are interested....

Earlier this year, a group of American students volunteered their brains for a cutting edge neuroscience project at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. The research used a technique that could watch their brains at work as they made decisions. At first glance, this seems nothing extraordinary: brain-imaging tools have been used routinely for years to assess damage caused by stroke, to hunt for brain tumours, and even identify the grey matter associated with language, love and memories. But this study was different. As each volunteer took their turn to slide into the coffin-like cylinder of the scanner, sticky fluids were squirted into their mouths. As unlikely as it sounds, the students were using multimillion pound medical equipment to take the Pepsi challenge.

Read Montague, the neuroscientist behind the Baylor experiment, is not alone in pushing the boundaries of neuroscience beyond the clinical. In recent years, a growing number of researchers have used brain-imaging equipment to try to reveal our innermost thoughts and feelings in less conventional "social neuroscience" experiments. As well as brand loyalty and consumer choice, neuroscientists are probing violent tendencies, moral reasoning, feelings of love and trust, and notions of justice. Just this week, researchers claimed to have used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify brain activity associated with racial prejudice.

While standard MRI machines like those still found in many hospitals take a snapshot of the brain, functional MRI is newer and more powerful because it takes lots of these snapshots one after the other, revealing how thoughts unfold over time. But the trend for using fMRI to probe social and behavioural issues is prompting some scientists to ask big questions about where this may all lead. Could it only be a matter of time before neuroscientists have techniques that can reveal secrets we would rather keep tucked under our skulls? According to some leading scientists, this isn't a paranoid over-reaction. "The CIA has been interested in fMRI for years as a means of doing lie-detection tests," says Bob Turner, an fMRI expert at University College London. After all, he says: "The brain can't lie."

As scientists unravel the links between how the brain looks and how it functions, some believe we will also be able to use images of the brain to see how people will behave. "There's no scientific distinction between prediction and understanding how the brain works," says Stephen Smith, associate director of the Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain at Oxford University.

The suggestion that brain scans could reveal not just our future health, but the intricacies of our personalities and how we might behave in a given situation, is unsettling enough to some scientists that they want legislation to stop brain-scan records falling into the wrong hands. "We're starting to get detailed information from these brain-scan experiments and soon people are going to be able to use it to predict an individual's behaviour," says Paul Glimcher at the Centre for Neuroscience at New York University. "That information has got to be proprietary to the individual."

The explosion in social neuroscience has been driven by the tumbling cost of scanning equipment. Brain scans used to be the preserve of medical and clinical experiments, because they relied on complex, expensive technology such as positron emission tomography (PET), which was only available in a handful of places. PET scanners, which rely on radioactive tracer materials, cost about £3m to buy and a single scan can cost as much as £2,000. In contrast, a new fMRI machine costs about £1.5m, and each scan works out at about £400.

The fMRI machines are essentially giant, powerful magnets that are used to detect the tiny magnetic fields carried by the hydrogen atoms in water (or blood). They allow a very detailed 3D map of blood flow to be built up, and in the head, blood flow means busy neurons. Studying which regions of the brain need the most blood tells scientists where the most thinking is going on. (The original MRI technique is identical to that used by chemists called nuclear magnetic resonance but the name was changed as it was thought nobody would want to be scanned by a machine with "nuclear" in its title).

As the scanners shifted from being an expensive piece of kit for specialist neuroscientists to a practical tool for anyone with the will to work it, the scientific questions the technique was used to investigate snowballed.

Three years ago, scientists at University College London used fMRI to investigate the essence of love. They recruited people who confessed to being hopelessly in love with their partners and showed them a series of photographs of people they knew, one of which was their partner. Although brain activity was different in each individual, the researchers found that in every case, four specific regions of the brain lit up each time they saw the one they loved. The researchers announced that they had discovered the brain's common denominator of romantic love.

A year later, Joshua Greene and colleagues at Princeton University in New Jersey studied how people solved moral dilemmas. In one test, volunteers were scanned while they were asked whether they would push a person in front of a speeding train if it meant saving the lives of five others. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the question caused a flurry of activity in parts of the brain linked with emotion, leading the researchers to conclude that such moral quandaries may not be solved purely by logical reasoning, but also by emotional reactions.

The technique has also been used to delve into the murky question of how we judge people. Last year, Ray Dolan's team at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in London used fMRI to see how people judged the trustworthiness of strangers. Volunteers were shown a series of faces and asked to judge whether the person was trustworthy. The researchers found that a region of the brain called the amygdala and two other parts of the brain flickered more intensely when people were shown the faces of people they thought would not be trustworthy.

But according to some scientists, such studies are the tip of the iceberg. The better fMRI systems become, and the more adept scientists get at extracting information from them, the more they will be able to piece together the neural circuits that make us who we are.

One emerging field is that of "neuro-economics". At the Center for Neuro-economics at Claremont Graduate University in California, Paul Zak is using fMRI to study how people assign value to certain products and make choices about what they buy. "If I ask you why you made a certain decision, you might not really be sure," he says. "But what if I can look directly into your brain and see how you reached that decision? That's what we want to be able to do."

Slowly, he says, researchers are homing in on the neural circuits that are activated when we make decisions - our likes and dislikes or, for example, how much different people value cigarettes over other items. Know that, and you can start feeding the data into policies such as how you tax products, says Zak. "If you know how much people value something, you can work out at what point a price hike will stop people buying it," he says.

Zak says fMRI stands to make a big impact in what has been dubbed "neuro-marketing". As an example of how fMRI might be used, Zak proposes a company that wants to increase its sales of milk. One way it might is to gather a group of people who like milk and scan them as they drink a glass. Some of the regions of the brain that buzz with activity might be triggered by any drink, but others may be triggered only by milk. Find other stimuli that trigger these regions of the brain and it could help you work out what it is that makes milk enjoyable, says Zak. Suppose objects from your childhood made those regions of your brain flicker. It might be that milk was evoking a sense of nostalgia, reminding you of when you got milk at school.

"If it turned out that milk was pleasurable to drink because it evokes memories of your childhood, you could market it as 'good when you were a kid, great when you're an adult'," he says. It's just an idea, and we're not there yet, but Zak says this is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. "A couple of years ago there was a lot of hostility to this kind of research, but now people are realising there's potential in it. Of course there will be a lot of crappy studies, but done properly, it allows us to get answers to questions we could never get before."

At Glimcher's lab in New York, progress is being made into understanding how the brain allow us to make certain decisions. Using fMRI scans and another technique that measures the activity of single neurons, Glimcher has recreated in a computer the neural programs that monkeys use to make decisions in a simple financial game. "Their behaviour is quite erratic and very similar to that of humans, but the program predicts what they will do to about 95% accuracy. It's spooky," he says. Ultimately, says Glimcher, neuroscientists should be able to use techniques like this to work out what a person will do in a specific situation, such as what he or she might buy when they walk into a shop.

At least one company, the BrightHouse Institute for Thought Sciences, in Atlanta, has been set up to exploit brain scans to inform marketing strategies. Instead of using focus groups, it is trying to use scans to tell companies what people think of their products and commercials.

Not everyone is convinced of the approach though. Donald Kennedy, the Stanford University-based editor of the journal Science and one of America's most eminent scientists, says: "You could just ask people what they think."

While Glimcher concedes that using brain scans to predict behaviour is a long way off, the progress is such that we should think about the implications, he says. "It raises serious philosophical questions, because it reduces us to a machine, but there's also a huge moral issue." Who should be allowed access to our brain scans, if they can reveal so much about us, he asks. "Within 10 years, we will need legislation that protects brain-scan information in the same way genetic information is protected," he says.

If using brain scans to predict specific behaviour is not on the cards, using them to judge if we will suffer from mental disease later in life is. Studies have shown that fMRI scans can be used to reveal early signs of multiple sclerosis and even go some way to predicting who might be most susceptible to dementias such as Alzheimer's. "For severe mental illness and dementias it is a serious proposition," says Sean Spence, a psychiatry researcher at Sheffield University. "There are changes in their brain before they begin to lose their memory. It's quite conceivable people could use that."

Stanford's Kennedy says it is the potential to use scans to predict people's health that is a concern. "I'm worried about fMRI scans being preserved after they have been taken," he says. "There's a push to prevent genetic information being used by companies for adverse selection, and at least equal protection should be given to brain scan data."

Glimcher says legislation banning access to people's brain scans should be drawn up to keep the data private before it's too late. "It's only a matter of time before the insurance companies come calling," he says. "It is going to happen and it's a big issue. It has to be dealt with soon."
 

 
One of America's top scientists is calling for a ban on insurance companies and other businesses gaining access to the brain scans of potential customers.

Donald Kennedy, of Stanford University and editor of the journal Science, said that the information contained in brain scans was too personal to be allowed into the hands of big business.

Brain scans may not only be able to reveal whether a person will suffer from various mental conditions in later life, but in the future might give an insight into their moral values, intentions and even their propensity to behave in a certain way, he said.

"If my stored brain images said something about my tendency to anger under different kinds of stress, or accounted for the ways in which I make moral choices, or how strangely I perform on certain intelligence tests, then I would be troubled," he said.

"I don't want anyone to know it, for any purpose whatever, including those offered in my own interest. It's way too close to who I am and it is my right to keep that most intimate identity to myself."

Some scientists believe brain scans can already be used to pick out people who are likely to develop multiple sclerosis and dementias such as Alzheimer's disease.

But scans are also increasingly revealing more about people's minds. Earlier this week scientists announced they had used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect people harbouring racial prejudice.

America recently passed legislation preventing businesses from obtaining customers' DNA amid fears they could use it to discriminate against those deemed more risky. In Britain a moratorium is in place to prevent companies from accessing customers' genetic material.

Prof Kennedy told the Guardian: "There's a push to prevent genetic information being used by companies for adverse selection, and at least equal protection should be given to brain scan data."

Laws barring companies from requesting brain scans may be premature, as it is unclear just how well the images will be able to reveal the secrets of a person's mind.

"There's been quite a lot of studies showing that different parts of the brain correlate with different types of behaviour, but the real issues are what does that data mean, how predictive is it, and who should have access to it," said Sandy Thomas, director of the Nuffield Council for Bioethics. "Perhaps we've reached the point where this kind of information is distinctive from other kinds of information insurance companies can request such as x-rays, and if so, we should be having this debate."
 

 
Pioneering research by Scots scientists is set to unleash a powerful weapon in the war on terrorists and drugs barons.

Last year a powerful scanner which can detect plastic explosives and illicit drugs was installed and tested at London's Gatwick Airport as part of a pilot programme.

But the scanner has been sitting idle because its remarkable technology allows it to use a special wavelength of light literally to see through clothing. This, for obvious reasons, infringes civil liberties and means the machine cannot be used.

So scientists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have been called in by the Home Office to work on a solution which could see the scanner deployed across the globe.

They are developing remarkable software which takes the 'naked' image of the person in front of the scanner and replaces it with a computer-generated dummy.

At the same time, the machine can detect suspicious packages or objects under the clothing. Ingeniously, the software then superimposes the real image of the item causing concern on the computer-generated dummy. Crucially, the target's privacy will still be maintained.

Dr Yvan Petillot, of Heriot-Watt's School of Engineering and Physical Science, said he was confident his team's development would mean the powerful scanners would be in use soon at airports.

He said: "The tests were carried out at Gatwick Airport last year, and while the airport authorities were impressed, it is now our job to make the scanner more private to become a mainstream solution to security.

"The problem with the scanner is you effectively see people naked, so although the technology is available and getting better all the time, you can't use it for privacy reasons.

"We are developing a form of automatic detection and identification tools so you don't need to have anyone looking at the 'raw' images where you see people naked.

"We want to cut and paste the part of the real image where things seem to be wrong on to a mannequin of a person.

"The operators then know where to check manually to see if the person is carrying something they shouldn't."

The powerful scanner, which was developed by American scientists, uses millimetre waves to see through clothes. It works because the fibres in clothes are less than a millimetre across, allowing the light waves to pass right through them.

A special camera using the waves can see through clothes as easily as we can see through glass. And the picture it creates can be seen on a screen so operators can see not just if a person is carrying arms, but also drugs and plastic explosives. Non-metallic illegal substances like these are not picked up by normal airport scanners.

Petillot explained: "The system would compare around 50 different images produced by the cameras in just two seconds.

"People move differently if they have things attached to them.

The computer will be able to pick up on this to identify things which shouldn't be there."

He added: "Current X-ray technology only allows operators to see metal weapons like guns and knives, but this scanner detects plastic explosives and drugs as well."

The scanner could eventually be used not just in airports and train stations but in all public places.

Petillot explained: "At the moment there is no real way of checking fans coming into a football stadium or pupils going into a school to see if they are carrying knives.

"The millimetre wave technology needs people to pause for a second at the moment. But it's possible that when the scanning software is developed it could get quick enough to scan crowds passing through turnstiles into a football match."

Another advantage of millimetre wave scanners over current technology is they do not interfere with pacemakers.

Petillot said: "The camera just receives the rays a person emits, rather than sending out waves itself. So it doesn't interfere with pacemakers and there are no risks involved in people going through the scanner."

And Petillot believes similar technology could be used to scan lorries and trains crossing borders for illegal immigrants.

Petillot's team has received £200,000 funding with assistance from the Home Office to complete the new software, which should be available for use in the next two years. His team believe machines could be sold for £100,000.

A spokesman for the Department of Transport said they were monitoring the new research with interest.

"We are aware of the technology but without the further research being carried out at Heriot Watt, the scanner was not mature enough for use at airports," he said.

"We actually enabled Heriot-Watt to achieve part of the funding for the further research.

"We will continue to keep abreast of the new technologies available, which will hopefully provide new weapons in the fight against terrorism."
 

 
Sweeping measures to deal with terrorist attacks and other emergencies are to be announced this week, giving the Government power to over-ride civil liberties in times of crisis, and evacuate threatened areas, restrict people's movements and confiscate property.

The Civil Contingencies Bill, which covers every kind of disaster from terrorism to the weather, will be the biggest shake-up of emergency laws since the early part of the last century, replacing legislation which saw the UK through a world war and the IRA bombing campaign.

Some of the proposals in the draft version of the Bill, drawn up in the summer, have alarmed civil rights activists, notably a clause that gives the Government the power to suspend parts or all of the Human Rights Act without a vote by MPs.

Once an emergency has been proclaimed by the Queen, the Government can order the destruction of property, order people to evacuate an area or ban them from travelling, and "prohibit assemblies of specified kinds" and "other specified activities".

If these rules had been in force during the Iraq war, critics say, they could have been used to to ban street demonstrations, making anyone who travelled to protest guilty of a criminal offence. After a major terrorist attack, forums made up of local councils, the emergency services and utility companies would be put in charge of trying to get shattered communities back together.

Other measures will be welcomed as a timely reaction to last week's carnage in Istanbul, where 57 people were killed and hundreds injured by suicide bombers.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday gave the official death toll from Thursday's attacks on two British targets as 30, 10 of whom died in the British consulate. He also confirmed that the four suicide bombers responsible for all four attacks were Turkish citizens, and revealed that 18 people have been arrested in connection with the bombings. Three groups linked to al-Qa'ida have claimed responsibility.

Although party political wrangling in Britain is often suspended after a tragedy on this scale, the pressure on Tony Blair showed no sign of letting up yesterday. Patrick Mercer, Conservative spokesman on homeland security, accused the Government of failing to take the terrorist threat seriously.

"Why wasn't our consulate in Istanbul shifted? It was attacked earlier on in the year, the same time as the American consulate was attacked. The Americans moved theirs to a less vulnerable position, we didn't," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He added: "I do wonder slightly why if, for instance, you go to London, the only building that seems to be taking the suicide bombing threat particularly seriously is the US embassy."

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, defended government actions saying: "While we must be vigilant, and of course defend our own staff and those using the consulates and embassies, we also have to exercise a degree of common sense. It is very good intelligence that actually saves you in the end, not massive concrete blocks around every piece of British territory abroad."

The US already has the Patriot Act, rushed through Congress after the 11 September attacks, which has been criticised for its effect on civil liberties. Such fears will have been heightened yesterday by General Tommy Franks, who commanded the coalition troops in Iraq and who has become the first high-ranking US official to talk openly about scrapping the Constitution in the wake of a major terrorist attack.

"The worst thing that could happen is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties," he warned.

The effect of an attack on that scale could be to provoke Americans to "question our own Constitution and to begin to militarise our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event - which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution," he said.

Meanwhile the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, has announced that he has abandoned any plans to host European summits next year, because it would be a security "nightmare". He said, in Brussels: "It's too costly, too disruptive and quite dangerous."

The Civil Contingencies Bill, which is being handled by the Cabinet Office minister Douglas Alexander, will be announced in Wednesday's Queen's Speech. More details will be made public on Friday, when a committee off MPs and peers publish their conclusions after four months examining the proposals.

Civil liberties groups have been alarmed by the Cabinet Office's sweeping definition of an "emergency" and the powers it confers. It is defined as any event that represents a serious threat to the welfare of the population, the environment, political or economic stability or security of any part of the UK. This includes wars, floods, a breakdown of power supplies, outbreaks of animal diseases or any situation that "causes or may cause disruption of the activities of Her Majesty's Government".

Gareth Crossman of Liberty said: "We are not saying that the Government shouldn't have powers to deal with civil emergencies, or that they shouldn't be brought up to date, but we are concerned that they have been extremely broadly drawn."
 

He couldn't possibly mean a network of spies and informers on, for example, politically incorrect attitudes or behaviour throughout all of British society, just like there used to be (and which were of course vehemently denounced as totalitarian by western politicians) in former States of the Soviet iron-curtain's "evil empire".... or could he?

a readily available anti-tuberculosis drug
could also cure man's deepest, darkest phobias

For some, the fear can drive them out of their own home. Others have to avoid feathers, subways, glass lifts or city squares that are filled with pigeons.

Phobias appear in many shapes and forms, affecting at least a quarter of the population. But doctors believe that a cure may soon be on hand from the most unlikely quarter.

They have discovered that a drug on the market for tuberculosis helps phobics to overcome their worst fears within a week. They believe it could be the anti-phobia pill which scientists have been searching for.

Early results from trials have been greeted with some excitement. The medication, D-cycloserine, works alongside traditional talking therapy and speeds up the process through which sufferers can learn how to beat their irrational panic.

The chemical causes changes to the amygdala, the part of the brain involved in learning and memory. It involves a protein that appears to kick-start a chain of neuro chemical events that enable people to relearn what makes them scared.

'These results are very exciting,' said Michael Otto, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. 'They represent a new direction for combining medication and cognitive-behavioural approaches to psychotherapy.'

So far, the pill has been trialled in a study by Michael Davis at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. Davis took 30 acrophobics - people who are scared of heights - and put them in simulated glass lifts that appeared to go up and down. Those who had received the pill had dramatically reduced levels of fear compared with those who took a placebo.

All of them had received two sessions of psychotherapy. A small dose of D-cycloserine - 50mg - appeared as effective as the 500mg usually given to combat TB.

People with strong phobias usually receive some form of exposure therapy, where they are exposed to whatever it is that they fear, so that they can learn not to be afraid. But normally they need at least eight sessions of therapy before improvements are made, and it doesn't work for everyone.

Davis believes it could work in almost any situation where a person is very nervous, according to Chemistry and Industry magazine. 'It should help you get over whatever it is you are afraid of, as long as you face up to your fear.' Apart from phobias, it could also help people overcome their natural nervousness when learning new skills, such as snowboarding or riding.

The Atlanta team is now beginning a study looking at people with a fear of public speaking, and the Harvard group, led by Otto, is to examine whether the drug could help people who have a panic disorder, a very debilitating form of anxiety.

Theories have abounded over what phobias represent, with some speculating that they are an evolutionary throwback to a time when man had to be instinctively wary of poisonous animals or falling from a cliff.

There are three specific forms: agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces; social phobia, which affects relationships with other people; and specific phobia, dealing with particular stimuli such as spiders or birds.

Freud speculated that agoraphobics suffered because, as young children, they had feared being abandoned by unloving mothers. But modern theories suggest that it often occurs in people who tend to avoid situations that are painful or embarrassing.

The avoidance of danger is a common thread in many phobias, yet phobias about cars, which cause more death and injury than anything else, are unheard of. But inherently disgusting creatures, such as slugs and cockroaches, may relate to an innate avoidance of creatures that would be dangerous to eat, or that might be harmful. Some research suggests there is a genetic predisposition to phobias: identical twins who live apart can independently develop fears such as claustrophobia.

One of the most common is arachnophobia, but sufferers don't all take it as far as Nicola Hearnshaw, who admits that she has invited strangers into her house to remove the creature.

For Nicola, 37, the presence of a tiny money spider is no laughing matter. If she thinks there is one in the house, she will push towels under the doors to keep it away.

'This fear takes over the whole of my life,' said Nicola, a bank clerk from Cheshire. 'I've had people calling at the door to collect charity money, and I've found myself begging them to come in and kill the spider upstairs.' She worries that, by displaying an extreme reaction when even the tiniest creature appears on a web, she might pass on the fear to her young daughter.

The nervous panic that sweeps over Nicola whenever she sees a spider is not uncommon: as many one in four Britons suffers from some kind of similar irrational fear.

Peter Hughes, an airline pilot, runs courses in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow to help thousands of Britons who are terrified of flying. He spends a day helping course members to learn relaxation techniques and talk about their fears, before taking them on a short flight - a technique that works, he says. 'About half our customers suffer from claustrophobia, and the two seem linked,' said Hughes. 'I'm not sure that a pill would work, but I'd be interested to see the results of a trial.'

David Loosmore, a graphic designer from London, would happily be a guinea pig for the pill. He dreads each flight he has to make, and tries to fly only once a year, putting off work-related travel whenever possible.

'In the week before the flight, I start to feel really worried', he said. 'Getting on the plane is hard and, as we approach take-off, I really start to sweat. I have to hold my partner's hand and I feel terrible.

'Strangely enough, a cloudy sky makes me feel safer, because it's as if we are in a giant white cushion. It's when I see the ground below that I feel very sick. I know it's not logical, but it's a very hard feeling to overcome.'