Neuroimaging Replaces Torture

Torture is obsolete, or at least obsolescent. Researchers, in part funded by the Department of Defense, have developed technologies that may render the “dark art” of interrogation unnecessary. As these technologies are implemented, many of the legal issues surrounding the aggressive “counter-resistance techniques" the United States presently employs against individuals detained in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) may be rendered moot. At the same time, however, these technologies themselves raise new legal issues.

The most promising of these new technologies is psychiatric neuroimaging, the predominant form of which is functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). FMRI provides near real time, ultra-high resolution, computer-generated models of brain activity. These models allow the operator to observe a subject’s neural response to cognitive or sensory-motor tasks. In essence, fMRI allows the operator to watch the subject’s brain think.

Cool stuff.

via Boing Boing