Are there any theories on antenna’s that can conduct vibrations other than from the radio wave spectrum? The vibrations of brainwaves exist in a wave form of electromagnetism, so how can we not already have antennas that pick up these frequencies? What would be the consequences of this evasive technology being legalized for private use?
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Yes, that’s how we detect brainwaves in the first place. The mesh of electrodes that doctors place on a patient’s scalp is effectively an array of antennas. Detecting them from a distance would be a lot tougher. Brain waves are fairly weak, and we’re surrounded by electromagnetic fields in our modern life. Even from just a few feet away, they’d be washed out by the background “noise”.
I think you misunderstand what brainwaves are, though. Our nerve cells use ion imbalances (unlike the electrical currents used in computers) to conduct signals. The thing is that brain waves aren’t a single thing… they’re the combined electrical field of *all* of the brain working together. Nerves fire in pulses and waves, and those patterns differ based on what you’re doing, which is why we have different brain waves for different activities.
They don’t correspond to different thoughts, though. There’s no way, whatsoever, that you could actually read a person’s thoughts (or even mood) from a distance. Theoretically, you could do so by placing electrodes in the brain, or by running fMRI on an immobilized subject, but it’s impossible from a distance. At most, you might be able to determine whether a subject is awake or asleep… but, frankly, there are easier and more reliable (and less expensive) ways of doing that.
Even if the technology to read brain waves from a distance was available, there’s no way that the government, corporations, or even nosy neighbors could use that information to read your mind. Likewise, transmitting brain waves would be indistinguishable from any other electromagnetic signal – and wouldn’t be able to influence a person’s thoughts in the least. That’s just not how brain waves work. If you want to be worried about people messing with your mind, don’t focus on pseudoscience and imaginary technology… the extent to which you can predict a person’s actions and influence their decisions through a decent grasp of (real) psychology is already much greater than you probably realize.
I have to disagree with the “impossible” answers. There is technology out there already that allows devices to read brainwave patterns and to reconstruct the images that someone is seeing.
(see “Mind Reading Tech Reconstructs Videos From Brain Images” – http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/mind…
As brain scanners become more sensitive and powerful, as computers become able to crunch more data more quickly, I think it’s entirely possible that one day scanning brainwaves — and actually being able to determine precisely what a person is thinking, feeling, remembering, seeing — will become quite easy.
Doing it remotely – why not? When I was a kid, it was magic enough that my voice could move through a phone line (I still think it’s a kind of magic). Today, wi-fi puts the whole idea of phone lines to shame. If all other information can be transmitted via invisible airwaves, why not brainwaves as well?
However, as far as I know, this technology does not currently exist, although researchers appear to be working on it.
Here’s another article I found interesting: “The Quest to Read the Human Mind.” http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/mind…
Back in the 1960s I read an article in a copy of Popular Electronics Magazine about how to build a do-it-yourself electro-encephalogram (EEG) , it was basically just a very powerful amplifier and detector of the electrochemical currents which occur in the human brain as you think.
Even back then we were able to record “brainwaves”. The problem is that brainwaves are the electrical equivalent of noise — like the creaks and groans of a turning mill-wheel, or – if you prefer, the sound of a roaring race car engine on the Daytona Speedway. In either case the sound of the thing is not the same as the thing itself, you cannot bake bread out of the sound of a mill-wheel, nor win the Daytona 5 with just the sound of an engine. A thought and the brainwave it produces are no more closely related than those sounds are to their causes.
Now it is true that we one day might be able to map precisely where a thought originates with something like a helmet covered with the SQUIDs that one of the other answerers mentioned, but without knowing your individual brain development in the womb and throughout your teens, and thereby your unique brain architecture, and without mapping it with your experiences, to know what you have stored in that particular part of your brain — it would be like trying to get a blind man to determine the shape of the whorls of your fingerprints exclusively by his sense of smell, or worrying that if some tourist takes a photograph of you, that your soul is going to be trapped in their evil “spirit-box”.
In other words you can relax it’s not possible and would never be possible to know a person’s thoughts by that means. As one of the other responders wrote, it is far more frightening that simply by observing your behavior – it is possible to deduce by no more than reason and computation of certain algorithms what you must be thinking. In fact that is what computers were originally designed to do, back when they were created to determine what the Nazis were planning. If you want to hide from that kind of mind reading, tin-foil hats are much less effective than just avoiding the internet.
Simple answer is that brainwaves are ELF frequencies (1-20 Hz) and therefore have wavelengths that are extremely long– THOUSANDS OF MILES LONG. Think about how big an antenna would have to be for such long wavewlengths.
But it doesn’t matter. If you gave it two seconds worth of thought you would see that being able to pickup the electrical activity in the brain does not mean that one is able to hear or read tthoughts. EEG deices pickup electrical emanations daily but so far, nobody has been able to convert those electrical patterns into any kind of corresponding words– thus suggesting that thought is not electrical in nature. So you’ll never have to worry about Big Brother eavesdropping on your private tthoughts, Just us telepathic people you need to look out for heh heh. 🙂
The technology your talking about is impossible. Interestingly enough such invasive brain reading technology not only exists but is in use all over the world and people don’t even think about it.
Have you ever started typing something, say “Where is Madonna’s pointy bra on display?” and after the first letter or two is comes up with a list of 4 or 5 suggested searches and the exact words you were about to type are one of those options? Mind reading algorithms are amazing at predicting what someone is thinking. It considers your past activity, what’s trending, and how it relates to you, and anticipates your thoughts with some degree of accuracy.
As cool as it is to type one letter and have google already know what your searching for, it could easily be used, and probably is, by the government to search for potential criminals chatting on facebook, yahoo, twitter, or where ever people happen to be social networking these days.
Without psychic powers, all the horrors you think might come of psychic spies will come, from algorithms that understand our thoughts better than we do.
A SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device) sensor can pick up the magnetic field generated by the brain, but it needs to be attached to the scalp. At any greater distance, the signal is completely swamped out by the earth’s own magnetic field and is not measurable. However, the device only measures the magnetic strength generated by different locations of the brain, and it does not read thoughts or ideas. Consequently, the content of thoughts or ideas cannot be deciphered from such magnetic signals, so there is no danger of “mind reading”.
Source(s): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID
Why not… Look at Zoe’s answer.
Brainwaves are electric signals, Theoretically, there are very weak electromagnic signals/waves.
On this basis, also “telepathy” would be biologically and technically possible.
Machines and (extraterrestrial, beacause of their evolution) Persons, that can receive this brainwaves.
Sounds like “tin-foil-hat”, but in theory possible.
Electric eels or rays generate high electric currents.
And birds and cows etc. can detect the earth magnet field.
At the “Phoenix Lights”, “Tripp Johnson” a jumbo pilot in his front yard under the 1-2 miles big triangular object has said, he (and his family and perhaps neighbors) has heard a voice in his head “Be not afraid this is just a demonstration”.
Technically absolutely plausible.
Actually, magnetic fields can generate noise in the head (brain).
Like the noise that gemerate a cellphone im an amplifier.
The brain is also only a machine (“wetware”), we can induce em currents.
The next step of radio evolution was clean tones (Morse code …).
And then followed speech.
Why not the same with the brain…..
This is already being done in the lab enviroment
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/brain-co…
In fact there is a quadropeligic man in Japan that has an entire body suit that he crontrols with his mind to walk across the room unplugging itself and then put itself ONTO the man. By the time his upper torso is in the device it looks like he is normal and using his normal arms to put and strap his legs in BUT at no time is it muscle driven its all mentally controled.