Robots: Reading Your Mind

A participant in the P300 study practices for the deception detection test. Courtesy Rosenfeld Lab.

Time is reporting that Northwestern University researchers are coming closer to the infamous, oft-rumoured, conspiracy-theory-inspiring technology of reading brainwaves in order to track terrorists.

"In a study published in the journal Psychophysiology, psychologists John Meixner and Peter Rosenfeld used electrodes to measure the brain waves of 29 undergraduates who had been told to mock-plan either a terrorist bombing in Houston in July, or a vacation in a different city in a different month. The researchers then presented the students with the names of various cities, methods of terrorist attack and dates. As they did so, they scanned the subjects' brains with electroencephalography (EEG), which records electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons. They watched for a particular brainwave — dubbed the P300, because it fires every 300 milliseconds — which signals recognition of something familiar."

Superheroines plan to save the world with tin foil hats.  Titans (vol. 1) #49 (Mar. 2003).

This is the sort of thing that inspires tin-foil-hat wearing individuals to come forth, but even they have a distunguished history.  The idea goes all the way back to 1927.  There's a 2012 humour site reporting on the rising price of alumninum due to the demand for hats here.  Tin foil hats also played a big part in an unfortunate story arc at the end of DC's Titans vol. 1 series, #48-50.

All DC Comics stories, characters and the distinctive likenesses thereof are Trademarks & Copyright © DC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.