Can the human brain be hacked?

Unintended consequences are the rule of the day for technologies that can vastly change human society. A great example of this is the home computer and the internet. While

undoubtedly one of the most important developments in the history of human technology,

it also brought on the advent of hacking, for better or worse.

It can be said that a human, at least in some ways, can be seen as a kind of biological

computer. Computers can do math, but so can we. Computers are programmed, we are

taught. And while there is currently much more to us than there are to computers, there

will come a day when computers will become virtually indistinguishable from their

human counterparts, at least in their abilities.

But at the same time, it seems likely that we ourselves will merge with our technology at some point, eventually using it to enhance ourselves in ways ranging from having a Ph.D. in physics implanted into our brains without having to attend a single class, or direct virtual reality connections to the internet all unfolding due to a chip implanted in our heads, or even telepathic direct mind to mind conversations.

If that's the way things go, then one must wonder what the unintended consequences will be. Among those are the possibility of someone hacking your brain, and that may be possible sooner than you think. More on that in a minute.

Rudimentary forms of these technologies already exist and research into improving them

is moving faster than most people realize. For example, brain to computer interfaces have

existed for some time. They fall into two general categories. The first are medical in

nature. These amazing technologies are already being employed to allow people with

severe spinal injuries to move robotic arms, and even in some cases restoring some amount of sight for people with certain types of acquired blindness. Wonderful, promising technologies to be sure.

But the other class is more recent and presents a dilemma. This is gaming and recreation. Non-invasive interfaces can be used to control and enhance video games. Called Neurogaming, these interfaces use the player's brainwave patterns, heart rate, and other indicators to change how the game is being expressed by its software. This includes adjusting scenery and music depending on the mood of the player. Eventually, this will go much further and potentially allow the player to control the game entirely with their mind, and possibly someday enter it completely in a full immersion brain-interfaced virtual reality mode. 

Other technologies and research expand this even more which include efforts to decode

thoughts. This is an effort which has seen some surprising success, even going so far as to reconstruct and create crude movies of what people are seeing from signals detected in the area of the brain responsible for vision. Another is the successful connection of a biological neuron with a computer chip, termed a neurochip. These are technologies that we already have, and no one is quite sure just how fast this field as a whole is progressing and that opens us up for the unintended consequences.

We will undoubtedly use these technologies to hack ourselves to varying degrees. Neuroscientist Chris Berka has found a method of monitoring the state of the brain where it becomes hyperfocused on a task, think if it as the state you are in when you are "in the zone". This allows Berka's company to inform people when they are "in the zone" helping them "zone in" and improve their performance.

As technology improves, other hacks will become available to us. Current generations of prosthetics, for example, are becoming quite advanced. There will come a day when those prosthetics surpass their biological counterparts. There may come a day, perhaps sooner rather than later, when disabled athletes in the Paralympics outperform biological athletes, no doubt creating ethical dilemmas when people wish to replace their healthy biological limbs with prosthetics. While that may seem a stretch, the human race generally speaking has been no stranger to body modification, and there's no reason to suspect that's going to change.

But what of the possibility of someone else hacking into your brain? The answer to this

question is complicated because we already do have ways of hacking someone's brain, such as brain-washing or propaganda. So it could be said that we've been hacking people's brains for thousands of years. But as to technologically doing so, it may not only be possible, but may come far sooner than most realize.

As technology advances, there seems to be little reason to doubt that eventually it will be able to decipher people's thoughts. Rudimentary forms of that are already being experimented with, in fact one such experiment deciphered parts of people's pin numbers and banking information. In the event that this technology continues to improve, eventually your politics, religious beliefs, and just about everything else that goes on inside a human brain becomes visible to someone else. Disturbing on many levels, hackers may use that technology to blackmail people, or worse.

But if we take all of these technologies a step further, it may some day be possible to not only eavesdrop on people's minds, but change them. Thoughts are just electro-chemical neural phenomena and likely can be changed. If an unethical individual, say a politician, that wanted to rule the world came up with a hacking scheme to hack and change enough minds in order to win an election, then we will live in a very frightening world indeed.

But there is hope, we're still moderately early in this game and people within the industry are actively sounding the alarm. With proper regulation and well-thought out architecture for these technologies, we may dodge this bullet yet.