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What capabilities can brain imaging offer outside of the medical industry? The National Research Council of The National Academies (part of a private, nonprofit institution that provides science, technology and health policy advice to elected leaders, policy makers, and the public) suggests that a promising possibility is intelligence application. In an NRC report, "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies," several potential intelligence functions are posited.

A summary within the Report addressing functional neuroimaging states, "Real-time, continuous readouts of neuroimaging results will become increasingly important for the [Intelligence Community] and the Department of Defense (DOD), which will evaluate them for temporal sequences that indicate psychological or behavioral states. While predictions about future applications of technology are always speculative, emergent neurotechnology may well help to provide insight into intelligence from captured military combatants, to enhance our training techniques, to enhance cognition and memory of enemy soldiers and intelligence operatives, to screen terrorism suspects at checkpoints or ports of entry, and to improve the effectiveness human-machine interfaces in such applications as remotely piloted vehicles and prosthetics."

Christopher Green, Chair of the NRC's Committee on Military and Intelligence Methodology for Emergent Neurophysiological and Cognitive/Neural Science in the Next Two Decades, explained further to DOTmed the possible applications: "The very best example is the one that is also most likely: Imaging can be an important tool to learning if certain messages are being understood by the percipient. This is possible in being sure complicated messages (not lies, which are simple mis-statements) that have educational purposes, purposes to inform, are being understood in languages and contexts different than in the "first" language of the receiver. In other words, to help pass the language barrier where things are often misunderstood. Imaging offers the possibility to be certain that messages are understood."

The use of brain imaging technologies, Green says, would not be for propaganda, "which is too complicated since it is basically untrue representations or distorted reality." However, negotiation processes may benefit. "Negotiations, surely: of help in telling how a person is really feeling about the material being presented."

In terms of detecting deception, a good possibility exists that brain imaging would be superior to polygraphs or drugs. According to Green, "It is hoped that Imaging together with other monitoring, such as eye-scanning, facial scanning, and so on...that the results would be more accurate, non-invasive to the person, remote, and faster for screening purposes."

Laypersons familiar with sometimes oversimplified news stories or pseudoscientific information in fiction may have misunderstanding of the current capabilities in cognitive neuroscience. Green told DOTmed about the most misleading information: "By far, it is the lay writer statements that functional brain imaging today 'reads minds.' It does nothing of the sort. It does show connections between parts of the brain anatomically, and can show what circuits are active in transmitting sensory and cognitive data between various centers of the brain. Some experiments show what parts of the brain are active during simple aspects of thought processes...but 'cognition' implies a cause and effect and reasoning over many seconds, if not more. Brain imaging as yet does not do this. In twenty years, perhaps. Our Committee was evenly divided on that as being possible."

However, there are aspects of brain imaging that should be encouraging to the public. "From brain imaging studies we will be able to learn what parts of the brain are chemically injured in Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disease, and how they can be cured," Green says.

Other key findings in the NRC Report include the fact that research enhances understanding of how culture affects human cognition, "including brain functioning, and is even suggesting a link between culture and brain development." The report goes on to say, "The U.S. military is placing greater emphasis on cultural awareness training and education as a critical element in its strategy for engaging in current and future conflicts. Military conflicts will increasingly involve prolonged interaction with civilian populations in which cultural awareness will be a matter of life and death and a major factor in outcomes. Similarly, political leaders, diplomats, intelligence officers, corporate executives, and academicians will need a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of foreign cultures to communicate more effectively with their counterparts in non-Western societies in the era of globalization."

The Report recommends that training programs be developed and implemented on a multidisciplinary basis, particularly in neuroscience research in the effects of culture on human cognition, and with special attention to the relationship between culture and brain development.

Further research and funding are needed for advancement of the applications, Green says. Each set of imaging experiments costs about $100,000 for a dozen subjects. The experiments are about two hours each, and they take about three expert scientists: a physicist to design the scan parameters, a brain imager researcher, and an assistant to run the experiment. In an encouraging note, the Committee has received positive feedback from the intelligence community as to pursuing further research.

Watch DOTmed News for a future report on medical imaging in forensic applications.