Mind Readers

In the sci-fi movie, Minority Report, police could read criminal minds and stop crimes from happening before they were committed.

Now a team of neuroscientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, University College London and Oxford University have developed a powerful technique.

Using high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity in the brain, they are learning which patterns are associated with which particular thoughts, emotions, wishes and ideas.

They believe they are developing the ability to discover people's intentions before they carry them out.

This has huge ethical implications for the future - not only in the area of crime prevention - but for society as a whole.