How Human Brains Could Be Hacked

a human head and digital binary code background as a symbol of internet fraud and data protection from ID criminals. — In an episode of the Science Channel's "Through the Wormhole," host Morgan Freeman, explores the potential, and dangers, of hacking the mind.

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Like computers, human brains may be vulnerable to hackers. Technology is already allowing scientists to read people's thoughts and even plant new ones in the brain.

The latest episode of the Science Channel's "Through the Wormhole," hosted by Morgan Freeman, explores the potential — and dangers — of hacking the mind. The episode premieres tonight (July 3) at 10 p.m. ET.

Reading people's minds doesn't always require technology. New York psychologist Marc Salem can decipher a person's thoughts using the tiny physical cues in a person's body language. "A scratch of the nose can mean you're lying, or it can mean that your nose itches," Salem told LiveScience. When he's trying to read someone's mind, he looks for what he calls a "packet of signals" that tells him what a gesture means. The show follows Salem as he guesses the cards of professional poker players — a seemingly impossible feat. To do it, Salem relies on context. "I'm able to pick up their nonverbal inflections and cues," he said. "The more I have a context for them, the more I can pick them up."

Of course, technology can give scientists even more direct access to the human brain. Inventor and neurotechnologist Philip Low is developing a portable brain monitor called iBrain that can detect the brain's electrical activity from the surface of the scalp, Freeman explains. People with Lou Gehrig's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) or other forms of paralysis still have healthy brain activity. Using the iBrain, they could use thoughts to control a virtual hand on a computer screen.

The show later delves into even more sophisticated forms of mind reading. "Some neuroscientists are already translating the language of the brain to plain English," Freeman says. Neuroscientist Jack Gallant at the University of California, Berkeley is compiling a "brain dictionary" to translate thoughts into pictures and words. Gallant and his colleagues showed people different images while measuring their brain activity via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). From the brain activity, Gallant's team can reconstruct the approximate images people saw. The scientists are also developing a dictionary of concepts that allows them to guess what people are thinking about the images they're seeing.

For example, imagine if you could turn an amateur into an expert in a single day. This is the mission of neuroscientist and entrepreneur Chris Berka. Athletes, performers or other experts can tap into a state of extreme mental focus, called being "in the zone." The zone state (which amateurs can achieve too) has a particular signature in the brain activity. The neurotech company Berka runs is developing technology to monitor people's brain activity during a task, such as archery, and notify them when they have reached their "peak performance state," aka, the zone. Essentially, the technology gives people the ability to hack into their own brains in order to improve their performance. [10 Surprising Facts About the Brain]

But what if other people could hack into a person's brain and plant thoughts there? Computer programmers break into secure systems using "cracks," Freeman says. In humans, sense of smell could be a crack for the brain. Ilana Hairston, a psychologist at The Academic College of Tel-Aviv Yaffo in Israel, uses smell to plant information in people's brains while they sleep. She trains snoozing people to associate certain pleasant or foul odors with particular sounds. The notion sounds like sci-fi, but it relies on a brain pathway that allows senses like smell to enter the brain without conscious awareness.

Tanya was a staff writer for Live Science from 2013 to 2015, covering a wide array of topics, ranging from neuroscience to robotics to strange/cute animals. She received a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a bachelor of science in biomedical engineering from Brown University. She has previously written for Science News, Wired, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, the radio show Big Picture Science and other places. Tanya has lived on a tropical island, witnessed volcanic eruptions and flown in zero gravity (without losing her lunch!). To find out what her latest project is, you can visit her website.