PERSPECTIVES
SciFi Meets Reality: Brain Scanners May Soon Be Able to Identify Your Kinks!
Could this research be used to fuel a thought police right out of "1984"? Absolutely.
Imagine lying down in an MRI machine with images flashing above you. The pictures are too fast for you to actually see them consciously, but your brain, quick as it is, does see them. On a screen a few feet away, colors appear and spread through an image of your brain, identifying where blood flows and what parts are more active at every moment.
The scientist at the computer ticks some boxes every couple of seconds, making notes and pointing to areas of your brain that are lighting up.
Once the experiment is over, you sit on a chair as the scientist reports their findings: "You are attracted to both women and men and enjoy spankings and light bondage. Oh, and you really have a thing for redheads."
As ludicrous as this scenario sounds, we're getting rather close to being able to identify sexual preferences via brain scans. A recent study by European scientists provided a proof of concept of this technique. In short, the study showed that heterosexual men's brains reacted with signs of sexual arousal when shown subliminal images of naked women and women masturbating. The participants themselves didn't remember what they saw.
The researchers argue that this technique is a fraud-proof way of showing that someone is a pedophile, for example. If the brain lights up when seeing subliminal images of children, then you have somehow "proved" that a person has deviant sexual interests.
Ethics and Politics
Does the fact that it works make this technique ethical? Right now, in our generally sexually permissive culture, we may not see much of a problem with it. After all, if it's just to identify pedophiles, that's a good thing, right?
Yet, consider that sexual mores and norms change across time. What if one day we believe, again, that homosexuality is deviant? Or that masochists are harming themselves and are mentally ill? What if we, again, legislate against sexual acts that right now are considered acceptable? And what about countries that currently have anti-LGBTQ laws?
The problem with this research is one that applies to lots of science and technology breakthroughs.
Just Because We Can, Doesn't Mean We Should
In a world where anti-LGBTQ, anti-sexual freedom politics is taking over country after country, such a technique could be used to identify so-called "deviants." Authoritarian regimes might use this research and scan people to eliminate "undesirables" not only for their actions, but now for thoughts and reactions that are out of their conscious control.