“What happens now?”
“We’re going to watch the movie at the same time as him, but directly, inside his brain.”
Beckers took a moment to enjoy the astonishment on her face.
“Today, my dear lieutenant, we’re going to explore important mysteries of the brain, especially with regard to images and sounds. The oldest card trick in the book—divination—is about to be relegated to the attic.”
“How so?”
“If you show your colleague a playing card while he’s in the scanner, I’d be able to guess which it is just by looking at his brain activity.”
In the room below them, the captain lay stretched out on the table, not feeling very reassured. The assistant had just fitted him with strange glasses with square frames and opaque lenses.
“Are you telling me that you can read people’s minds?”
“Let’s say it’s no longer a fantasy. Today, we’re able to project simple visual thoughts onscreen. When you see a specific image, thousands of tiny areas of the visual cortex, which we call voxels, light up in an almost unique way and identify the relevant image. Thanks to complex mathematical treatments, we can then associate an image with a cerebral cartography, and we record all of it in a database. Thus, at any given moment, we could use the system in the opposite direction: to each group of voxels visualized by the MRI, there corresponds an image, at least in theory. If the image is in our database, we can reconstruct it, and thus display your thoughts.”
“That’s astounding.”
“Isn’t it? Unfortunately, the voxel, our smallest unit, measures fifty cubic millimeters and already contains around five million neurons. Despite the power of our scanner, it’s like seeing the outline of a city from up in the sky, without being able to make out the pattern of the streets or the architecture of its buildings. But it’s already a giant step. Ever since one brilliant scientist had the idea, a few years ago, to make people drink Coke and Pepsi in a scanner, the possibilities have become limitless. They were blindfolded and asked which soft drink they preferred before tasting it. Most answered Coke. But in the blind test, the same people said they preferred the taste of Pepsi. The scanner showed that an area in the brain, called putamen, reacted more strongly for Pepsi than for Coke. Putamen is the seat of immediate, instinctive pleasures.”
“So the ad campaign for Coke claims that people prefer it, while in reality their bodies prefer Pepsi.”
“Precisely. Today all the big advertising firms are clamoring for our scanners. Neuromarketing allows them to increase brand preference, maximize the impact of an advertising slogan, and optimize its memorization. We’ve been able to highlight areas of the brain involved in the purchasing process, like the insula, which is the site of pain and pricing, as well as the median prefrontal cortex, the putamen, and the cuneus. Soon all an ad will have to do is enter your visual or auditory field to have an impact. Even if your eyes and ears aren’t paying attention, it will be studied so as to stimulate the memory circuits and the purchasing process.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“It’s the future. What do you do when you’re tired, my dear lieutenant? Life is increasingly demanding and exhausting, so to relax you settle in at home, in front of your screens. You open your mind to images like a faucet, with your awareness lowered, almost asleep. And at that moment you become the perfect target, and they inject whatever they want into your head.”
It was both staggering and horrible. A world governed by images and the control of the subconscious, in which the barriers of rationality were bypassed. Could one still speak of free will? Seeing all these perfected tools working on the brain, Lucie was reminded of the fantasy of the optogram: they were in the heart of the matter, and it wasn’t so fantastic after all.
“So I’m not entirely off the mark if I say that an image can leave an imprint in the brain?”
“That’s exactly right—you’ve understood the basis of our work. You study fingerprints; we study brain prints. Every action leaves a trace, whatever it might be. The whole trick lies in knowing how to detect it, and having the tools that let you exploit it.”
Lucie thought of all the investigative techniques the crime lab used when dealing with a case. Here they did the same thing, but with gray matter.
“Obviously, we’re still in the Middle Ages of technology, but in a few years we’ll probably have machines that will allow you to visualize dreams. Do you know that in the United States they’re already talking about installing scanners in courtrooms? Imagine those machines projecting a defendant’s memories. No more lies; verdicts that are always reliable… And I’m not even talking about other fields, like medicine, psychiatry, or business. There’s also neuropolitics, which offers the possibility of accessing voters’ deep-seated feelings toward a given candidate.”
Lucie recalled the film Minority Report. It was a dizzying prospect, but this was the reality of tomorrow. A rape of consciousness. The director from 1955, with his subliminal images, was already part of the process. Perhaps he had understood, well before his time, the function of certain areas of the brain.
On the other side of the glass, the poor captain disappeared into the magnetic tunnel. Lucie was pleased to have avoided that bit of pure anxiety. Watching the film was already trying enough.
“What do you think of the film from 1955?” she asked.
“Impressive, on all fronts. I don’t know who the director was, but he was a genius, an innovator. With his use of subliminal imagery and multiple exposures, he was already acting on areas of the primitive brain. Pleasure, fear, the desire to confront taboos. In 1955, such a process was completely unheard of. Even advertisers came to it later on. And the man who can beat advertising to the punch is hands down a genius.”
The same words had come out of Claude Poignet’s mouth.
“And what about the mutilated woman and the bull? Special effects?”
“No idea. That’s not really my specialty—I was more interested in how the film was put together, not its content… Excuse me a moment, my assistant is signaling that all’s ready.”
Beckers turned toward the monitors. On the screen Lucie saw what was supposed to be her boss’s brain. A throbbing ball, the seat of emotions, memory, character, and lived experience. On another screen, Lucie could see the first image from the digitized film, set on PAUSE. The scientist made several adjustments.
“Let’s get started… The principle is simple. Once activated, neurons consume oxygen. The MRI simply colors this consumption.”
The film progressed. The captain’s brain activity was haloed with colors; the organ seemed to be gliding over a rainbow that veered from blue to red. Certain areas lit up, faded, moved around like fluids in translucent tubes.
“Do you think Szpilman did the same thing with your former director two years ago?” Lucie asked. “Use the machines to dissect the film?”
“Most likely, yes. As I told your boss on the phone, the director had talked a little about the experiment at the time. And about a very strange film. But I really hadn’t thought much more about it.”
Beckers returned to his screen and began commenting in real time:
“Every image that enters your visual field is extremely complex. It’s first treated by the retina, then transformed into a nerve impulse that the optic nerve carries to the back of your brain, to the visual cortex. At that stage, multiple specialized zones analyze the various properties of the image. Its colors, forms, movement, and also its nature: violent, comic, neutral, sad. What you see there certainly does not allow us to guess what image the witness is observing, but the data do allow us to identify some of the parameters I just mentioned. These days, experts in neuroimagery have fun guessing the nature of a film just by analyzing these masses of colors. Comedy, drama, suspense…”