brain imaging

Unless you are this woman, you probably have a long mental list of moments and facts you wish you could remember -- but for the life of you, you can't. To use a personal example, I periodically Google the words "yellow house Berlin," hoping to produce the name of that one hostel I lived in for a summer in college; alas, no success yet.

Neuroscientists are already able to read some basic thoughts, like whether an individual test subject is looking at a picture of a cat or an image with a specific left or right orientation. They can even read pictures that you're simply imagining in your mind's eye. Even leaders in the field are shocked by how far we've come in our ability to peer into people's minds. Will brain scans of the future be able to tell if a person is lying or telling the truth?

Neuroscientists have proven yet again that using a cell phone impairs ones ability to stick to the yellow line. The authors of the Carnegie Mellon University study, which is upcoming in the journal Brain Research, admit that multitasking in this way intuitively seems dangerous—then go on to list 23 behavioral studies that prove even hands-free devices affect driving performance. So whats the big news?