Question: Could you create mind control with your research? Could this potentially lead to super-humans with control and censorship on their minds and their capabilities?

Martha Havenith answered on 24 Jun 2015:

Aha, more world domination! Very good. 🙂
The short answer to this is ‘No’. Here’s the longer version:
Let’s say we find that neuron groups are active in certain patterns when animals successfully pay attention to something. That would tell us that these activity patterns are better at communicating information. But it wouldn’t tell us what the animal is ‘doing’ to create that brain pattern. So just because we understand how it works, doesn’t mean we can make it happen. It wouldn’t be just a matter of repeating one activity pattern either, more a type of pattern that changes for any situation you’re in (like, ‘on average these neurons are active more closely together when someone is focusing, but depending on what they focus on, it’s a different subgroup of neurons’.
Let’s say we would figure that out though. Then the difference between using such a technique in a mouse, and doing the same, safely, in a human, is still huge – at least a few decades, probably longer. And then of course there is the question of ethics – is this something we want to be able to do?
By the way, one much faster and simpler way of achieving the same thing is meditation. No kidding, meditation changes brain activity in similar ways to what we are trying to do. So if you want mind control, become a buddhist monk!