This is just about as astounding as it gets:

Scientists extract images directly from brain

Researchers from Japan's ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person's mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people's dreams while they sleep.

The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.

Putting together entries for this blog means that I read an amazing story every other day -- sometimes more frequently than that. We see so many huge developments that it's hard to realize how impressive, how potentially world-changing some of them are.

If this is real, it is a world-changing development. Technology such as this could lead to a revolution in art and entertainment unlike anything that has come before. Such a development has the potential to unite the machine world and the human world in a completely new and powerful way.

But there's a downside. As surveillance technology has continued to dig its way deeper and deeper into every level of our existence over the past few years, we could always take comfort that the human imagination is the one final refuge for someone seeking privacy.

Now that reassurance is gone. And that is pretty damn scary.