mineki oguchi & masayoshi someya february 29, 2008 utcp seminar series @ the university of tokyo...

Mineki Oguchi & Masayoshi Someya

February 29, 2008UTCP Seminar Series

@ The University of Tokyo

Will “the Ultimate Privacy” be Invaded?

Mind-Reading Technology and the Privacy Problem

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Introduction 1

Background An increasing number of neuroscientific

researches which try to read “contents” of mind from brain images have been reported in recent years.

⇒ “Mind-Reading” or “Brain-Reading”

“Mind-reading” attracts public attention and expectation as new techniques to guess what a person perceives, thinks, prefers, or feels.

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Introduction 2

At the same time, there is spreading concern that these mind-reading techniques can be a threat to “the ultimate privacy” of mind.

Will this concern become a reality?What is “the ultimate privacy” of mind at

all?

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Outline 1

Introduction

Section 1: Current State of Mind-Reading Technology

►1a: Unconscious Racism (Phelps et al., 2000) ►1b: Lie Detection with fMRI (Langleben et al., 2002) ►1c: Brain Fingerprinting (Farwell and Donchin, 1991) ►1d: Brain Decoding (Kamitani and Tong, 2005)

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Outline 2

Section 2: Theoretical Problems of Mind-Reading

►2a: Criteria for Individuating Mental states

►2b: Situation-Dependency of Folk Psychological Concepts

►2c: Interpersonal Difference in Neural Correlates ►2d: Comparison with Psychological Reading

Technologies

Section 3: What is “the Ultimate Privacy”? ►3a: Lessons from Genetic Exceptionalism ►3b: Brain in the Image ►3c: Ethical Coping and Conclusion

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Section 1: Current State of Mind-Reading

Technology

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1a: Unconscious Racism

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Phelps et al. (2000) investigated the relationship between unconscious racist attitude and amygdala （扁桃体） activity.

1a: Unconscious Racism

Phelps et al investigated, by using fMRI, the relationship between unconscious racist attitude and amygdala activity.

In this experiment, American White subjects were scanned while they were shown pictures of Black and White male faces and asked to indicate if each face was the same with or different from the one immediately preceding it. After scanning, subjects took two psychological tests - the Implicit Association test (IAT) and the eyeblink startle response test - which examine their unconscious emotional evaluation of Black and White social groups. In addition to these tests, they completed the Modern Racism Scale which measures their conscious, self-reported beliefs toward Black people. The image data scanned under White faces condition were subtracted from those under Black faces condition to analyze the degree of amygdala activity, which was significantly correlated with the intensity of unconscious racism bias marked by IAT and the eyeblink startle response test, but not with the intensity of conscious bias measured by the Modern Racism Scale.

From the results, Pelpes et al has guessed that amygdala is especially related with unconscious response to a different racial group.

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1b. Lie detection with fMRI

Langleben et al. (2002) have guessed that anterior cingulate cortex （前部帯状皮質） and superior frontal gyrus （上前頭回） play a key role in deceiving.

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1b. Lie detection with fMRI

Using the Guilty Knowledge Test (which assesses whether suspects conceal information about a crime), Langleben et al investigated which brain regions are activated when subjects are intentionally deceiving.

First, subjects were given a playing card along with some money and asked to memorize it. Then, they were told that they would be able to keep the money as a reward if they succeeded in concealing the identity of the card from a computer. They had to reply to questions appearing on a screen by pushing “Yes” or “No”. Experimenters scanned subjects’ fMRI images under both lie and truth conditions and subtracted statistically-averaged data under the truth condition from those under the lie condition. This research showed that brain regions activated when a subject was telling a truth were also activated when he/she was telling a lie, but anterior cingulate cortex, superior frontal gyrus, and left premotor, motor, and anterior parietal cortex were activated only when a subject was deceiving the computer.

Langleben et al have guessed that anterior cingulate cortex and superior frontal gyrus play a key role in inhibiting true responses, which is an essential part in the process of deceiving.

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1c: Brain Fingerprinting

Farwell claims that we can detect a suspect’s lie and reveal his/her connection with crime by using brain fingerprinting.

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1c: Brain Fingerprinting

There is another neuroscientific lie detection technique called “brain fingerprinting”.

This technique is based on the measurement of changes in the amplitude of Event Related Potentials (ERPs) called P300. P300 wave will be observed when a subject receives familiar stimuli such as familiar words, phrases, pictures, etc. Brain fingerprinting is expected to be used in criminal investigation. A suspect is shown relevant objects or pictures which are known only by the real culprit and his/her P300 is recorded and analyzed. L. Farwell (who invented brain fingerprinting technology and founded his company selling it) claims that we can detect a suspect’s lie and reveal his/her connection with crime by using this technique.

Since the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, this technology has attracted public attention as a new method of detecting terrorists.

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1d: Brain Decoding

Kamitani and Tong have developed a new decoding technology which enables us to predict the orientation of lines perceived by subjects.

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1d: Brain Decoding

In recent years, “the decoding approach” has become active, which try to read contents or states of mind by picking up activated regions from a relatively wider brain area.

For example, Kamitani and Tong have developed a new technology which enables us to predict the orientation of lines perceived by subjects using fMRI images of primary and secondary visual cortices (V1 and V2).

The information about the orientation of perceived lines is represented in “columns” or groups of neurons smaller than 1/10 mm in diameter. However, these columns are too finely spaced to be resolved by fMRI because its voxel is only about 3×3×3 mm in size. So Kamitani and Tong analyzed each voxel datum by a neural network decoder trained by supervised learning and successfully predicted what stimulus orientation a subject is viewing. Each voxel datum had very weak orientation selectivity, but they got stable orientation selectivity by collectively decoding them.

And they could also predict which stimulus orientation a subject is attending to when seeing a diagonal plaid stimulus with considerable accuracy.

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Section 2: Theoretical Problems of Mind-Reading

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2a: Criteria for Individuating Mental States

To establish “the ecological validity” outside a laboratory

⇒ Mental states to be read should not be just specific to the task involved in a mind-reading experiment.

Ex.) unconscious emotional evaluation of a certain racial group when seeing a picture of a Black and lying in fMRI▪▪▪

⇒ Rather, it should be the common state of mind found across various relevant tasks.

Ex.) unconscious racist attitude in general

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In principle, however, there are an infinite variety of mental states interpretable as correlated to each brain activity.

⇒ Nonetheless, each brain activity is considered not just as being correlated to the state of mind specific to each experimental condition.

This is because we place uncritical reliance on our folk psychological criteria for individuating mental states.

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Brain imaging studies cannot directly provide or verify criteria for individuating mental states.

⇒ Brain imaging technologies such as fMRI or PET are highly “theory-laden”: researchers analyze brain image data through complicated statistical processing against the background of a certain theoretical map about mental process or cognitive activity.

Therefore we have to search for the criteria “outside” the brain imaging studies.

⇒ How to ensure the criteria will become a big problem for the further development of mind-reading research.

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2b: Situation-Dependencyof Folk Psychological Concepts

Even if we continue to adopt our folk psychological criteria ▪▪▪

Most folk psychological concepts have a situation-dependent character.

Ex.) There are various types of lying in various situations in our dairy life.

▪ lying for disguising or quibbling ▪ deception in sports and poker ▪ irony and exaggeration as humor ▪ diplomatic remarks and flattery words ▪ self-deception and so on ▪ ▪ ▪

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2b: Situation-Dependencyof Folk Psychological Concepts

Can we lump them into the same category in terms of their truth/falsehood?

Is there any state that can be taken as a common factor in all these mental activities?

It is crucial for mind-reading technology to individuate mental states without dependence on the particularity of a task or a situation.

⇒ The situation-dependency casts doubt on the generalizability or wide applicability of mind-reading technology.

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2c: Interpersonal Differencein Neural Correlates

Brain image technology generally requires establishing a baseline on the basis of data on an individual subject.

⇒ To overcome this constraint and generalize mind-reading technology, at least the neural correlate of a certain type of mental state we seek to read off should be largely common to different individuals.

⇒ In fact, it seems that there is such commonality in a certain instance.

Ex.) Kamitani and Tong reported that the information about orientation is represented in an early stage of visual processing in the way common to primates.

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2c: Interpersonal Differencein Neural Correlates

However, the existence of such commonality may be due to the fact that the processing of orientation has been structured as a innate “brain module” dedicated to a domain-specific task.

It is highly likely that the neural correlate of a more abstract and complex task are interpersonally different if such a task is handled by a domain-general mechanism without a module.

If so, it’s still a mere dream that we will succeed in constructing a technology for reading high-level mental activities in detail.

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2d. Comparison withPsychological Reading Technologies

We can observe the precedence of psychological reading technologies over neuroscientific ones in some researsches.

Ex. 1) Unconscious racism ▪ Phelps et al could demonstrate the activated amygdala

as a neural correlate of an unconscious racist attitude “from the inside” just because they could utilize the psychological methods (IAT and the eyeblink startle response test) measuring the attitude “from the outside” antecedently.

⇒ If so, doesn’t it follow that we have only to use psychological tests to read mind and that we don’t need to examine the inside of the brain?

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Ex. 2) Lie detectors The problems of brain fingerprinting ▪ There cannot be independent testing of its validity since

the technology is proprietary and undisclosed. ▪ Subjects can interfere with the construction of the

baseline by performing certain covert acts. (Rosenfeld, 2005)

The problems of lie detector using fMRI ▪ Its accuracy is not high enough to identify individual

deceivers, remaining only enough to show a between-group difference.

▪ There is no common activated region shown across all subjects. (M. Nagamine)

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There is another research trend which tries to develop a more reliable lie detector using “micro-expressions” (P. Ekman).

▪ Micro-expressions are involuntary facial expressions which last for a brief period of time less than 1/4 seconds when one hides certain feelings.

▪ Sejinowski have attempted to detect micro-expressions by a computer system and to utilize them as reliable signs about lies.

⇒ Here, too, the approach “from the outside” as reading facial expressions precedes one “from the inside” of the brain.

The inside of the brain might be, after all, not the best place for reading mind. (Prof. Nobuhara)

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Section 3: Ethical Coping and Conclusion

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3a: Lessons from Genetic Exceptionalism

Now, the fear seems to be groundless that mind-reading technologies may open new possibilities to expose the information about personal privacy covertly.

Rather, we should think about its “value” that many stakeholders (medical institutions, insurance companies, judicial agencies, and probably the public) hopefully find in mind-reading technologies.

Compare with the debate on genetic exceptionalism in bioethics.

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Genetic exceptionalism ▪ Gene information needs special protection because

it essentially differs from other medical information in

that it is related to “the ultimate privacy” of an individual. (1) Gene information predicts the future health condition of an

individual. (2) Genes contain information about his/her kin group

members and even about local community members, and so it has a risk for promoting discrimination against these groups.

⇒ Thomas Murray Criticized these grounds▪▪▪

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Murray’s Criticism(1)➨ Other kind of medical information (hepatitis B carriage,

HIV carriage, or high cholesterol) is also highly predictive of the future health condition.

(2)➨ Information about venereal disease or tuberculosis can also suggest the possibility of infection to the family or colleagues of a patient, so other medical information also has caused discrimination in various situations.

There isn’t any essential difference between gene information and other kind of medical information.

Genetic exceptionalism may encourage genetic determinism or genetic reductionism.

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Weak Genetic exceptionalism ▪ One’s gene information is closely related to that

of other members of his/her kin group and thus its effect upon discrimination can be relatively more serious than that of other medical information.

▪ Such a relative specificity gives us a sufficient reason to protect gene information more heavily than other information.

⇒ The need for more concrete debate concerning insurance, employment, education, marriage, loan, and criminal investigation, as well as medical care.

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The lesson is▪▪▪• The privacy of gene information stems not from the

inherent essential specificity but from various socio-economic demands for the information.

• Privacy information to be protected was not given at the outset, but determined by the social environment which seeks to utilize it.

Apply this conclusion to the case of mind-reading▪▪▪• What provides “the ultimate privacy” for the brain is

not the brain itself but their socio-economic surroundings.

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3b: Brain in the Image

Mind-reading technology remains unpromising. ⇒ Then, even if a social structure which gives brain

or mind “the ultimate privacy” is brought into being, can there be any room for the ethical problem of privacy invasion at all?

Even if brain information lacks appropriate substance for its purposes, the substance is constructed by socio-economic demands and such a fictional substance is used in various actual situations.

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Racine et al (2005) investigated press coverage of fMRI in the U. S. and found three trends.

1) neuro-realism : the press reports about neuroscientific experiments as if fMRI images visually “prove” brain activities without regard to enormous complexities of data acquisition.

2) neuro-essentialism : many expressions in which the word “brain” is used as a grammatical subject (for instance, “Brain prefers”, “Brain scares”) give the impression that we can assimilate “the person” or “the self” with the brain.

3) neuro-policy : media coverage prompts the public to think that we can use the results of fMRI investigations to promote political agendas (the regulation of pornography, the bilingual education problem, and so on).

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“Neuro-realism”, “Neuro-essentialism”, “Neuro-policy”

From these trends, we can predict that brain information will gradually be taken as a kind of personal information having a certain socio-economic utility, hypostatized as “the ultimate privacy”, and inflated in value without a due consideration as to whether it has a real value appropriate for its purposes.

➨ How should we cope with this problem?

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3c: Ethical Coping and Conclusion

The major factor of the problem lies in the fact that brain information is cognitively far more complex than other private information and thus vulnerable to misuse and abuse.

⇒ Sheri Alpert (2007) claimed that brain information needs a special legal protection to avoid misuse and abuse, in view of our overwhelming tendency to attribute simplistic explanations to complex phenomena.

This is ethical coping required from the relative specificity (cognitive complexity) of brain information, after the denial of strong exceptionalism.

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In addition to a legal protection, we must not neglect the effort to improve the public understanding of neuroscience.

⇒ For such an effort will create a basis for stopping the movement of hypostatization and inflation of the privacy value, and eliminate the necessity of special legal protection itself, and thus prepare the social environment to distribute brain information in an appropriate and useful way.

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We ought to cope with the brain-privacy problem with two pillars -

1. legal protection as a tentative step2. building of neuroscentific literacy as a substantial

step

The necessity and urgency of the latter, which is included in the problem of scientific literacy in general, should be emphasized more strongly in that it is directly connected to ethical coping with the privacy invasion.

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What must be done now is▪▪▪

not to treat neuroimaging technology as potentially capable of reading mind and to hypostatize and inflate “the ultimate privacy of mind” more and more

but to assess what is really going on and to find out the specific measures for disarming the surroundings which generate such a move.

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EndThank you for your kind attention!

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mineki oguchi & masayoshi someya february 29, 2008 utcp seminar series @ the university of tokyo...

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