"Lying in the scanner, I concentrated on a sequence of seemingly random images projected onto a screen a few feet from my eyes...."

"Pictures of traffic lights, cars, airplanes and trees were meant to elicit a 'boring' response from my amygdala (which governs fight-or-flight responses). Images of grotesque A.I.-generated faces or people making threatening gestures were meant to excite that part of my brain. In art school, I was taught to read images deliberately and slowly in the same way we might read and critique bits of literature or morsels of philosophy. In the fMRI machine, however, an image is just a visual stimulus to elicit a neurological response. On my second day of scanning, I learned that my amygdala is highly responsive to a certain type of 'boring' image: pictures of small airplanes against a big sky. This rattled me. Amy Kuceyeski, the radiology professor running this experiment, did not know that in my work as an artist, I spend enormous amounts of time tracking and photographing drones, satellites and aircraft. I felt like my mind had been read, that a machine had reached into my subconscious to unearth something deep, private and intimate about my professional life and personal interests...."

Writes Trevor Paglen, in "I Saw the Future of Mind-Reading" (NYT).