Mind reading is no longer science fiction.

In 2006, in the journal Science, neuroscientists unequivocally showed that hospitalized, unresponsive patients can actually communicate with the outside world through their brain activity alone. Ask a "yes" or "no" question, and receive an answer based on what the patient is visualizing or imagining inside: playing tennis for "yes," or walking through their home for "no," each inner experience yielding markedly distinct patterns of brain activity.

More recently, with the introduction of machine learning and artificial intelligence, neuroscientists working with healthy participants have been able to decode and reconstruct various presented stimuli, from individual letters to entire scenes, capturing what the mind sees on screen. The same researchers who published the landmark study in 2006 are now asking how these reconstructions may be applied to similar patient populations to unlock a clearer window into their mind, and with it, greater communication with the outside world. In 1968, Alan Watts lays the foundation for psychedelic........

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