Fantastical headlines are fueling beliefs that dystopian mind-reading and brain control tech are imminent and just around the corner, according to this year’s Stanford Emerging Technology Review.
Meanwhile, Stanford’s own researchers have been demonstrating how they have already been able to read, write, and control the brains of mice, which is a vastly different undertaking from those of people.
As for us humans, “the necessary theoretical understanding of how neurocircuits work is still limited to only a few areas of the brain,” according to the Stanford Emerging Technology Review (SETR) 2026.
“Science fiction and fantastical headlines fuel beliefs that mind-reading technology, brains controlled by computers, and other dystopias are imminent. In reality, work to comprehend the brain’s staggering complexity remains in its early stages”
Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2026
This year’s Stanford Emerging Technology Review highlights 10 technologies that are reshaping our world:
- Artificial Intelligence
- Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology
- Cryptography and Computer Security
- Energy Technologies
- Materials Science
- Neuroscience
- Quantum Technologies
- Robotics
- Semiconductors
- Space
If we focus-in on neuroscience, the review states that the public’s fascination with mind-reading and brain-controlling tech as something that could happen anytime soon is overhyped.
“In reality,” the authors write, “work to comprehend the brain’s staggering complexity remains in its early stages. Most advances involve incremental progress, expanding our theoretical foundations rather than producing revolutionary leaps to futuristic applications.”
“Popular interest in neuroscience vastly exceeds the current scientific understanding of the brain, giving rise to overhyped claims in the public domain that revolutionary advances are just around the corner”
Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2026
Imminent or not, dystopian or otherwise, brain-hacking technologies are being researched and developed at this very moment.
Here are some headlines from various Stanford-related publications:
- “Mind-reading in real life: Study shows it can be done (but they’ll have to catch you first)” — Stanford Medicine, 2013
- “Mind ‘Reading’: Brain-controlled prostheses get a boost” — Stanford Magazine, 2015
- “Method of recording brain activity could lead to ‘mind-reading’ devices, scientists say” — Stanford Bio-X, 2013
- “Scientists develop interface that ‘reads’ thoughts from speech-impaired patients” — Stanford Report, 2025
Now, starting with the ability to control the brains of mice, Stanford researchers are looking into how they could one day “meld minds and machines” in order to understand, cure, and ultimately augment the human brain.
“We can control the brain […] We can write into the digital twin to control it. Then we can transfer these same neural patterns into the actual brain to write into the brain and control the brain”
Surya Ganguli, India AI Impact Summit, February 2026
At the India AI Impact Summit in February, Stanford University researcher Surya Ganguli highlighted experiments that used “AI and lasers to write to the mind of a mouse” and control its brain.
“We were able to use AI to read the mind of a mouse. We could look directly at neural activity in the brain of a mouse, and we could decode what it was seeing […] But we can go further than that to write to the mind of a mouse. By writing-in carefully designed neural activity patterns, we can make the mouse hallucinate a particular percept”
Surya Ganguli, India AI Impact Summit, February 2026
Ganguli showed how scientists were able to read, write, and control the brain, even going so far as to make it hallucinate.
The next step in melding minds and machines is healing and augmenting the human brain.
“The possibilities of melding brains and machines are limitless — both to advance AI and to understand, cure, and augment the brain”
Surya Ganguli, India AI Impact Summit, February 2026
“Complete understanding of what each neuron is doing at any given time is currently impossible. Even for a mouse brain, which is much simpler than a human brain, it is still a tremendous effort to characterize individual brain regions despite the availability of powerful techniques that allow us to identify activity in individual neurons or to noninvasively tag cells to respond to light signals”
Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2026
Humans and mice are obviously different, and the SETR 2026 is accurate in its assesment that comprehending the human brain is still in its early stages.
But progress is being made in the ability to read the human brain thanks to brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).
BCIs like that of Neuralink can be invasive in that they require surgery, but there are other BCIs that are non-invasive wearables like rings, bracelets, and ear buds.
Speaking at the 2023 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Duke University’s Nita Farahany explained that the technology to decode brainwaves already existed and that they could already pick up images in your mind, including the PIN code to your bank account.
“We can pick up and decode faces that you’re seeing in your mind — simple shapes, numbers, your PIN number to your bank account”
Nita Farahany, World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, January 2023
“Headlines about mind-reading chip implants are exaggerated and still more the realm of science fiction. Even with tremendous interest and increasing progress in neuroscience and engineering”
Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2026
Moving away from the dystopian and more towards the positive side, the Stanford Emerging Technlogy Review 2026 does highlight that advances in neuroscience “have led to some progress in several areas, including understanding and treating addiction and neurodegenerative diseases and designing brain–machine interfaces for restoring vision.”
What will the future of neurotech bring, medicine or poison?
Perhaps both.
Image Source: AI generated with ChatGPT
