Your brain may not be private much longer

If you’ve ever wished your brain was more user-friendly, neurotechnology might seem like a dream come true. It’s all about offering you ways to hack your brain, getting it to do more of what you want and less of what you don’t want.

There are “nootropics” — also known as “smart drugs” or “cognitive enhancers” — pills that supposedly give your brain a boost. There’s neurofeedback, a tool for training yourself to regulate your brain waves; research has shown it has the potential to help people struggling with conditions like ADHD and PTSD. There’s brain stimulation, which uses electric currents to directly target certain brain areas and change their behavior; it’s shown promise in treating severe depression by disrupting depression-linked neural activity.

Oh, and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are working on brain-computer interfaces that could pick up thoughts directly from your neurons and translate them into words in real time, which could one day allow you to control your phone or computer with just your thoughts.

Some of these technologies can offer very valuable help to people who need it. Brain-computer interfaces, for example, are already helping some paralyzed people.