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Brain implantation and manipulation is a mainstay of science fiction. Often, characters can gain extra memory or get smarter, by having chips placed within the brain. (Or you can wind up mind-controlled by a psychopath. It's a mixed bag.) More »
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Remember when James Bond's arch-nemesis Blofeld opened a clinic where he would treat women and help them to stop being allergic to chickens? And while he was teaching women to love chickens, he was also turning them into mass-murderers? More »
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Before their sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo cult released a series of bizarre anime recruitment videos starring their bearded leader Shoko Asahara levitating, phasing, and using other ridiculous supernatural powers. More »
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A high school in Mocoa, Colombia recently hired hypnotist Miller Zambrano Posada to entertain a group of 590 youth for a student fun day. More »
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Mind control is a favorite plot device in science fiction. It typically calls for a powerful manipulator to turn other people into drones using some extremely complicated-sounding, but often unexplained, process. It's a neutral power, used by heroes (Obi-Wan Kenobi) and villains (The Riddler) alike. Moral ambiguities aside, let's take a look at whether pop culture mind control could ever work in reality. More »
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We all act like being mind-wiped and reprogrammed is such a bad thing — but is it always? Sometimes having your personality or identity scrubbed away like so much grout scum is just a great way to make room for new stuff. Like killer ninja skills. Or superpowers. More »
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Mice are less anxious when they eat a diet that includes the kind of probiotic yogurt you can buy in the health food sections of most stores. The yogurt includes Lactobacillus rhamnosus, a bacterium that lives in the guts of humans and many other animals, and is believed to contribute to healthy digestion. It also apparently affects the brains of mice, making them calmer. More »
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During World War II, the Axis propaganda campaign took a turn for the bawdy when Japanese and German forces began distributing porno pamphlets among Allied troops. The central thesis? It was much better to stay home and get laid rather than risk your neck fighting Fascism. More »
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Most people make upwards of 250 food-related decisions a day. Sound high? That's because researchers believe the majority of these decisions are made unconsciously, and that many of our eating habits are actually driven by subtle environmental cues. How we manipulate these cues can have a huge impact on our eating habits. More »
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Mind control yarns are a staple of science fiction, but they tend to fall back on the same tropes. Fortunately for you, I've developed a character that blows all those tried-and-true formulas to smithereens. Join us as we reinvent the mind control tale. More »
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Sometimes scientific experiments sound like pranks. Case in point: a recent study that managed to turn a bunch of young men into the embodiment of every stereotype about old people driving. And all that was need was a driving simulator and some carefully chosen words. More »
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Scientists have engineered a worm with neurons that respond to light, making it a living bio-bot. More »
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In 1979, ABC News aired Mission Mind Control, a documentary about the US government's research into the mind control applications of hallucinogens. The documentary is fascinating (albeit depressing), and the 1970s production values give the video a retro flair. [Archive.org] More »
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The Euhaplorchis californiensis is a little parasite who lives in Southern California. And in this movie, released last year by researchers with the USGS, we learn why its lifecycle is the stuff of nightmares. More »
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A lot of movies advertise themselves as scary. So why are the most frightening movies often the ones that aren't marketed as horror? More »
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Yes, you can kill someone using strategic mind control. It's called the nocebo effect. More »
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It's Lost's Room 23, only more perverted. A naked woman's strapped down and shown images of flowers, cats, Buddhas... all in the name of hacking her consciousness. It's the only scene worth watching from the Ilsa movies. And very NSFW. More »
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Last night's episode featured a mind-controlling teenager with a penchant for violence. But that's not why Astrid has her tinfoil hat firmly in place. We also learned something sinister about our corporate friends at Massive Dynamic. More »
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We've already got memory-wiping drugs, and now researchers have taken the next baby step to a whole new you. They have used lasers to etch bad memories into the brains of flies, and changed their reactions to certain stimuli. More »
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So you’ve gotten yourself infected with mind-controlling parasite. And now the parasite is using your body, running up your credit card debt, and trying to take over your planet. Although possession by an alien parasite often means certain death, we offer a few remedies you should attempt before you resign yourself to a life of extraterrestrial slavery. More »
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Want to remember doing something, like attending 400 lectures on molecular cell biology, without ever actually having to do it? A special kind of ultrasound can trigger neurons in your gray matter, and the team of Arizona State neuroscientists who discovered this immediately played the Total Recall card. They're already talking about implanting memories of everything from fake vacations to learning kung fu. More »
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Memory is one of the main reasons why drug addicts who have gone sober suddenly find themselves jumping off the wagon. Environmental cues like visiting a place where you were high can make you remember the drug and weaken your resistance to taking it again. But now researchers have discovered a way to selectively erase "drug-associated memories" and make it easier for you to just say no to the needle, pill, or pipe. It all has to do with interrupting the brain's process of "reconsolidation," or memory retrieval. More »
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The mind-control machine in Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London has the greatest user interface in history. It's intuitive, easy to use, and versatile. When you want to use one of your mind-controlled puppets to kill someone, it turns into a fighting video-game screen straight out of the mid-1990s. (Click through to see some of its other amazing screens.) But it has one vulnerability — a hawt blonde British agent can easily pummel your programmer into revealing its password, which is probably the least secure password for a mind-control device in any case. More »
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The latest arms race will take place entirely inside the human mind. So say top scientists with the U.S. military, who have gotten quite a bit of government funding to explore things like memory-enhancing drugs, mind-reading binoculars, and brain-computer interfaces. Today Danger Room's Noah Shachtman reports on how the U.S. military's greatest fear these days, at least as it looks to the future, is losing the brain enhancement race to other nations that are creating souped-up super-soldiers. More »
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A pair of monkeys at the University of Pittsburgh have taken a major step forward in futuristic prosthetics: they can now feed themselves by controlling a robotic arm with their brains. Using primitive brain implants that record activity in the primates' motor cortex, the monkeys showed they could manipulate a robotic arm to pick up marshmallows and other tasty treats. More »
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We've already mentioned the John Woo-produced anime sequel Appleseed: Ex Machina and spoken with director Shinji Aramaki, but Warner Video was on hand at WonderCon, handing out a billion postcards to remind people that it comes out DVD on March 11th. They even had a screening of it on Saturday night during WonderCon, although it faced stiff competition from parties featuring costumed fans and tipsy publicity reps. If you missed that, then peek at the clip below and find out what the world of Appleseed is all about. More »
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People spend the GDP of Peru in therapy trying to cope with the crap that happened to them when they were kids. It's such a 20th century approach to childhood suckage. Maybe soon, we'll be able to pay to turn our childhoods happy retroactively. Click through for our roundup of ideas for making your childhood a happy one, retroactively, ranked by difficulty. (With time-travel being the hardest.) More »
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A crazy lady points her gun at a hulking thing and delivers a screaming speech right into the camera. Is it a Sam Fuller movie or a Fredric Hobbs movie? Can't decide? That's because it's the amazing Zontar: The Thing from Venus! All you need to know to understand this thrilling confrontation between lady and lump is that Zontar came from space and has been mind-controlling people into doing things like beating their wives and killing people. But now our hero has found him deep underground and is showing him who's boss. Everything about this scene makes my heart soar: the strange, porno-esque music as she winds her way underground, her kicky 1960s red shirt, and the sorry ragtag monster who looks different from shot to shot. In the immortal words of Courtney Love, this movie fakes it so real that it's beyond fake. More »
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All those people who wear tin-foil hats to stop the government messing with their minds? Turns out that they've been right all along. Daniel Pinchbeck explains how in an article about remote emotion-control via "electromagnetic energy" in the work of Dr. Nick Begich. More »
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Must-read graphic novels are futuristic classics that shouldn't be missed. Of course, not every must-see is perfect. That's why we've rated them 1-5 on the patented "crunchy goodness" scale. More »
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