Why mind reading

Slow down, get them on board, and then move forward—together. Terri Trespicio is a New York—based lifestyle writer.

For nearly a decade, she served as a senior editor and radio host at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Find her on Twitter TerriT. Her TEDx talk has more than 7 million views, and her work has been featured on Dr. Catani, M. Perisylvian language networks of the human brain.

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Amsterdam: Elsevier, Pardini, M. New workplaces, new food sources, new medicine--even an entirely new economic system.

From anticipating the needs of a client to knowing how to approach your boss, developing an inner intuition about what others value can help you get ahead. People send signals about their thoughts all the time, says Miner, but it can take practice to tune in. Boomers, on the other hand, like to talk to someone in person. For boomers, we spend the money and go out.

Generations also value different things, says Miner. Millennials, for example, look for fast results. When we talk to them, we move slower and talk about things like safety and risk. Electrical current can be applied by an electrode on the scalp to stimulate or inhibit neurons from firing in appropriate brain regions.

The military is using this method to speed learning and enhance cognitive performance in pilots. The method is so simple, brain stimulation devices can be purchased over the internet or you can make one yourself from nine-volt batteries. But the DIY approach renders the user an experimental guinea pig. New methods of precision brain stimulation are being developed. Electrical stimulation is notoriously imprecise, following the path of least resistance through brain tissue and stimulating neurons from distant regions of the brain that extend axons past the electrode.

In experimental animals, very precise stimulation or inhibition of neuronal firing can be achieved by optogenetics. This method uses genetic engineering to insert light sensitive ion channels into specific neurons to control their firing very precisely using laser light beamed into the brain through a fiberoptic cable.

Applied to humans, optogenetic stimulation could relieve many neurological and psychiatric disorders by precision control of specific neural circuits, but using this approach in people is not considered ethical. But the genie is out of the bottle. We better get to know her. The views expressed are those of the author s and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Credit: Nick Higgins.