Having an MRI scan can be a noisy, unusual, and sometimes stressful experience. But can it also be a social one?

In a new paper, neuroscientists Benjamin O. Turner and colleagues ask whether telling people that their MRI scan will be a “mind reading” procedure is enough to alter brain activity through ‘implied social presence’. As the authors put it:

If people believe that a technology can ‘see’ their internal thoughts, will people alter what they think about?

In an elegant and cl