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ROBORAT hit the headlines in May 2002. By remotely controlling the movement of a rat using electrodes implanted in its head, researchers demonstrated an impressive understanding of the brain, at least for rodents. Yet this was also a chilling demonstration of a type of mind control previously confined to the realm of science fiction.

Sponsored by the Pentagon鈥檚 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), RoboRat was the tip of an iceberg of military research on psychology, the brain and the nervous system. On the surface, the programme鈥檚 goals sound laudable: defusing the actions of terrorists and insurgents, making soldiers more effective warriors, and helping the wounded recover. The research also promises potential spin-offs that could improve the medical treatment of a variety of physical and mental ailments.

Yet it鈥檚 not that simple, writes Jonathan Moreno, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia. During the cold war, military research on psychology and the brain took some ugly turns. Hoping to find ways to extract information from captured spies, military scientists and the CIA covertly dosed people with LSD and tried a variety of unsavoury experiments in psychological warfare that were preludes to the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war.

Modern insight into the workings of the brain has led to more sophisticated research. Moreno briefly explains our understanding of the brain, and catalogues a number of projects conducted by DARPA, an agency that is relatively open in describing its activities. He says virtually nothing about classified programmes, other than to dismiss reports that the Pentagon has already developed tools to read and control our minds. Those claims may have been bluffs by intelligence agencies, or the delusions of conspiracy theorists.

The book comes alive when Moreno drops his scholarly objectivity to face old ghosts. His father was a psychiatrist whose sanatorium hosted trials of LSD in the 1960s. But what most seriously shook Moreno was learning several years ago of a link between one of his father鈥檚 closest friends, Harvard psychiatrist Henry Murray, and Ted Kaczynski, who later became known as the Unabomber after murdering three people and wounding 23 others with letter bombs. In the 1950s, Murray studied how Harvard undergraduates including Kaczynski reacted to stressful attacks on their own beliefs. The experiment 鈥渃ould have left deep scars鈥�, Moreno writes. 鈥淚t did not meet the ethical standards of the day.鈥� Clearly troubled, he asks, 鈥淒id the whole experience create the Unabomber? Unlikely, but it certainly didn鈥檛 make Kaczynski more sanguine about science.鈥�

Once Moreno turns to the present, his scholarly objectivity returns, his passion fades, and he loses direction. Instead of a hard-hitting analysis of current programmes, he turns to the slippery distinction between mind and brain. His criticism of research is muted and the secrets exposed are few. He talks about programmes devoted to reading people鈥檚 thoughts electronically and determining whether they are telling the truth, but doesn鈥檛 probe the problems posed by conventional lie-detector tests. His concluding chapter wanders erratically between hope that ethics will be given more credence in future and concern that it won鈥檛.

Moreno knows his subject but pulls too many punches. You can feel him shudder when he tells of his reactions to Murray鈥檚 abusive experiments, but too much of the book reads like the carefully balanced but soporific programme reviews issued by committees of eminent scientists. And it is disturbing to realise as the book draws to a close that it virtually ignores the possibility that this brave new mind science might be used to oppress people other than those universal bogeymen we label 鈥渢errorists鈥�. Although Moreno describes the pattern of intimidation and abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, he can鈥檛 bring himself to blame it on anything more sinister than cold war psychology. He should have taken the same cold, hard look at his own colleagues as he did at his father鈥檚.