What if scientists knew what you would do before you even knew? What if they could read out your feelings, your preferences and your inclinations even if you weren’t aware of them?

It’s not so much science fiction anymore. A team of researchers headed by John-Dylan Haynes at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience has developed a technique that can read out people’s intentions before they actually act on them, by analysing patterns of brain activity during the decision making process.

In a series of tests, subjects were given the option of adding or subtracting numbers. Haynes says he could clearly distinguish the brain pattern for adding from the pattern for subtracting before the subjects had actually performed the action. And he says soon, science will go even further: Determining actions, feelings and preferences long before people even know they are thinking of them. A trip deep into the sub-conscience.

"They wouldn’t even know. For them it was unconscious. So they have the impression that they haven’t even made up their mind yet. So it seems that their brain seems to be determining something before they themselves even become aware of it," John-Dylan Haynes says about his research.

Haynes says widespread use of mind reading devices and total observation are still a thing of the future, but he does believe, he tells me, that science has reached a point where society needs to debate and decide how far it wants researchers to go. He says the potential benefits are huge.

Mind reading technology could drive the development of brain-controled computers that would help people with disabilities manage their lives just by using their minds, and the technology could revolutionize crime fighting as the perfect lie detector and even help in the battle against terrorism, Haynes says.

"We might be able to tell from a brain activity pattern if someone has been in a specific place before, such as an al Qaeda terrorist camp. That’s something that we should be able to do within the next couple of years."

But what if a company could make the perfect cigarette, or food, or another product that perfectly targets reward systems in the human mind or if all your secrets were laid out to authorities on a regular basis? Haynes says that’s where he would draw the line, the only question at that point: Will scientists then still have the power to draw the line?

Watch my report

-- From CNN Berlin Bureau Chief Frederik Pleitgen

We drove into Sderot on Wednesday a little before noon. Just after the first barrage of Qassam rockets had fallen on the Israeli town.

The streets were quiet. Occasionally we saw an ambulance or the uniformed girls from the civil defense force inspecting bomb shelters.

Our first stop was the Mayor’s office, a small and shabby municipal building in the center of town. When we entered his office, the Mayor had his feet propped up on the desk, leaning back and smoking a cigarette. He seemed very relaxed for a man whose town is under attack.

Of course, Sderot is used to it. It’s come under daily rocket attack for years now. But in that last three days there has been a dramatic increase, more than 80 have fallen in the area.

“It’s not about protecting Sderot,” the mayor told us in typically blunt fashion. “It’s about killing the terrorists.” He wants the government to take harsh action to root out Hamas in Gaza. But he doesn’t seem convinced that will happen any time soon. “They haven’t done anything,” he said.

There’s a poster on his office wall of the Mayor as James Bond. “Winner of the Golden Qassam” it says in big gold letters with a quote: “When you can’t trust the government, you can only rely on yourself.”

Our next stop was a home that had taken a direct hit from a Qassam rocket. When we got there, government inspectors were estimating the damage. The rocket had blown a big hole in the roof and slammed straight into the main bedroom, seriously injuring a woman and her two children.

When we got there, the family was still at the hospital. Only a guard was there with a cat that had somehow found a nest of rocket debris and blown-apart shoes to sleep in.

As we interviewed the Aflalo family next door, a group of Jewish students came by to give us some unsolicited opinions about the rocket attacks.

“They want us to run away, but we won’t,” said a religious man accompanying the students, maybe a teacher. He pointed to about five teenage boys with kippots on their heads skipping and dancing in a circle, holding hands and singing. “See? We will be happy and strong. We will make this a dynamic, vibrant place!”

He seemed very pleased with his declaration, but the Aflalos just gave him a tight-lipped smile and turned away. They had already decided to take their two daughters and spend the next few nights outside of Sderot, far away from the Qassam rockets.

As we drove around town, we saw other Qassam hits. In a residential courtyard. In a community center and local movie theater. Schools were closed which was good because the next day a rocket slammed straight into one.

We returned to the center of town where families boarded buses to leave. Medical workers distributed candy to the kids. A nearby salon was still open for business, despite the attacks. Customers in curlers and freshly washed hair watched the ongoing departure and debated the pros and cons of leaving town. Was it giving in to the terrorists? Or was it just common sense to leave?

But it also seems that Sderot residents are strangely proud to be the home of the Qassam rocket attack. In the front of the salon was a large picture of an elegant model with her hair done up in the shape of an incoming Qassam rocket.

Just then, people began yelling and I could hear my sound technician Oki shouting: “Atika! Atika!” I had no idea what was going on. I looked around and everyone was ducking into buildings or diving to the ground. “The warning! The warning! It’s another attack!”

But I didn’t move. I didn’t know where to go. Across the street, Oki waved to me frantically to take cover in the supermarket. Finally, I ran … straight into the vegetable stand. And just as I got there I could her first one boom and then a much larger BOOM!

But we were fine. The rocket landed a neighborhood away. We all looked in the direction of the blast and within seconds the sirens were blaring. The ambulances raced off.

But the people of Sderot? They just dusted themselves off and continued with their day. The families boarded back on the bus without much fuss. The salon ladies went back to their nails and their hair and a young couple came out of the supermarket licking scoops of chocolate ice cream.

Clearly, there’s something I could learn from this little town.

-- From CNN International Correspondent Atika Shubert

Somewhere in Gaza, BBC correspondent Alan Johnston is marking his 45th birthday this Thursday.

Alan went missing on 12 March, and is now being held, it appears, by a group that goes by the name of Jaish Al-Islam, the Army of Islam.

In an audio recording posted on the Internet, the group is demanding the release, among others, of Jordanian-born Abu Qatada, an al Qaeda sympathiser currently detained in Britain. The British government has raised the issue of Alan with Abu Qatada, who has expressed a willingness to do what he can to win Alan’s release.

Wherever Alan languishes in Gaza, he can probably hear the sound and fury of the madness raging outside, as gunmen from Hamas and Fatah battle it out in the streets.

The brave Palestinian reporters in Gaza -- and I’ve spoken with many of them -- were stuck indoors while the gunmen struggle for control of the ruins.

Watching them, all of whom I know well, huddled in Ramattan Studios -- where the CNN office in Gaza is located, incidentally -- while a battle raged outside was stressful enough. Being there must have been 10 times worse.

But here’s the paradox: As a journalist who hates being office-bound, who hates watching news unfold from afar, who loves the field’s taste, smell, feel and adrenalin, I have to confess: Part of me, a big part of me, wishes I was there. Yes, it’s dangerous. Yes, it’s probably insane, and my wife would verbally whack me on the head repeatedly for even saying it, but it’s true.

"It’s a good thing you’re not there now," an Israeli official told me yesterday. "You would be a walking target." I know. I know.

But for me Gaza is important. I was there in July 1994, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, when Yasir Arafat stepped foot on Palestinian soil for the first time since before the 1967 war.

It was pandemonium from the first moment he crossed the border. In the chaos as he got into a car to drive from Rafah to Gaza City, I jumped on a truck right behind him and rode all the way. Palestinians lined the road all the way north, cheering on their leader.

And as Arafat rode by the Israeli settlement of Kfar Darom (now abandoned and in ruins,) I watched as settlers on the ramparts booed and hissed him. In Gaza City I fought my way through the huge crowd that had jammed into Gaza’s main square to hear him speak. It was one of those days in a journalist’s career when you really felt like you have a seat on the front row of history.

Less than two weeks later I was in Gaza, at the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel, when the first clash broke out between Palestinian security forces and the Israeli army. It was then, cowering behind a block of concrete as bullets zipped overhead, that I concluded the peace process, not even a year old with the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in September 1993, was doomed to end in bloodshed and bitterness.

I heard many, many more bullets and explosions when I covered Gaza at the beginning of the second intifada. And it was in Gaza that I was shot in the back, at the Karni Crossing, on Halloween, 2000. Four years later I was in a taxi in Gaza when my colleague, producer Riyadh Ali, was kidnapped. And these are just a few dubious highlights of my time there.

Gaza is full of memories, some happy, many not so, but none forgettable. And I’m hoping that, sooner rather than later, I’ll be able to go to Gaza, and Alan Johnston will be able to leave.

-- From CNN Senior Correspondent Ben Wedemen

Colorful fireworks light up the sky as the train leaves South Korea's Munsan station, heading north for its historic voyage.

We head into the station, ready to grab reaction from the spectators to this exciting and seemingly joyous event. But instead we head straight into a small group of protesters. And they are angry.

We are quite familiar with the group, mostly made up of Korean War veterans, a staple at anti-North Korean rallies.

One protester catches me by the arm and asks where we are from. Upon learning we are CNN, he says, please tell the U.S. that we need them to come in and wage a war on North Korea. He won't tell me his story, but just that he knows how awful the North Koreans are.

Ninety-four-year-old Cho Myung-Sun sobs when he tells me it broke his heart when he saw the train pull away from the station.

"When I was young, I used to ride the train back and forth from the north to the south all the time," he says.

Cho’s home town is in the north, but he left his parents and his sister behind when the war broke out and came to the south.

He never saw or heard from his parents again. He says he assumes his parents have all passed away, but as the train left, it hit him that he may also never see his home town again as well. "I wanted to be on that train so much."

-- From CNN International Correspondent Sohn Jie-Ae