As neuroimaging and neuroscience tell us more about how the human brain works, this knowledge inevitably will have both medical and non-medical implications for society. Many of those implications will be based on accurate understandings of the new science; others will stem from misunderstandings – and some of them the result of willful exaggeration. Whether the science is accurate or not, the social effects may be substantial. This talk will survey six areas where new neuroscience results are likely to affect society beyond solely medical consequences: prediction, mind-reading, responsibility, treatment, enhancement, and culture. Neuroimaging will improve our ability to predict future mental health, neurological conditions, and behavior. It will allow us, in some circumstances, to do make better inferences about what a person’s mental states, whether that involves deception, pain, or more general communication. Responsibility – criminal, civil, and moral – is not likely to be revolutionized by neuroimaging, but neuroimaging will make its assignment, in at least some cases, more difficult. Funding for neuroimaging comes largely from hopes of finding prophylaxis, treatment, or even cures for mental or neurological illnesses, but improved understanding of brain processes may allow “treatment” for non-disease behaviors, such as criminal activity, which would raise its own set of ethical questions. Neuroscience, guided by neuroimaging, may also allow not just the ill but also the healthy to enhance their cognitive abilities. And, finally, neuroimaging may (but, I suspect, probably will not) have broader cultural consequences by affecting people’s understanding of free will. In each of these cases, many “breakthroughs” will be claimed, but few will actually occur. We need to maintain, and educate the public to, an appropriate skepticism about whether these breakthroughs really do work – and, if they work, how well. At the same, we should benefit from considering just how our societies will be affected by real progress in understanding the workings of human brains.