This development came about after they attempted to understand just what goes on in the brain whenever a person reads or mulls over abstract ideas like love or justice. This kind of research might lead to a better understanding of how people would be able to consider meaning and context whenever they read or think.
I would suppose this will also have some kind of military application if the technology is refined even further – for example, you manage to capture someone from the enemy camp and want to extract secrets from his/her mind, but “traditional” methods have failed to break that particular person. Since we are not as advanced as the Star Wars era to have IT-O interrogation droid to strike fear into the hearts of the interrogated, perhaps this particular line of research will have to do.