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Officer K asks Dr. Ana Stelline if a particular memory of his is real or implanted.

Stelline: Now think about the memory you want me to see. Not even that hard. Just picture it. Let it play.

Officer K sits there and silently thinks about his memory of a little boy with a toy wooden horse and running from other boys at the orphanage.

Stelline sheds sad tears from both eyes.

Stelline: Someone lived this. Yes, it happened.

Officer K: I know it is real. I know it is real! Damn! Damn!

That scene implies Stelline's device can read minds. All K does is think and she knows what he sees in his mind.

Gaff made the unicorn origami in the original Blade Runner to inform Rick Deckard that he knows of Deckard's unicorn dream. I always assumed that meant Gaff knew which memories were implanted into Deckard but had no way of knowing what Deckard was thinking.

This scene implies a device can read memories and perhaps even read minds.

Is there anything else in the Blade Runner stories that shows mind reading abilities?

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    Good question, but if this was a normal thing to do, then perhaps there'd be no need for the Baseline Test, or even the Voight-Kampff test.
    – Möoz
    Commented Apr 16, 2018 at 3:17
  • I was thinking that when K is using the DNA analyzer, Joi shows him the wooden horse -- this is before he fetched from the furnace in the scrapyard so although the image Joi produces could be from his verbal description of the horse, it could also be because Joi can read minds, a useful feature in a holographic companion -- I don't really think that is what the film makers intended but it would explain how Joi was able to do produce an accurate image of the wooden horse before she had seen it directly.
    – releseabe
    Commented Apr 1, 2022 at 16:42

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The script indicates that the device is a 'Stelline Scanner', something that was invented by Ana during her lifetime.

She offers K a CHAIR built perfectly into the wall by the glass. Fitted with a chin ledge so a LIGHT can SCAN deep into the eyes, like an optometrist’s slit lamp. A Stelline Scan. After its designer.

That being the case, it's not something that would have been available during the time of the original Blade Runner when there was a need to detect replicants using crude methods like the VK test.

There's also the implication that it needs Ana to operate it (with her unique skills as a memory specialist to be able to tell that the memories being projected are fake) and that it can be resisted, making it largely worthless as an interrogation tool.

K: Does it hurt?

ANA: Only if you fight it. So maybe don’t fight it.

...

She works her console. Peers into a MATCHING LIGHT. Seeing INSIDE... through the optic nerve, into the visual cortex... the Scanner translating neural impulse until... A ghost of an IMAGE takes loose shape... She GRABS it.

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