It is not impossible to read shapes from the human mind, but it has only ever been done with fmri / serious tech (not simple electrodes) - and even then only with significant margins of error. It is much like speech recognition, in that the more you calibrate and "learn"/establish patterns the computer can recognize, the better the thing works.
I do not think it is coincidence/stylistic that there were flashing lights above the enemies. This is old tech.
From around the 80's or so the military and aviation companies were using this tech. Anyone who knows about epilepsy can understand how it works, and why.