A new scientific technique can unlock the truth inside a criminal’s mind, working more effectively than a lie detector test. Brain fingerprinting is finding favour in criminal justice, but it also has potential to help marketing and health-care markets.
Digital Journal — When prosecutors and police can’t find evidence with the naked eye, they can turn to neuroscientist Dr. Lawrence Farwell. He founded Brain Fingerprinting Technologies, a company in Seattle that fronts a truly innovative scientific discovery: peeking into the brain to turn someone’s memory against them.
Brain fingerprinting unlocks that “aha!” moment when the brain recognizes a familiar object or clue. Dr. Farwell tells DigitalJournal.com that this technique can show when a suspect has a genuine memory of an event by identifying a particular brain activation pattern.
“When you see an elephant, you know instantly what it is,” Dr. Farwell says. “And you can’t deny that discovery moment. The brain notices the elephant instantly.”
For criminal justice purposes, it’s not an elephant but a murder weapon, for instance, or the scene of the crime that is of interest to prosecutors. A suspect under interrogation using brain fingerprinting will be hooked up to a headband-like sensor and computer software will measure brain activity when the suspect is show various photos. By analyzing the brain waves, Dr. Farwell and his team can determine if the subject recognizes what he sees.
That “aha!” moment is dubbed the P300 Mermer, a response occurring 300 milliseconds after the stimuli has been shown.
Dr. Farwell believes his technique is more effective at finding information compared to a lie detector test. The latter only tests stress levels via blood pressure and it’s been banned from most courtrooms. Brain fingerprinting can’t detect lies, but identifies the subjective info stored in the brain. If a perp saw a specific Colt .45 used in a recent murder, the brain fingerprinting will show that recognition. No one can mask or subdue that sliver.
Brain fingerprinting has been ruled admissible in one court case so far. In Harrington vs. State of Iowa, the state released Terry Harrington, who served 24 years for the 1977 murder of a parking lot security guard. His lawyer Mary Kennedy got brain fingerprinting results admitted in court after data revealed Harrington had no recollection of specific details from the murder scene. Dr. Farwell is excited a precedent has been set, but that also means he has to wade through the more than 400 emails requesting his services from lawyers, prisoners and families of inmates.
“I can’t handle all these cases by myself,” he admits, “but I can train others to use brain fingerprinting. And that’s a long-term goal.”
Dr. Farwell sees potential for brain fingerprinting to impact national security. “It’s a game changer in figuring out if someone engaged in terrorist training,” he points out, adding how it can also steer interrogators away from abusive techniques if the suspect truly doesn’t know anything about the crime in question.
Dr. Farwell’s company is currently in the final round of a competition called the Global Security Challenge, which will net it $500,000 if it takes home gold on Nov. 13. Brain Fingerprinting Technologies is up against challengers across the world, but it was honoured as one of the top two companies in the Americas. “That award alone should help us get some U.S. government contracts,” Dr. Farwell says.
But don’t think national security is the only area where brain fingerprinting can shine. Health care can take advantage of the technique for Alzheimer’s research. “We can measure the latency of a response in senior patients, to find out if they can recognize something quickly or not,” he notes. “Detecting Alzheimer’s early enough can go a long way.”
Dr. Farwell warns these kind of advances in health care won’t progress until several years from now.
Another industry that could take a shine to brain fingerprinting is advertising. Because ad execs are concerned about how consumers retain info from ad spots, brain fingerprinting can pinpoint how the brain relates to certain brands or segments of a commercial.
And for training professionals, the neural technique can find out what training attendees are understanding clearly and what they soon forget.
So with all the benefits of brain fingerprinting, what are some of the challenges its proponents face? “Now that the technology is proven, the big challenge is educating people about the product,” Dr. Farwell says. “It sounds more sci-fi than reality — to determine if someone committed a murder or not — but we understand it will take awhile for everyone to catch on.”
