KBTV

KBTV::Fingerprinting: A Window into the Mind ... Part II

SCRIPT: (August 15, 2007)

I’m Kate Bohner for KBTVonline …thanks for joining! Today we begin Part II of our three-part series “Fingerprints: A Window into The Mind.” Yesterday I discussed new technology that enables scientists to identify someone’s gender, their eating and smoking habits … even illicit drug activity … simply by looking at the smudge left from a single fingerprint. Today I explore how scientists are taking that one step further with technology that literally reads people’s minds to help determine whether or not they’ve committed a crime!

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The technique is called brain fingerprinting. And … according to Dr. Lawrence Farwell, a psychiatrist who heads up the Human Brain Research Laboratory in Fairfield, Iowa, this technique can equally as important as, say, recovering fingerprints or DNA from a crime scene. By studying a particular type of brain scan, Dr. Farwell can discern whether or not certain information about a crime is stored inside a person’s memory. The obvious advantage to this instead of, say, gathering fingerprints or DNA at a crime scene … is that people’s brains are like video cameras … they record everything they see.

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So … how does brain fingerprinting really work? According to Dr, Farwell, a person is put through two sets of tests … one where words and images from a crime scene are flashed in front of his or her eyes … in the second part of the test … irrelevant words and pictures are shown. When person being studied recognizes specific bits of information certain electrical brain impulses are involuntarily elicited. Dr. Farwell calls these impulses “electroencephalographic responses” or MERMERS … that’s MERMERS. And this is the clincher. Let’s say certain details of a crime that have not been in the press … only the investigators and the perpetrator would know this particular bit information … a person cannot control when his or her brain emits an impulse … or the MERMER when it recognizes that particular detail. I love this part ... (KATE AD LIBS STORY ABOUT 18-INCH, SERRATED HUNTING KNIFE!)

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Dr. Farwell claims his tests have been 100 percent accurate. An example, he correctly identified 17 FBI agents out of 21 people tested. Dr. Farwell said he hopes to use the technology to detect possible terrorists. For example, he says, the technology could be used to screen frequent travelers from Afghanistan to see if they have or do not have specific information about how Osama bin Laden trains recruits at his terrorist camps.

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Tune in tomorrow for the final installment of our series “Fingerprints: A Window into the Mind” to learn how scientists, through brain fingerprinting and MRI scans, are creating the ultimate lie detector tests which … they say … will be used by everyone from law enforcement officials to homeland security agents … to EVEN ... cheating spouses!

posted by katebohner @ 5:45 PM