Farwell's brainwave fingerprinting technology continues to get press.

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New 'Brain Fingerprinting' Could Help Solve Crimes

Tue February 11, 2003 12:34 PM ET

By Alan Elsner, National Correspondent

FAIRFIELD, Iowa (Reuters) - A technique called "brain
fingerprinting," which seeks to probe whether a suspect has specific
knowledge of a crime, could become a powerful weapon in national
security, its inventor believes.

Lawrence Farwell, a Harvard-educated neuroscientist who founded Brain
Fingerprinting Laboratories Inc. 12 years ago and runs the company
from a small town in southern Iowa, believes the technique could
emerge as the next big thing in law enforcement and intelligence.

"From a scientific perspective, we can definitively say that brain
fingerprinting could have substantial benefits in identifying
terrorists or in exonerating people accused of being terrorists,"
Farwell said.

But first the controversial technique, which has had some success,
must overcome the skepticism of some experts who are reluctant to
embrace it.

Brain fingerprinting works by measuring and analyzing split-second
spikes in electrical activity in the brain when it responds to
something it recognizes.

For example, if a suspected murderer was shown a detail of the crime
scene that only he would know, his brain would involuntarily register
that knowledge. Under Farwell's system, that brain activity is picked
up through electrodes attached to the suspect's scalp and measured by
an electroencephalograph (EEG) as a waveform.

A person who had never seen that crime scene would show no reaction.

Many scientists have studied the initial spike in brain activity,
known as the p300, that peaks at between 300 and 500 milliseconds in
response to a stimulus. Farwell's contribution was to develop
something he calls the MERMER (Memory and Encoding Related
Multifaceted Electroencephalographic Response) that measures the
pattern of brain response up to 1,200 milliseconds after the stimulus
has been administered.

MURDER SOLVED

In 1999, Farwell used his technique to solve a 1984 murder in
Missouri. Police strongly suspected a local woodcutter, James
Grinder, of kidnapping, raping and murdering Julie Helton, a 25 year-
old woman, but had lacked the evidence to convict him. He agreed to
undergo brain fingerprinting to demonstrate his innocence.

Farwell flashed on a computer screen details of the crime that only
the murderer would have known, including items taken from the victim,
where the victim's body was located, items left at the crime scene
and details of the wounds on the body of the victim.

"What his brain said was that he was guilty," he said. "He had
critical, detailed information only the killer would have. The murder
of Julie Helton was stored in his brain, and had been stored there 15
years ago when he committed the murder."

Grinder pleaded guilty a week later in exchange for a sentence of
life in prison, avoiding the death penalty. He also confessed to
three other murders of young women.

In 2000, brain fingerprinting underwent its first legal challenge in
the case of Terry Harrington, an Iowa man who had spent 23 years in
prison for the 1978 murder of a security guard. Farwell's tests
suggested conclusively that Harrington was innocent since he did not
have knowledge of the crime scene.

The judge in the case admitted the evidence but did not free the
suspect, saying it was not clear test results would have led to a
different verdict in the original trial. The case is before the
Supreme Court of Iowa.

Farwell has done work for both the FBI and the CIA and has been
contacted by foreign governments, including some in the Middle East.

Still, critics are dismissive.

SNAKE OIL

"It's pure snake oil. There's no evidence you can determine evil
intent or anything else from brain fingerprinting. It's the 21st
century version of the lie detector test, which also doesn't work
very well," said Barry Steinhardt, who directs a technology program
for the American Civil Liberties Union.

A General Accounting Office report in 2001 found that CIA, FBI,
Department of Defense and Secret Service officials did not at this
stage foresee using brain fingerprinting because of the expertise
needed to employ the technique and because it would likely be of
limited usefulness.

The CIA, for example, explained that to administer brain
fingerprinting, an investigator would have to know enough details of
a particular event to test an individual for knowledge of that event.
In counterintelligence, such specific details are not always
available.

Farwell countered by citing a 1993 test he conducted for the FBI in
which he identified 11 FBI agents from a group of 15 people. "If we
can detect someone trained by the FBI, we should be able to detect
someone trained by al Qaeda," he said.

However, just like lie detector tests, the technique requires the
cooperation of the subject. A suspect could simply refuse to
cooperate by closing his eyes and refusing to watch the prompts
flashed on the screen before him.

If and when the technique is widely accepted, a judge may have to
decide whether to admit test results as evidence.

Independent scientists contacted by the GAO investigators raised
various objections to brain fingerprinting and said it needed more
work into issues such as how memory was affected by drugs and
alcohol, mental illness and extreme anxiety during crime situations.

Still, William Iacono, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at
the University of Minnesota, said he was confident that brain
fingerprinting would eventually establish itself for many
applications, including the investigation of carefully planned
premeditated crimes.

Meanwhile, Farwell is pressing on. He wants to explore the use of
brain fingerprinting to detect and monitor the onset of Alzheimer's
Disease.

He also sees commercial interest from advertisers anxious to measure
how effective their commercials are, which parts are remembered and
which forgotten.

"It takes time for new technologies to win acceptance, but it's only
a matter of time," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?
type=scienceNews&storyID=2208667