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Brain fingerprinting: a comprehensive tutorial review of detection of concealed information with event-related brain potentials

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Abstract

Brain fingerprinting (BF) detects concealed information stored in the brain by measuring brainwaves. A specific EEG event-related potential, a P300-MERMER, is elicited by stimuli that are significant in the present context. BF detects P300-MERMER responses to words/pictures relevant to a crime scene, terrorist training, bomb-making knowledge, etc. BF detects information by measuring cognitive information processing. BF does not detect lies, stress, or emotion. BF computes a determination of “information present” or “information absent” and a statistical confidence for each individual determination. Laboratory and field tests at the FBI, CIA, US Navy and elsewhere have resulted in 0% errors: no false positives and no false negatives. 100% of determinations made were correct. 3% of results have been “indeterminate.” BF has been applied in criminal cases and ruled admissible in court. Scientific standards for BF tests are discussed. Meeting the BF scientific standards is necessary for accuracy and validity. Alternative techniques that failed to meet the BF scientific standards produced low accuracy and susceptibility to countermeasures. BF is highly resistant to countermeasures. No one has beaten a BF test with countermeasures, despite a $100,000 reward for doing so. Principles of applying BF in the laboratory and the field are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Note that an indeterminate outcome is neither a false positive nor a false negative error. Rather, it is a determination that there was insufficient data to draw a conclusion with a high statistical confidence in either direction. False negatives and false positives are errors that provide false evidence, to the detriment of the judicial process. An indeterminate provides no evidence, and has no legal impact.

  2. Accuracy is correctly reported as 100% minus the error rate. This allows the reader to compute the true error rate. Reports of “accuracy” that confound false positive and false negative errors with indeterminate outcomes have the effect of hiding the true error rate, and thus make comparison with correctly reported studies problematic.

  3. Note that in brain fingerprinting, both targets and irrelevants provide standards. Bootstrapping computes the probability that the probe responses are more similar to the target responses, or more similar to the irrelevant responses. This results in high statistical confidences for both information-present and information-absent determinations.

  4. For example, in Meixner and Rosenfeld (2010, p. 63, Table 2, subject 10), GNO condition was classified “innocent” when there was an 86% probability that the probe response was larger than the irrelevant response (i.e., 86% probability that “guilty” was the correct classification).

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Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to former FBI scientists Drew Richardson, PhD and Sharon Smith, PhD for their substantial contributions to some of the research reviewed herein; to attorneys Thomas Makeig, Mary Kennedy, and Thomas Frerichs for their legal expertise in obtaining admissibility in court for brain fingerprinting; to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for funding several of the studies reviewed herein; and to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US Navy for their cooperation and assistance in conducting research with their personnel in their facilities. The views expressed herein are the views of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other individual or agency.

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    Lawrence A. Farwell

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Farwell, L.A. Brain fingerprinting: a comprehensive tutorial review of detection of concealed information with event-related brain potentials. Cogn Neurodyn 6, 115–154 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-012-9192-2

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