I must admit when I first heard the words "Brain Fingerprinting" I was also
quite concerned. The claims were a bit outrageous, but the science behind
them is fairly sound. The brain will respond differently to information that
is familiar than to information that is novel. (this is where the hundreds of
studies they were talking about came from, similar to an "oddball" paradigm
that is prevalent in the ERP literature). I must assume they were using an
ERP procedure, and by presenting both familiar and novel information a
baseline within each subject can be created. Then, when information that is
either new or novel (this is the interesting part) is presented, the brain's
reaction is compared to the baseline data. Therefore, they are not confirming
the null. This is more like a fancy polygraph than anything else, but still
could be useful.
The use of "weeds and grass" (here, I am assuming quite a bit) as the phrase
that concludes guilt or innocence was probably a bad one, and I would assume
that there were other details of the crime in which we didn't see details.
"Brain Fingerprinting," I don't think so, but there is some sound science
behind the research. I'm thinking more along the lines of an "Extended
Polygraph."
Jonathan Roberts, M.S.
Adjunct Faculty, Randolph Macon Woman's College
ABD in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Virginia Tech
