Brain Fingerprinting

Dr. Lawrence A. Farewell

Presented by
Tonya Slager
The fundamental difference between
the perpetrator of a crime and an
innocent person is that the
perpetrator, having committed the
crime, has the details of the crime
stored in his memory, and the
innocent suspect does not.
This is what Brain Fingerprinting
testing detects scientifically, the
presence or absence of specific
information.
 Defining Brain Fingerprinting

 Scientific technique to determine whether or not

specific information is stored in an individual's
brain
 Relevant words, pictures or sounds are presented
to a subject by a computer in a series with stimuli
 The brainwave responses measured using a
patented headband equipped with EEG sensors
 P300- Specific, measurable brain response
 emitted by the brain of a subject who has the relevant
information stored in his brain
 How Does it Work?
 measurements are recorded in fractions of
a second after the stimulus is presented,
before the subject is able to formulate or
control a response
 Dr. Farwell discovered that the P300 was
one aspect of a larger brain-wave
response that he named and patented, a
MERMER (memory and encoding related
multifaceted electroencephalographic
response)
 Brain responses were recorded from the
midline frontal, central, and parietal
scalp locations, referenced to linked
mastoids (behind the ear), and from a
location on the forehead to track eye
movements
 At the end of each test, subjects were
given a written list of all stimulus items
and asked to mark each item as
noteworthy, somewhat noteworthy, or
irrelevant – those marked were thrown
out
Information is absent Information is
present
 The MERMER includes:
1. The P300 -an electrically positive
component maximal at the parietal
scalp site
2. Another, longer latency, electrically
negative subcomponent prominent
at the frontal scalp site
3. Phasic changes in the frequency and
structure of the signal.
 Types of Stimuli Used
 Probes
 Life-experience related
 Relevant to the investigated event -recognizable and
noteworthy only for the subjects who had participated in the
event (MERMER)
 Indistinguishable from the Irrelevants for a subject who is not
knowledgeable about the situation under investigation
 Targets
 Push a button to indicate known image
 Since the relatively rare Targets are singled out in the task
being performed, the Targets are noteworthy for the subject,
and each Target stimulus elicits a MERMER
 Irrelevant Stimuli
 information relevant to the crime that the suspect claims to
have no knowledge of
 Case Studies
 FBI- new agents 100% accurate
 CIA- 3 experiments
 Pictures rather than verbal cues
 Words/phrases to determine connection between
professionals, their organization, and known
information related to work
 Real-life events including 2 felony crimes

Overall 79 participants with 100% accuracy

 Questions?

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