Word: brained
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Blood flow isn't the only way your mind can blow your cover; electrical activity can too. Your brain emits signals called event-related potentials (ERPs) that can be tracked with a high-density electroencephalogram (EEG) machine and 128 sensors attached to the face and scalp. Telling the truth and then a lie can take from 40 to 60 milliseconds longer than telling two truths in a row, because the brain must shift its data-assembly strategies. In theory, if a subject truthfully answers a question related to intention (say, "Are you traveling to Miami?") and then answers a more...
...last they may be getting somewhere. Next month No Lie MRI of San Diego, a beneficiary of some of that federal largesse, will roll out a brain-scan lie-detection service it is marketing to government and industry. Another company, Cephos of Pepperell, Mass., hopes to follow within a few years...
Scientists at DODPI have also become expert at tracking the motion of the eyes. When the eye takes in a series of images of faces, objects or scenes, it spends less time on familiar elements because the brain needs less processing to interpret them. DODPI has developed an infrared camera that can track eye movement and an algorithm that can interpret it, providing clues as to whether a suspect recognizes, say, the face of a kidnapped child. Tests have reportedly achieved an 85% to 92% success rate...
Each of these systems comes with uncertainties and limitations. Researchers working with EEGs, for example, concede that not all truths read the same way in the brain. A truthful answer about where you were born may produce a quicker--seemingly more honest--signal than an equally truthful one about how you spent your last birthday. Moreover, your brain and someone else's may not answer the same question at the same speed. Each test must thus be painstakingly calibrated for each subject. Not only is that impractical, but it also introduces a whole new level of variability--like trying...
...fMRIs may be more serious. Physical anomalies such as evidence of a stroke or tumor can interfere with the scan's accuracy. And the test is administered in a decidedly unnatural way--with the subject lying down inside a giant magnet. Since speaking aloud activates regions of the brain that could swamp lie-detection results, subjects are asked yes-or- no questions and then instructed to push a button to answer. Maybe the brain operates the same way with a push-button fib as with a verbal one--but maybe it doesn't. And because we all do a certain...