Forget Fingerprints: "Brain Printing" is 100 Percent Accurate

News Staff : Apr 20, 2016
Binghamton University

"Cerebral security" could be used at checkpoints to high-security locations like the Pentagon, naval research bases and nuclear instrumentation labs.

(Binghamton, NY)—Do you like pizza? Would you consider yourself a boat enthusiast, a landlubber or none of the above? Does comedian Adam Sandler make you laugh or make you cringe? (Photo: Jonathan Cohen)

Your responses to certain stimuli—foods, celebrities, words, seafaring vessels, you name it—might seem trivial, but they say a lot about you. In fact (with the proper clearance), these responses could gain you access into restricted areas of the Pentagon.

A new technology developed at Binghamton University can identify you simply by measuring your brain's response to different stimuli. The technology has garnered attention from media outlets around the world, including National Geographic, which spent a day interviewing and filming on campus. It's called brainprint, and it could revolutionize the security industry.

A team of researchers, led by Assistant Professor of Psychology Sarah Laszlo and Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Zhanpeng Jin, recorded the brain activity of people wearing an electroencephalogram headset while they looked at a series of 500 images designed specifically to elicit unique responses from person to person—e.g., a slice of pizza, a boat, Anne Hathaway, the word "conundrum." Each image flashed on a monitor for only half a second.

In their original study, titled "Brainprint," published in May on the website of the academic journal, Neurocomputing, the research team was able to identify one person out of a group of 32 by that person's responses, with 97 percent accuracy. More recently, they were 100 percent accurate at identifying one person out of a group of 30.

"When you take hundreds of these images, where every person is going to feel differently about each individual one, then you can be really accurate in identifying which person it was who looked at them just by their brain activity," Laszlo says.

For example, stimuli used in the experiment included images of sushi. Laszlo picked sushi because it's a divisive food. Some love it. Some hate it because it's slimy. Some have never...

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