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Brain wave may be used to detect what people have seen, recognize
Brain activity can be used to tell whether someone recognizes details they encountered in normal, daily life, which may have implications for criminal investigations and use in courtrooms, new research shows.
The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that a particular brain wave, known as P300, could serve as a marker that identifies places, objects, or other details that a person has seen and recognizes from everyday life.
Research using EEG recordings of brain activity has shown that the P300 brain wave tends to be large when a person recognizes a meaningful item among a list of nonmeaningful items. Using P300, researchers can give a subject a test called the Concealed Information Test (CIT) to try to determine whether they recognize information that is related to a crime or other event.
Most studies investigating P300 and recognition have been conducted in lab settings that are far removed from the kinds of information a real witness or suspect might be exposed to. This new study marks an important advance, says lead research John B. Meixner of Northwestern University, because it draws on details from activities in participants' normal, daily lives.
"Much like a real crime, our participants made their own decisions and were exposed to all of the distracting information in the world," he explains.
"Perhaps the most surprising finding was the extent to which we could detect very trivial details from a subject's day, such as the color of umbrella that the participant had used," says Meixner. "This precision is exciting for the future because it indicates that relatively peripheral crime details, such as physical features of the crime scene, might be usable in a real-world CIT -- though we still need to do much more work to learn about this."
To achieve a more realistic CIT, Meixner and co-author J. Peter Rosenfeld outfitted 24 college student participants with small cameras that recorded both video and sound -- the students wore the cameras clipped to their clothes for 4 hours as they went about their day.
For half of the students, the researchers used the recordings to identify details specific to each person's day, which became "probe" items for that person. The researchers also came up with corresponding, "irrelevant" items that the student had not encountered -- if the probe item was a specific grocery store, for example, the irrelevant items might include other grocery stores.
For the other half of the students, the "probe" items related to details or items they had not encountered, but which were instead drawn from the recordings of other participants. The researchers wanted to simulate a real investigation, in which a suspect with knowledge of a crime would be shown the same crime-related details as a suspect who may have no crime-related knowledge.
The next day, all of the students returned to the lab and were shown a series of words that described different details or items (i.e., the probe and irrelevant items), while their brain activity was recorded via EEG.
The results showed that the P300 was larger for probe items than for irrelevant items, but only for the students who had actually seen or encountered the probe.
Further analyses revealed that P300 responses effectively distinguished probe items from irrelevant items on the level of each individual participant, suggesting that it is a robust and reliable marker of recognition.
These findings have implications for memory research, but they may also have real-world application in the domain of criminal law given that some countries, like Japan and Israel, use the CIT in criminal investigations.
"One reason that the CIT has not been used in the US is that the test may not meet the criteria to be admissible in a courtroom," says Meixner. "Our work may help move the P300-based CIT one step closer to admissibility by demonstrating the test's validity and reliability in a more realistic context."
Meixner, Rosenfeld, and colleagues plan on investigating additional factors that may impact detection, including whether images from the recordings may be even more effective at eliciting recognition than descriptive words -- preliminary data suggest this may be the case.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Association for Psychological Science. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- J. B. Meixner, J. P. Rosenfeld. Detecting Knowledge of Incidentally Acquired, Real-World Memories Using a P300-Based Concealed-Information Test.Psychological Science, 2014; DOI: 10.1177/0956797614547278
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140923101656.htm
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
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Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
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• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
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