Brain Fingerprint ® : a new instrument for scientific ufology.

Text by Dr. Eugenio Ballini (Fondazione Sentinel, Gruppo Camelot, owner Italianufo, Vareseufo)

First publishing (28/04/2004) : "Inserto Speciale" Allegato a N°8, Anno 2004. Camelot Chronicles.


A new instrument which is able to determine with extreme certainty if in a person's memory there is or "not" fixed information is undoubtedly the one that could give modern ufology a further quality leap, and make it part of scientific research.

According to the latest studies, this instrument seems to coincide with the revolutionary Brain Fingerprint® [Note A] (www.brainfingerprint.com) [1]. It is a testing system, that looks like a mixture of hardware devices, software programs, algorithms and procedures, planned with the purpose of recording the different electro-physiological manifestations appearing during the brain activity, and able to measure them in a not-invasive way through the MERA (Multifaceted Electroencephalographic Response Analysis), [1], and obtain from these some information useful to determine pre-existing memories.

The Brain Fingerprint is used with success in different criminal cases, Harrington [2] and Grinder [3] above all, but even in the medicine and pharmaceutical field, and in the latest years in the fight against terrorism. It was associated to ufology, and more precisely to the research in the abduction field and the lived experience analyses on the supposed abducted subject, for the first time by Dr. Carlo Sabadin during a conference which took place at Budrio, BO, Italy in January 2004 [4]; on this topic you can also find a short article on Nexus Magazine N° 49 (April-May 2004), in the column "Villaggio Globale" (Global Village), a simple translation of an abstract on BBC web site [5].

But before trying to understand how useful it could be for researchers and ufologists, it is necessary to understand fully "what" we are talking about.

Brain Fingerprint was ideated and developed by Dr. Lawrence A. Farwell, Neuroscience Ph.D. at the University of Illinois [6], and by his team composed of scientists and technicians (S.S. Smith, D.C. Richardson, R.S. Hernandez, P. Rapp and W.G. Iacono among the others) after twenty years researches, tests and scientific publications. Starting from the research on the measurable brain response known as P300, which started in the 70es and has been widely accepted in several scientific fields such as psycho-physiology, the researchers have discovered a wider brain response called MERMER® [Note 1] (Memory and Encoding Related Multifaceted Electroencephalographic Response) [1], that has increased the accuracy of the results obtained by the test by EEG/P300 [1]; we better deal with this topic, from a technical and scientific point of view, in a future article.

We have to point out that with the introduction of MERMER within the different analysis algorithms of the brain waves, the results' exactness obtained with the Brain Fingerprint test has been verified in all the tested cases, and it has been carried out on more than 200 different subjects [7]. As an example of these cases is a study carried out on a group of people, among them some FBI agents, which aimed at measuring the brain response given on words and sentences that only these agents knew [8].

In order to solve any possible doubt on the scientifical character and seriousness of the topic, all the results have been published in the most authoritative scientific peer-reviewed journals of this field, or better with a scientific referee-based approach, as for example: "Psychophysiology", "Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology", "Physical Review E" and "Journal of Forensic Sciences". Moreover there have been several conferences, congresses and meetings in which the different aspects of this technology were presented and discussed; among the most important ones it seems correct to quote the several annual meetings of "Society for Psychophysiological Research" annual meetings [9].

From this point of view, it is fundamental to underline the fact that the studies on Brain Fingerprint technology have brought about the correct determination of every single tested case, when the information provided by the tests was sufficient to obtain a certain response (in more than 90% of the cases).

These researches are now carried on in the Brain Fingerprint Laboratories Inc., a private company founded in 2003 by Dr. Farwell in Fairfield, Iowa, which then moved to the Washington University Technology Centre, located in Seattle, WA, in order to use this kind of technology on a wider scale and in different fields.

From the mediatic point of view this argument has had a large resonance after the test results given by Brain Fingerprint and EEG/P300, carried out on the convict Mr.Terry Harrington (See Figure 1), were admitted as evidence by the US District Court in march 2002 [10].

In 1977 Mr.Harrington, who was seventeen at that time, was accused of the homicide of the retired police captain Mr.John Schweer, and, in spite of a very convincing alibi and various witnesses in his favour, in 1978 he was condemned to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court of the State of Iowa, with a virdict mainly based on the witness of Mr.Kevin Huges, a sixteen year-old boy.

(Figure 1)

In 2000 Dr. Farwell carried out the Brain Fingerprint test on him, and the results showed that what was stored in Mr.Harrington's mind did not correspond to the crime scene but to his alibi [11]. Fundamental, at this point, was the sentence of District Judge Hon.Timothy O'Grady, in March 2001, who stated that Brain Fingerprint test met the Legal Daubert Standard for the admissibility in court as scientific evidence [12]. After the case reopening on 26 February 2003 [13], after more than 25 years of detection, since October 2003 Mr.Harrington has been a free man [14].

This test, that will be analyzed in the course of this article, simply measures the brain waves produced by the subject's brain, and detected by the sensors placed within the EEG/P300, as a response to the informative stimulus proposed to the subject through particular devices and software programs. These waves are detected in a second's fraction after the information is presented, within a very precise 300ms time lapse (from which the name P300) and 800 to 1500 ms time lapse, before the subject could be able to give an intentionally wrong response, or to control it in some way. It is a good thing to remember that everything happened independently from the subject's emotivity and will.

In order to consider the procedure followed by the Brain Fingerprint test in a deeper way, it is possible to notice that the information sequence could be formed by images, sounds, words or sentences, and it is presented to the subject, under the control of fixed software algorithm, maintaining each of them at an interval of a fraction of a second. While building this sequence we have to remember that the information could be divided into three distinct groups [15], each with an own characteristic and functionality:

• Information defined "Target", about 15 %,
  
  
• Information defined "Irrelevant", about 70 %,
  
  
• Information defined "Probes", about 15 %.

These informative stimuli are given to the subject that is instructed to push a particular button as answer to the information he considers target, or known, and another button as answer to the other fully unknown stimulus.

"Target" consist therefore of general information known by the suspect, they will act as a reference base of the cerebral response we will obtain for the information known as significant for the suspect within the crime contest (continue line in the two graphics shown aside). These stimuli, being known, will provoke a specific MERMER event.

Most of the stimuli do not belong to the "Target" category, they are unknown and are not related to the investigated situation, but they will be linked to other life situations. They will belong to the "Irrilevant" category. It is important to notice that these stimuli do not provoke a MERMER event and, for this reason, they build up a reference point for the brain response to information known as to be irrilevant for the suspect within the crime contest (dotted line in the two graphics shown aside).

There are, however, some stimuli within the "Non Target" cathegory, that are relevant for the situation under investigation. These stimuli, that can provoke or not a MERMER event, will fall into the "Probes" category and they are fundamental for the success of the test (bold line in the two graphics shown aside).

At this point it is easy to see how for a subject that has the knowledge of the investigated situation, crime scene or other in advance, the "Probes" information will be the same as the ones of the knowledge already acquired, thus provoking a MERMER event (as shown in the graphic in Figure 2); this kind of brain wave response will show the presence of the information related to the investigated situation, stored in some area of the subject's mind.

(Figure 2)

On the other hand a subject that lacks this knowledge, will not provoke a MERMER event, and so the "Probes" information will not be separated from the "Irrilevant" ones (as shown in the graphic in Figure 3); the result will be absence of relevant information.

This research has been mainly carried out in the legal spheres, which has been made possible by a technique that detects with high certainty range the difference between the life situation of someone who has commited the crime, and someone who has not: the former has actually stored the details of the committed crime in some corner of his memory, while the latter does not. This presence or absence of specific information is what is scientifically detected by the test in question, or in a deeper way, it is what can be measured by the Brain Fingerprint, thanks to the headband called EEG/P300, equipped with the EEG sensors, which detect the presence or absence of the P300 and MERMER brain responses.

In order to support the fact that the legal field is, in this moment, the most important branch where the Brain Fingerprint researches are concentrated, we have to show that in the United States of America about 5000 persons, some of whom are potentially innocent, are in jail with a death sentence on their heads. Hundreds of thousands of persons are in this moment expiating, from life imprisonment to more than 10 years of detention, and, in general, more that 10 million people are incriminated every year [16]. The possibility of improving the certainty range and justice in such cases as the Harrington one, where maybe it is not possible to have fingerprints or DNA as reperts, could be very important for future justice.

However this specific test can be extremely useful in a wider range of cases which strongly differe from each other:

(Figure 3)

• In the investigation of terrorist activities, where DNA or fingerprints are not available, it is possible to take advantage of the fact that the person who plans and/or executes the crime, or even he/she who helps in some way these criminals, has surely these information stored in his mind; in this way terrorists can be identified even before they carry out attentats, with an improvement in everyone's security, and above all for the innocent persons that are mistaken for terrorists [17],
  
  
• In the medical research and especially in the geriatrich field, as Alzheimer: thanks to this kind of test, it is possible to obtain a diagnosis in an easier and cheaper way which is not invasive in the disease progress, and a more precise measurement of the effectiveness of the different treatments and progresses in the course of the time [18],
  
  
• In the insurance field, we could reduce the numbers of frauds, determining if a person has or not the knowledge of fraud acts,
  
  
• In support to computer science police: this kind of tests could help to determine if a person has committed a computer crime or not, given that, in some cases, there is neither a physical evidence of the event nor a possibility to have some witnesses [19].

Besides an application is such important and serious fields as the one mentioned above, there could also be and improvement in the abduction research field (i.e. hypothetical kidnapping carried out by aliens, entities and/or military people). Frequently we forget that the persons, who think or are persuaded to be subject to the abduction phenomena often live their status in a negative way.

Undoubtedly it is extremely important to state with absolute certainty if a person, that thinks or has the sensation to be abducted, has the "real memory" of this lived experience or not, and so whether this event, that he thinks to be real, is born of his mind or not. It is a utopia to think that? We will see.




Notes
[Note A] - Both terms "Brain Fingerprint" and "MERMER" are on ® Trademark Registered; I've decided to put the symbol ® on side of these two terms only the first time they are quoted, in order not to make reading difficult (as the different papers and articles within the web pages of Brain Fingerprint Laboratories Inc.).



Bibliography References