brain fingerprinting

[ breyn fing-ger-prin-ting ]

noun

1. a technology for determining whether specific knowledge or information is stored in a person's brain, by showing the person certain words or pictures and measuring brain-wave response:

   Brain fingerprinting proved that the suspect recognized the murder victim.

brain fingerprinting

noun

1. a technique in which sensors worn on the head are used to measure the involuntary brain activity of someone in response to certain images or pieces of evidence pertaining to a crime

Other Words From

• brain fin·ger·print noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of brain fingerprinting¹

First recorded in 1995–2000

Example Sentences

In the second season of the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, Steven Avery, who is serving a life sentence for a brutal killing he says he did not commit, undergoes a “brain fingerprinting” exam, which uses an electrode-studded headset called an electroencephalogram, or EEG, to read his neural activity and translate it into waves rising and falling on a graph.

From The Guardian

“Brain fingerprinting could have provided the evidence we needed to bring the perpetrators to justice before they actually committed the crime.”

From The Guardian

“These people were already on watch lists,” Larry Farwell, the inventor of brain fingerprinting, told me.

From The Guardian

“Brain fingerprinting isn’t lie detection. It simply determines whether you are storing information. So, if an elephant ran into the room and you saw it, I could test you and see if that information is stored in your brain. That’s the concept of it, which is far superior to doing lie detection on the polygraph,” she said.

From The Guardian

And she manages to sell brain fingerprinting as a marvelous innovation in lie detection that can prove whether a person recognizes details of a crime or not, rather than the controversial practice many consider it to be.

From Salon