ABC World News - Brain Fingerprinting

From ABC News, this is World News this morning. Now from our headquarters in New York...

Reporter: You've heard of telepathy, extrasensory perception, two unusual forms of silent communication. Well, now there is the brain-to-speech synthesizer. Just think of it...

Here is ABC's Bill Blackmore.

Reporter: It was bound to happen. As soon as scientists learned how to detect brainwaves, with computers they could then connect those computer signals to a speech synthesizer.

Here is how it works. The computer shows you many different words. When you see a word you are waiting for, you naturally produce a certain kind of brain wave. The computer detects that brain wave and its voice says the word it just showed you.

This system, created by Dr. Lawrence Farwell in his Maryland lab. It can also offer you individual letters, so you can build up any word you want. But since the same brainwave occurs whenever you recognize anything, it also has another kind of use.

In one test, Farwell was able to pick all 17 FBI agents out of a group of 21 people by flashing information only FBI agents would know on the screen. Suppose a criminal were shown information only the criminal would know.

Farwell: This brain would be saying "Aha, Yes I do recognize it. Those were the details of the bomb that I constructed, or what have you."

Reporter: The brain responds in half a second, before the person can decide whether to lie.

Bill Blackmore, ABC News, Potomac Maryland

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