With the film « Criminal » or the series « Mindhunter », American productions had already accustomed us to delving into the minds of criminals. Fiction is now becoming reality, as recently demonstrated by the Dubai police with their Memory Print machine.
Reading a suspect’s thoughts to better expose them was, not so long ago, an idea worthy of science fiction. Today, it has become possible. The General Department of Forensic Science and Criminology of Dubai has, for the first time, used the ‘Memory Print’ technology (which could be translated as ‘memory imprinting machine’) to solve a criminal case. This first application undoubtedly opens up new perspectives for investigators worldwide.
The case took place in January 2022. Following a murder committed in a warehouse where the murder weapon was recovered, Dubai police identified several potential suspects. Investigators decided to subject them to this new technological tool, which had already been under experimental use in their department for a year.
Memory Print: a 100% reliable cognitive polygraph?
How does this technique work? During an interrogation, a headset equipped with electrodes and connected to the machine is placed on the suspect’s head. They are then shown photos or objects related to the murder. The Memory Print records the brainwaves emitted by the subject’s brain, particularly the P300 waves. These waves correspond to brain activity triggered by a visual or auditory stimulus. A spike in these specific waves indicates that the person has stored in their brain the memory of the object or the scene being presented in the photos. In short—or rather, even before a single word is spoken—the suspect is betrayed by their memory, capable of storing every event of daily life !
Neuroscience to the rescue of truth.
This technique, which places neuroscience at the heart of police investigations and forensic methods, was developed by American neuroscientist Lawrence Farwell, a former researcher at the prestigious Harvard University and inventor of brain fingerprinting (or cerebral imprinting technology). It is, in a sense, a nearly infallible cognitive polygraph. Lawrence Farwell currently heads the Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, whose mission is to develop testing systems capable of determining which information is stored in human memory and making it available to the justice system as scientific evidence.His work has already placed him on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential innovators of the 21st century. He even made an appearance with his device in the second season of the Netflix documentary « Making of a Murderer ». Once again, reality meets fiction…
Admissible evidence?
In the United States, courts are increasingly turning to brain imaging. In France, however, judges remain reluctant to rely on this ‘cognitive’ source of truth, because while the brain cannot lie, its reactions remain difficult to interpret.
In the Dubai case, the « Memory Print » fully played its part. The brain of one of the suspects reacted to the sight of the murder weapon with a burst of P300 waves. Questioned by police, he subsequently confessed.
Sources
*https://menafn.com/1101492036/Dubai-Police-nab-murderer-by-looking-into-his-brain
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