Indian neuroscientist peers into a woman's brain, finds guilt

This is pure Philip K. Dick: in June a judge in India found a woman guilty of murdering her former fiancé and sentenced her to life in prison. The smoking gun? Test results obtained using the Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test (BEOS) developed by Indian neuroscientist Champadi Raman Mukundan. The BEOS software uses an EEG to determine whether the subject is recalling specific details of a crime as they are being read aloud. BEOS "works" because as the crime's details are recited to a subject, their brain lights up in specific regions -- the areas that (in theory) show measurable changes when experiences are relived. According to Mukundan, the system can distinguish between peoples' memories of events they witnessed and deeds they committed. Gee, now that we have the technology to read criminal's minds and predict crimes we'll be expecting a crime-free society any minute now.

Update: The headline error in the post has been fixed -- thanks commenters!

[Via Slashdot]

[)law( @ Sep 15th 2008 9:39PM]

These should be installed in the lunch room of every bussiness to find out who the thiving basterd is who eats other co workers lunches...

[russ d @ Sep 15th 2008 10:11PM]

Hey, I didn't see your name on that sandwich.

[KYDS3K @ Sep 15th 2008 10:15PM]

hmmm looks like SOMEBODY has been reading Lifehacker . . . ;-)

[Graham @ Sep 15th 2008 10:24PM]

Yea! Good idea. I walked into work today and all four bottles of SoBe I had in the fridge were empty!

[marosell @ Sep 16th 2008 12:02PM]

Sandvich?! nom nom nom nom

[KEROLiUKAS @ Sep 15th 2008 9:39PM]

Wow that's lame..Though i really don't believe it worked, I think they just needed some evidence to put her away, and this is the best they could come up with, which is kinda sad.

[americansoldierr @ Sep 15th 2008 10:13PM]

I thank God for this great country we live in. It's far from perfect, but it's pretty amazing and this just shores that up...

[Artie Lange @ Sep 15th 2008 11:35PM]

No love for the Point Break reference? Tough crowd...

[Artie Lange @ Sep 15th 2008 9:43PM]

I AM AN FBI AGENT!

Sorry.

[andres @ Sep 15th 2008 10:08PM]

not anymore

[Cool guy #2 @ Sep 15th 2008 10:40PM]

I'm an illegal immigrant!!

...from Canada

[Jeebus @ Sep 18th 2008 11:15PM]

I'm a cop you idiot!

[Elkin @ Sep 15th 2008 9:43PM]

Minority Report anyone?

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Sep 15th 2008 9:46PM]

A Scanner Darkly...

[AshR @ Sep 15th 2008 10:09PM]

I was just thinking that too.

I'll join the "Future Crime" Fighters, and beat crime before they even happen... lol

[thedesolate1 @ Sep 16th 2008 11:28PM]

what about Wanted? Ofcourse it will never be used on people of power or otherwise deemed inconclusive.

[Me @ Sep 15th 2008 9:43PM]

...or much less convincing arguments against capital punishment...

[Simon @ Sep 15th 2008 9:43PM]

they sentenced someone to life in prison on theory? if that really works then great, but what if she's innocent?

[Stephen @ Sep 15th 2008 9:48PM]

Then somone, somewhere is about to loose alot of money...

[andres @ Sep 15th 2008 10:08PM]

loose is fine, as long as they don't lose it.

[Brian @ Sep 15th 2008 10:10PM]

Whoa! You can loose money? Can you tighten it too?

[russdogg @ Sep 15th 2008 10:25PM]

Uh, i think that's the point of this article.

[Scott @ Sep 15th 2008 9:54PM]

If it works with identification of details as they are being read aloud, I would imagine that sights, sounds and smells would cause intense activity in those 'specific regions'

[Max Tinglewood @ Sep 15th 2008 9:57PM]

Think naughty thoughts, think naughty thoughts.

[andres @ Sep 15th 2008 10:09PM]

always

[JAmerican @ Sep 15th 2008 10:01PM]

I wonder what guilt looks like. I think it might look something like Bush or Cheney.

[projektR @ Sep 15th 2008 10:02PM]

BEOS or BS? No, I think this is a very interesting concept, but what is the realistic accuracy of such technology? We can have very strong emotional responses to events we never actually participated in -- novels, films are probably the most obvious examples. So how do we know that these brain signals we're reading are not just from the person's activated imagination?

[cantcount @ Sep 15th 2008 10:28PM]

I think the emotional response from imagining someone being killed vs. actually having the memory of killing someone would be quite different regardless of how active an imagination would be.

- This message was sent from my tricorder

[GON @ Sep 15th 2008 10:07PM]

They should try this on OJ.

[Engadgetier @ Sep 15th 2008 10:15PM]

i like orange juice, but OJ is guilty!!!!

[Reader @ Sep 15th 2008 10:58PM]

What's the point? Everyone already knows he was guilty.

[JR @ Sep 15th 2008 10:07PM]

Shut up! Someone hacked my brain and put those thoughts there!

[andres @ Sep 15th 2008 10:10PM]

you weren't supposed to remember that!

[Nzo @ Sep 15th 2008 10:08PM]

I have mixed feelings. On one hand BEOS has such a slick interface. On the other hand its liable to get me incarcerated if I'm not careful.

[tbirdman @ Sep 15th 2008 10:12PM]

well i highly doubt it can be used in the us without other evidence pointing to one individual as the culprit. i know if i were found guilty of something with this tech i would try to get a retrial. but this is very interesting. i would love to hear the legal wranglings that are going to happen because of the highly criminal us government trying to use this in the "drug war."

[FRZ @ Sep 15th 2008 10:22PM]

Yeah sure, crime free anytime now. I am not gonna hold my breath though. I am just a rebel that way.

[rayman19082 @ Sep 15th 2008 10:26PM]

What if you recount some similar event from a movie? This is so flawed.

[Blooper62 @ Sep 15th 2008 10:31PM]

I can see it now.... Maury 2.0. YOU ARE THE FATHER!!! oh and while I was in there I noticed that he wants to sleep with your sister!
Yall dont know Me!!

[guidedbyvoip @ Sep 15th 2008 10:36PM]

Argument against: Describe to me a breakfast. (Bear with me) My brains reaction and readings withing BEOS, are they signifying that particular breakfast read aloud or a breakfast that I've had quite like it?

If someone is supposedly "re-experiencing" the event in regions of their brain, how is it proof they are guilty and not envisioning a similar occurence?

[jonnys @ Sep 15th 2008 10:44PM]

Someone should port ReiserFS to BeOS....

[Living Brain Donor @ Sep 15th 2008 10:46PM]

Sadly, it doesn't work. Wired did a piece on this a while back that seemed to do a decent job of explaining why Mukundan's analysis is mostly fantasy. There are other papers in the primary literature saying the same thing, but this should give you the gist of things.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-06/mf_neurohacks

[Sherbert @ Sep 15th 2008 11:05PM]

When they mentioned Guilt all I could think of was Trauma Center...

[H Cushing @ Sep 15th 2008 11:07PM]

The charlatan who is pedaling this crap is not a neurosurgeon. Please correct your title.

[tiuk @ Sep 15th 2008 11:08PM]

Was anyone else saddened by the fact that the acronym that some of us used to know as "BeOS" is now being recycled for a different meaning? Long live BeOS.

[Ian @ Sep 15th 2008 11:21PM]

Hey, as long as they don't start asking me about my massive porn addiction, I'm good to go.


That shit is embarrassing.

[ethana2 @ Sep 15th 2008 11:27PM]

Oh thank goodness. I thought they wrote it for BeOS and I was about to headdesk.

[Matthew @ Sep 15th 2008 11:43PM]

Now if I were only an illiterate criminal...

[Brandon @ Sep 15th 2008 11:55PM]

If she was repeatedly told of crime story, she'll have visual memory of the crime even if she didn't commit it. Also, she may even start to think that she was part of the crime (kind of brainwash). This technology is not a very reliable way to prove crime.

[critic @ Sep 15th 2008 11:57PM]

Sounds like rubbish science, but good enough for convicting some presumably powerless woman who anyway committed the
unspeakable crime of eloping with another man. Not good enough to convict a powerful man any time soon, I'll bet you.

[Ray Von Sixx @ Sep 16th 2008 12:00AM]

omg its going to turn into a real life 'batman forever' with jim carey stealing our brains!