A comment on Farwell (2012): brain fingerprinting: a comprehensive tutorial review of detection of concealed information with event-related brain potentials

Ewout H Meijer; Gershon Ben-Shakhar; Bruno Verschuere; Emanuel Donchin

doi:10.1007/s11571-012-9217-x

A comment on Farwell (2012): brain fingerprinting: a comprehensive tutorial review of detection of concealed information with event-related brain potentials

Cogn Neurodyn. 2013 Apr;7(2):155-8. doi: 10.1007/s11571-012-9217-x. Epub 2012 Aug 14.

Authors

Ewout H Meijer¹, Gershon Ben-Shakhar, Bruno Verschuere, Emanuel Donchin

Affiliation

¹ Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, PO BOX 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands ; Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.

Abstract

In a recent issue of Cognitive Neurodynamics Farwell (Cogn Neurodyn 6:115-154, 2012) published a comprehensive tutorial review of the use of Event Related Brain Potentials (ERP) in the detection of concealed information. Farwell's review covered much of his own work employing his "brain fingerprinting" technology. All his work showed a 100 % accuracy rate in detecting concealed information. We argue in this comment that Farwell (Cogn Neurodyn 6:115-154, 2012) is misleading and misrepresents the scientific status of brain fingerprinting technology.

Keywords: Brain fingerprinting; Concealed information test (CIT); Guilty knowledge test (GKT); P300.