Fighting Crime by Reading Minds

What if we could read the mind of a terrorist? Researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago say they have taken a step closer to that reality with a test that could uncover nefarious plans by measuring brain waves.

In a study published in the journal Psychophysiology, psychologists John Meixner and Peter Rosenfeld used electrodes to measure the brain waves of 29 undergraduates who had been told to mock-plan either a terrorist bombing in Houston in July, or a vacation in a different city in a different month. The researchers then presented the students with the names of various cities, methods of terrorist attack and dates. As they did so, they scanned the subjects’ brains with electroencephalography (EEG), which records electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons. More