A recent scientific development has been the invention of “brain fingerprinting” (BF) by Dr Larry Farwell in the United States. Recognising the occasional fallibility of humans in detecting truth and deception, the jury’s function may be assisted by highly regulated expert evidence about a variety of scientific techniques. Far from describing the brain and its functions, fMRI and Brain Fingerprinting produce models of the brain that reinforce social notions of deception, truth, and deviance.Ī major feature of the Australian criminal justice system is that jurors assess witness credibility and are the ultimate finders of fact. The author contends that the juxtaposition of polygraphy and brain-based detection is a rhetorical strategy that foregrounds the corrective advantage of brain-based techniques, creates an artificial rupture between contiguous technologies, and ignores the shared assumptions foundational to fMRI, EEG, and two older ‘‘truth telling’’ technologies: polygraphy and fingerprinting. In scientific journals and the popular press, each has been juxtaposed and deemed superior to traditional polygraphy, which measures changes in the autonomic nervous system and correlates these fluctuations with emotions such as anxiety, fear, and guilt. The volume is of interest to a broad scholarly readership dealing with topics in interdisciplinary fields such as the history of science, history of knowledge, cultural studies, and techniques of subjectivization.įunctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the electroencephalography (EEG)-based technology of Brain Fingerprinting have been hailed as the next, best technologies for lie detection in America, particularly in the context of post-9/11 anxiety. The first part of this book focuses on the technologies and media of mind reading, while the second part addresses practices of mind reading as they have been used within the juridical sphere. The collected contributions explore the question of how these techniques have been epistemically formed, institutionalized, practiced, discussed, and how they have been used to shape forms of subjectivities – collectively through human consciousness or individually through the criminal, deviant, or spiritual subject. The authors address the practice of, and discourses on, mind reading as they form part of the consolidation of modern governmental techniques. This volume considers the techniques of mind reading within a wider perspective of discussions about technological innovation within neuroscience, the juridical system, “occult” practices and discourses within the wider field of parapsychology and magical beliefs. We understand mind reading in a broad sense as the twentieth-century attempt to generate knowledge of what people held in their minds – with a focus on scientifically-based governmental practices. This book provides a genealogical perspective on various forms of mind reading in different settings.
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