The Future of Interrogation

What if we could look inside, or even pry open, the mind of a suspected criminal or terrorist?

And what if this question weren’t a matter of science fiction, but a matter of steadily emerging capabilities of existing technologies?

Those are the questions being asked in an article just published online from the Behavioral Science and the Law journal (article available here for download).

The article, by Bruce Luber, Ph.D., Division of Brain Stimulation and Therapeutic Modulation, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, focuses on the possibility that non-invasive stimulation of the brain — which can disrupt neural processes, including, possibly, processes involved in deception — could be used for interrogation and introduced as evidence in court.

While the idea of using fMRI and other brain-scanning techniques to detect lies has gotten a lot of attention, this paper is actually talking about something different: instead of scanning to try to see deception, tools such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) could be used to try to inhibit deception. Or, as the paper puts it, to alter “a person’s ability to engage brain networks involved in conscious deceit.”

Now, we are still some ways away from being able to actually do this. How exactly the brain engages in deception is still not very well understood. One problem is that “deception,” as such, isn’t a discrete brain process controlled by one spot in the brain (just as there is no “Buy Button,” as some neuromarketers would love to find). We can’t just look inside and say, “Ah! The flibbertigibbet is lit up! He must be lying! Now we know who shot J.R.!” Processes involved in lying include: generating rationale, intent, and strategies for deception; executing a response incompatible with the truth; suppressing truthful responses; monitoring the internal consistency of deceptive responses. Among others. What’s more, as the paper notes, “merely showing that a region of the brain activates when a person is trying to lie does not prove that region of the brain is involved in deception.”

What TMS and tDCS allow, though, is for direct testing of the findings from scanning. Say scientists take a brain region they believe is involved in deception, based on fMRI studies. The paper mentions the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. And then, say scientists used TMS to disrupt processing in that part of the brain. The paper mentions just such an experiment, conducted in the authors’ lab, using a simplified Guilty Knowledge Test, where 15 subjects were asked to lie about what playing cards they were holding. What it found was that application of TMS “substantially slowed (by 20%) responses in trials when deception was required compared with trials when deception was not required.”

It’s a very preliminary finding. But further research like this could not only help us gain a deeper understanding of how deception works — it could actually allow us to prevent people from deceiving us, whether through making their deceptions more obvious (e.g., slower) or making deception actually impossible.

Using such evidence in court is probably the least-likely scenario at this point, given the Daubert standard, which requires that parties seeking to use scientific evidence “provide indicia of the technique’s reliability and validity, such as tests of the falsifiability of the theory on which it is based; peer review of data generated by its use; documentation of a known error rate; and general acceptance by experts in the field.” What’s more, with current technology, countermeasures would be rather easy for subjects to deploy: deliberately slowing down one’s responses, to mask the effects of TMS or tDCS; or, simply moving one’s head. And then there’s the question of whether criminals’ brain function is comparable enough to that of the healthy subjects scientists are studying to develop these techniques.

But, if such problems can be overcome, we’ll end up with some fascinating legal and ethical questions related to “cognitive liberty”: Is there a Fourth Amendment protection against search of one’s own mind? Is there a Fifth Amendment protection against incriminating one’s self? Is there a First Amendment protection against being made to speak (the truth) involuntarily?

And, given that this paper was supported by a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), we might also ask: Would such interrogation of enemy combatants violate the Geneva Conventions? Would conducting such interrogations violate the professional ethics of doctors, who would be needed to help conduct them? Wouldn’t this, perhaps, be a far more humane method of extracting useful intelligence from terror suspects than the means we currently use?

The paper also mentions, toward the end, another neuro tool that could be used for interrogation: oxytocin. Building trust between interrogator and subject is an important part of many interrogations. Oxytocin, available as an injection or as a nasal spray, is known to be important in trust and bonding and has been shown to increase trust in the laboratory setting.

Maybe we wouldn’t even need to pry, if people could just be sprayed into opening up their minds.

HT: Mind Hacks

photo credit: –Tico–