Brain Research Raises Boggling Issues

Dec. 22, 2004 — -- The murder conviction of an Iowa man was overturned last year by that state's highest court on the basis of a new technique that has some scientists wondering if we are entering a strange new world that may ultimately redefine what it means to be a human.

Terry Harrington had served more than two decades for the 1978 murder of a Council Bluffs night watchman when the court reversed the conviction. Something called "brain fingerprinting" convinced the court that the "records" in Harrington's brain did not match the scene of the crime or the details of the case.

He could not have killed the watchman. If he had, parts of his brain would have emitted an electrical response that showed some recognition of photographs and evidence pertaining to the crime, according to the court.

The case is particularly significant to neural scientists because it is part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that we are entering a new realm of delving into the inner workings of the human brain. That could raise profound ethical questions that will make the current debates over genetic engineering seem pale.

All of that has stirred the concerns of a number of scientists, including Martha J. Farah, a psychologist with a varied background who now directs the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. Farah, who earned a bachelor's degree in metallurgy and a doctorate in psychology from Harvard and then entered the young field of neural science, believes we are treading in dangerous waters in a field we have only barely begun to understand.

"Technical progress is making it possible to monitor and manipulate the human mind with ever more precision through a variety of neuroimaging methods and interventions," she says in an essay in the current issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences. While that may lead to wonderful advances in such things as treatment for the mentally impaired, it also will certainly lead us into areas where no human has gone before.