Cognitive Engineering, LLC and Adriden Global, Inc. Collaborate on use of MRI for Interrogation

April 18, 2010 - PRLog -- Cognitive Engineering, LLC (CogEng) announced today a collaborative arrangement with Adriden Global, Inc., an international intelligence, security and investigations company.  Adriden Global will employ CogEng technologies including the patented Cognitive Engram during interrogation as a means of understanding the truthfulness of statements given. In addition Adriden Global will use CogEng methods to support the documentation of whether a subject is experiencing pain, depression or other emotional states.

Investigators have attempted for centuries to determine the truthfulness and accuracy of statements obtained during interrogation. Methodologies include standard interrogation, with and without use of medication or coercion, polygraph, and brain fingerprinting using brain evoked response potentials (ERP). None of these technologies have yielded optimal results, for various reasons, and are not entirely suitable for measuring deception. The current state of terrorism and the pressures put upon counter-terrorism agencies for reliable interrogative methodologies have fueled interest in brain imaging for both interrogation and for mining of knowledge.

An association between the ERP and lying on a standard test such as the Guilty
Knowledge Test suggest that deception may be associated with changes in other measures of brain activity, such as regional blood flow. These changes can be measured  using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) ,and reflect regional brain activity. These areas of brain activation detected using fMRI have been correlated with active memory encoding.

CogEng employs fMRI, with activation pattern analysis, both for truth and deception, and combined with analysis of activation map patterns for face and object recognition. These combination analytical methods have the potential to yield a more robust schema for use of fMRI as an interrogation and investigation technique. CogEng has pioneered the concept of Cognitive Engrams - the multi-dimensional representation of activation areas in the brain. Their work demonstrating face-specific activation patterns across individuals has subsequently been independently validated and repeated by other scientists at leading research institutions, and awarded a patent. Cognitive engrams symbolically represent specific thought process themselves, and CogEng has grouped truthful and deceptive responses, pain, depresion, and also the recognition of specific faces and objects, into unique cognitive engrams.

“Certainly when an individual thinks of a truthful or a deceptive response, or recognizes a face or an object, that concept transforms into the more generalized concept of truthfulness or deception, or recognition of a specific person. This overall recognition is not simply fragmented into hundreds of isolated activation points, but should be treated as a whole, as a widely distributed cognitive engram,” said Donald H. Marks, M.D., Ph.D., the founder and Chief Scientific Officer of CogEng.

Adriden Global, Inc.. is an International Intelligence, Security and Investigation firm. Their strength areas are : Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Operations, International Operations, Investigative Operations, Undercover Operations, Intelligence Products, and Training.

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Cognitive Engineering, LLC is an innovative neuroscience company located in a HUB zone in Birmingham, Alabama. CogEng commercializes highly promising non-invasive interrogation and neuroimaging process :

· Forensic interrogation,
· Correlation of two face recognition technologies: functional MRI to camera biometrics
· Rosetta Database- the Human Genome Project of the Mind. Library of brain activation patterns for faces, objects, concepts and emotions.
· For individuals who experience pain, cognitive impairment, or depression, CogEng offers unique neuroimaging which demonstrates / illustrates recognized neuromarkers on brain MRI which correlate with and document the presence of these feelings.