High-tech interrogations may promote abuse

Some intelligence experts believe that fMRI can be used to detect deception, or to flag when a suspect recognizes (but may not wish to admit that he recognizes) the photograph or name of a suspected terrorist.

Marks, who also heads the Bioethics and Medical Humanities Program at Penn State's University Park campus, finds the approach problematic. "There can be all sorts of reasons for recognizing a name or a photograph or for responding cognitively to a particular word," he said. "I spent years living in London, listening to reports of IRA bombings. My brain would light up if you mentioned the word semtex (a plastic explosive)."

Interrogations that employ fMRI may also be making a considerable leap of faith. According to Marks, fMRI-based studies of lie detection have only been conducted on small groups of healthy people to examine changes in blood oxygen levels in the brain when they are lying in highly artificial laboratory settings. These results cannot be generalized, he argued, and should not be applied to terror suspects who have usually been detained in stressful circumstances and may have mental health issues that could clearly be exacerbated by their detention.

"MRI machines are very useful diagnostic tools but using them to claim that certain things are going on inside people's minds is a major jump," said Marks, who is also a research fellow and acting director of Penn State's Rock Ethics Institute. Such a jump is a particularly dangerous one in the interrogation context, he argues.

The short duration of the test is another worry. According to the Penn State researcher, many neuroscientists argue that it could take many hours, even weeks, of testing with the suspect before getting accurate baseline readings.

Marks also argues that fMRI scans are open to broad interpretation, but they can produce seductively persuasive graphic images that provide a false sense of security and help create a narrative that may lead to aggressive interrogation tactics.

"One of the real concerns I have is that you can see how people can begin to say 'the fMRI picked him out as a terrorist so let us give him a going over in the interrogation room,' " Marks explained. "Contrary to the view that fMRI will render torture obsolete, it might become a license for further abuse of detainees because its readings will convince people that they have a terrorist on their hands."

The Penn State bioethicist says his view, which draws on the previously unpublished statements of an experienced U.S. interrogator, raises fundamental concerns about the use of fMRI either to detect deception or to flag recognition of a stimulus. If a terror suspect does recognize a certain stimulus, that person could be singled out for more aggressive interrogation.