AIIMS-Patna team working on brain print for forensic test

PATNA: Using fingerprints for forensic examination is a common method to detect individual’s identity. Now, a team of medical researchers, including those from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna (AIIMS-P), is trying to create a database of brain prints of living human beings.

According to researchers, each one of us has a unique brain, a fact reflected in its neural wiring. It is this fact which makes the brain print a trusted technology to identify a person.

The team, including researchers from National Brain Research Centre, Manesar, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGI) Chandigarh and Langone Medical Centre, New York, presented research proposals at the 50th anniversary of the International Neuroscience Conference of the Society for Neuroscience 2019 held in Chicago from October 19 to 23.

AIIMS-P team leader Dr Ashutosh Kumar of the anatomy department, who represented Patna team at the conference, said the unique neural wiring raises a specific pattern of elevation and depression (gyri and sulci) on the cortical surface of brain. Dr Sanjiv Chaudhary, head of the anatomy, and Dr Ravi Kant, senior resident, are other members of the Patna team. Although the individual specific variation in cortical gyri and sulci are known, not enough research has been done on their composition pattern.

“AIMS-P neurology department has already collected brain prints of 15 dead individuals and now the team is working with the brains of living individuals who visit the neurology or neurotrauma department there for treatment and CT, MRI scans,” Ashutosh said.

While undertaking CT and MRI scans, individual’s consent will also be taken in writing for collecting their brain signatures. “The unique cortical pattern or signature, called brain print, can be constructed from the CT scan or MRI scan of living individuals and the exact brain specimen is printed with 3D printer,” explained Ashutosh.

Other groups associated with the research team are adopting the same technology for creating brain prints.