Detection of Concealed Stored Memories with Psychophysiological and Neuroimaging Methods

This chapter describes the use of three types of physiological measures used to detect concealed memories. These measures may be utilized by legal authorities to detect involvement in criminal and terror activities and malingered cognitive deficits. The first set of measures records activities of the autonomic nervous system such as heart rate, skin conductance, and blood pressure as indexes of autonomic arousal accompanying confrontation with crime-related items. The second and third sets of measures record brain activity associated with recognition of intentionally concealed information. The second utilizes the P300 event-related brain potential derived from EEG and the third utilizes functional magnetic resonance imaging responses accompanying the viewing (or hearing) of crime scene details. All these measures use the guilty knowledge test (also called the concealed information test) protocol to discover concealed memories. The research literature and current status of the guilty knowledge test with the various measures are reviewed.