Brain Pattern Proven as Unique as a Finger Print

While the idea that each person has a unique set of connectome – or brain connections – isn’t exactly new, new research has confirmed this theory by “developing a new technique to image these connections in greater detail than ever before,” IFLScience.com reports. This team of scientists have managed to identify people with 100% accuracy just by looking at their brain connections.

This team of scientists used an imaging technique called diffusion MRI to generate a map of local connectomes in 699 human brains. Rather than attempting to create a map of a person’s entire connectome, they focused on small sections of white matter and mapped out the individual connections between the neurons in these sections. 

To test the reliability of their findings, the researchers conducted 17,398 identification tests in which they were able to identify which connectome belonged to which brain every time.

“This confirms something that we’ve always assumed in neuroscience – that connectivity patterns in your brain are unique to you,” study co-author Timothy Verstynen said in a statement. 

“The most exciting part is that we can apply this new method to existing data and receal new information that is already sitting there unexplored. The higher specificity allows us to reliably study how genetic and environmental factors shape the human brain over time, thereby opening a gate to understand how the human brain funtions or dysfunctions,” said Fang-Cheng Yeh, the study’s first author.