Your Thoughts Are Your Password
From: Wired News - 04/27/2006
By: Lakshmi Sandhana

Researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, believe it may be
possible to observe a brain signal that is encoded with thousands of bits of
information in a repeatable manner. Julie Thorpe, Anil Somayaji, and Adrian
Chan are pursuing the idea of developing a system that would enable people to
log on by thinking "yes" or "no" to a "pass thought," such as the memory of a
birthday, or a predetermined song, picture, or video clip. The biometric
security tool would monitor the individual's brain activity, and unlike other
biometric security devices, would also allow people to change their pass code
occasionally. The project builds on the research of those working to develop
a brain-computer interface (BCI) that would allow prosthetic devices to read
the brain-wave signals of people who are disabled. The project has its
doubters in Iead Rezek, of the Pattern Analysis Research Group at the
University of Oxford, and Jacques Vidal, a BCI expert in the computer science
department of UCLA. Rezek says picking up signals would be "akin to
recognizing speakers from muffled voices because, for example, the speakers
are some distance away." Vidal contends that "the link between thought and
brain waves is immensely indirect." The Carleton researchers face other
challenges, including designing a system that is able to recognize the
changes in the signature of a pass thought over time, and making it more
convenient to transmit brain signals without having to wear an EEG
(electroencephalogram) cap, smeared with conductive gel, on the head. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70726-0.html

Links:
Carleton University
http://www.carleton.ca/

P*ssw*rds on the brain
http://eureka.carleton.ca/2006-03/60.htm

Julie Thorpe
http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~jthorpe/

Julie Thorpe's Research
http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~jthorpe/research.html

Iead Rezek
http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~irezek/

Jacques Vidal
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/csd/people/faculty_pages/vidal.html
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~vidal/vidal.html