Do Our Brains Have Fingerprints Too?

Researchers working with MRI have found that human brains produce recognizable 'fingerprints' in just a couple of minutes. Learn about connectomes in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/brains-fingerprints-news.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. Oh. We think of
fingerprints as being something each of us carries around on
the terminal knuckle of our fingers, unchanging and unique from
everybody else's. That might be true for our digits, but
new research suggests that our brains have fingerprints too, and

(00:25):
that we can find them pretty quickly. Using an MRI machine,
neuroscientists can create what amounts to a map of your
brain called a functional brain connect home. The human brain
is a little like a country, with different regions in it.
One region for short term memory, another for hearing, another
for hand movement. The first map of the brain was

(00:48):
published in nineteen o nine by a German physician who
defined fifty two distinct areas of the brain. These days,
these brain regions are called cortical areas and researchers who
identified of them, and they're connected by these little neural
fibers that act as highways. A connect dome is based
on the activity that a person is doing and what

(01:08):
parts of the brain this activity needs to use. In
a Yale University study found that no two brain connect
domes are the same that when given MRI I images
taken of the same several brains over the course of
a few days, the connectivity fingerprint of each brain could
help scientists match up the brain with a study participant

(01:29):
with around accuracy. Then, in a study that appeared in
the journal Science Advances in October, the scientists examined how
long it actually took to capture a snapshot of a
person's brain fingerprint. In the past, MRI images were captured
over the course of several minutes, but the research team
wondered if they could be taken in a shorter time.

(01:53):
In a press release, researcher and Rico Amico said, until now,
neuroscientists have identified brain finger prints using two m r
I scans taken over a fairly long period. But do
the fingerprints actually appear after just five seconds, for example,
or do they need longer? And what a fingerprints of
different brain areas appeared at different moments in time. Nobody

(02:15):
knew the answer, so we tested different time scales to
see what would happen. Amiko and his colleagues found that
five seconds didn't cut it, but one minute and forty
seconds was long enough to capture a brain fingerprint and
further that an individual's unique brain map began appearing first
in sensory areas of the brain, like those related to

(02:37):
eye movement and visual perception and attention. Brain fingerprints and
regions related to more complex functions like the frontal cortex
developed over longer periods of time. The research team plans
to compare the brain fingerprints of patients with Alzheimer's to
those of healthy people, Amiko explained in the press release.

(02:59):
Based on my initial findings, it seems that the features
that make a brain fingerprint unique steadily disappear. As the
disease progresses. It gets harder to identify people based on
their connectomes. It's as if a person with Alzheimer's loses
his or her brain identity. Knowing this could mean earlier
detection of neurological conditions like autism, stroke, or dementia that

(03:21):
might cause a brain fingerprint to disappear. Today's episode is
based on the article our brains have fingerprints and we
can find them fast on how stuff works dot Com,
written by Jesslin Shields. Brain Stuff is production of by
Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com,
and it's produced by Tyler Klang four more podcasts from

(03:43):
my heart Radio. Visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.