A map of connections between brain regions that are active during mental activity can be used as a unique, reproducible 'fingerprint' to identify individuals.

Emily Finn of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and her colleagues studied data from the Human Connectome Project, which is mapping all of the structural and functional connections in the brain. They looked at 126 people whose brains were scanned while they were resting or doing certain tasks. By analysing patterns of neural connectivity, the team identified subjects with a success rate of more than 90% when comparing rest scans, and with 54–87% success when comparing brain activity during tasks. The most useful networks for identifying people were those in certain regions of the cerebral cortex that control attention, memory and other cognitive functions.

The results provide a foundation for future work to link functional brain connections with individual behaviours, the authors say.

Nature Neurosci. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn.4135 (2015)