Going beyond deception detection, neuroscience may soon be able to play a more practical role in counterterrorism. The enabling technologies are non-invasive brain imaging (particularly with data-fusion from multiple imaging modalities), trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, virtual reality environments, and the terrabytes of newly shared neuroscience data indexed in massive databases.
The goals might be: 1) to gain insight into the brain states that are necessary and sufficient to subserve a terrorist act (particularly when the act results in the suicide of the perpetrator), 2) to use technologies to modify such brain states in a controlled fashion–in the laboratory first and subsequently the field and 3) to explore the use of artificial sensory inputs to transition brains from terrorist-permissive to the normative condition.
Ultimately, terrorism is a human act produced as a result of neuronal actions in a human brain. While human acts are often very complex in nature, many behaviors have been explained quite well at the neuronal level (e.g. addiction and drug abuse). If the neural basis can be understood, then interventions can be devised.
Discoverers and Discoveries 