Exploring Psychopathology with Brain Fingerprinting Technique

In the exploration of psychopathology, the most discussed anecdote which always remained contradictory was the notion of ‘functional vs biological’ perspective of psychopathology. With the same anecdote, the present study attempted to reflect the clarity on the issue by taking a paradigmatic move in exploring the psychopathology with the help of Brain Fingerprinting Technique (BFT). BFT computes a mathematical and statistical algorithm for determination of information through presentation of stimuli. This presentation of stimuli leads to generation of P300-MERMER brainwave to determine the information. The same argument of real vs virtual experiential contexts pertaining to certain psychiatric conditions was applied in the present study. With the help of data analysis, it was proven that no biological evidence of fingerprinting with respect to delusional beliefs, perception of auditory stimuli in hallucinatory behaviour and real loss of information in case of dissociative amnesia was observed in the brain. Rather, in first two conditions the mathematical and statistical algorithm computed ‘information absent’ and in third condition it computed as ‘information present’ respectively. The above observations helped in substantiating the diagnoses of the patients with scientific sanctity and physiological correlates. The present study could be able to expand the horizon of applications of BFT in few of the psychiatric conditions such as delusional disorders, hallucinatory behaviours, and dissociative amnesia.