James Bond who? As badass as retinal scanners and fingerprint IDs are in movies, the next generation of password technology is even more advanced — it reads your brain.

Numerous researchers are looking into ways to use brain waves and heartbeats to identify individuals.

“There will come a time when a lot of current input devices won’t be necessary,” Dr Ken Revette, a professor of computer science at the British University in Egypt, told to ABC Science. Revette is the founder of the International Journal of Cognitive Biometrics which focuses on the development of high-tech identification systems.

We already know that passwords are not fool-proof and some people still choose ones that are not secure.

Navin Cota and Ramaswami Palaniappan, of the Mind Research Network in New Mexico and the University of Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom, respectively, are studying how different individuals might be identified by their brains’ reactions to various images, such as one’s mother. Brain activity is different when comparing someone who is viewing a familiar image to someone who doesn’t know what they’re looking at. The challenge, however, is utilizing this technology without making users wear a cap. Currently, brain wave-reading technology needs to make contact with the head to function.

Another group of researchers is seeing how individuals might be detected by their heartbeat. Each person’s heartbeat has different identifiers — even when their heart is pumping fast.

There’s also been talk about being able to ID someone using their keystroke patterns.

Are these new personal identification technologies more scary or cool? Tell us in the comments.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, ktsimage

More About: brain, EEG, mind-reading, passwords

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