Hidden Nook
"Because in Cyberspace, no one can hear you scream."
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Liar, Liar? Mind on fire?
[Media Source*] According to researchers a new brain scan may be able to determine whether or not a person is telling the truth. The researches were using a new type of technology using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to shed some light on the activity inside one's mind when people lie.
Radiological Society of North AmericaDr. Scott Faro, director of the Functional Brain Imaging Center at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia) and other colleagues tested 10 volunteers who were asked to shoot a toy gun with six of them were asked to lie about it.
Three others who watched told the truth about what happened and one volunteer dropped out of the study. The nine brave volunteers were then hooked up to an fMRI who mapped their brains as they gave out their testimony. Here is the rest of the report from MSNBC (see source link above).
There were clear differences between the liars and the truth-tellers, Faro's team told a meeting in Chicago of the Radiological Society of North America.
"We found a total of seven areas of activation in the deception
(group)," he said. "We found four areas of activity in the truth-telling arm."
Overall, it seemed to take more brain effort to tell the lie than to tell the truth, Faro found.
Lying caused activity in the frontal part of the brain --- the medial inferior and pre-central areas, as well as the hippocampus and middle temporal regions and the limbic areas. Some of these are involved in emotional responses, Faro said.
During a truthful response, the fMRI showed activation of parts of the brain's frontal lobe, temporal lobe and cingulate gyrus.
(click on interactive)
Faro said the study was small and limited. Volunteers were not asked to try especially hard to deceive the equipment, he said -- noting that it has been documented that some people can fool a polygraph using various techniques.
Using fMRI as a lie detector is expensive, but it may be worthwhile in some cases -- such as trying to question a terrorism suspect, or in a high-profile corporate crime case, Faro said.
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