[extropy-chat] I knew this was coming

Keith Henson hkhenson at rogers.com
Tue Nov 30 06:53:06 UTC 2004


http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041129/full/041129-1.html

Published online: 29 November 2004; | doi:10.1038/news041129-1
Brain imaging could spot liars
Mark Peplow
Tests reveals patches in the brain that light up during a lie.

Lying activates tell-tale areas of the brain that can be tracked using 
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), according to scientists who 
believe the technique could replace traditional lie detectors

snip

Faro and his colleagues asked six volunteers to fire a toy gun. The 
subjects then lay inside an fMRI scanner and lied about having fired the 
shot. They also received a polygraph test. Five more volunteers who did not 
shoot the gun were tested in the same ways to compare their responses.

Both tests caught out the liars and identified the truth-tellers in every 
case. The fMRI scan showed that specific areas of the brain were active 
during lying, including key parts of the frontal, temporal and limbic 
lobes. Overall, more areas of the subjects' brains were activated when they 
lied.

snip

However he points out that the method will need to be made much cheaper 
before it could be used routinely. Efficient lie detectors are needed to 
beef up security in airports, he says, but million-dollar fMRI machines are 
simply not an affordable solution.

snip

It is too early to tell whether fMRI can be fooled in the same way as the 
polygraph, says Faro. However, he says that the results are promising 
because these characteristic brain patterns may be beyond conscious 
control, rendering it much more difficult to cheat.




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