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, , , , , , , & (2002). Brain activity during simulated deception: An event-related functional magnetic resonance study. NeuroImage, 15: 727-732.
There is a long-standing history of interest in methods of identifying deception—including Freud's famous claim that “If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore” (1905, p. 78). More quantifiable approaches for identifying lying might appear to have been developed with the polygraph methods of a few decades ago, but that method is usually not regarded as very reliable. However, a new approach to the problem is suggested by the finding that lying activates, consistently, a series of brain regions that can be tracked using fMRI. On a Guilty Knowledge Test, participants were asked to fire a toy gun and then were scanned while they lied about having fired the shot. Control subjects were treated in the same way but did not shoot the gun. The liars and truth-tellers were readily identified in scans, which identified strong group differences in a range of key brain regions: the anterior cingulate cortex, the superior frontal gyrus, and the left premotor, motor, and anterior parietal cortex. These areas showed higher activation when subjects lied, perhaps consistent with the fact that inhibition of the correct or truthful response may be the key component of the process of deception. Of course, it seems unlikely that we will see such technology deployed in airport security, but the method certainly offers a useful way of investigating the many psychiatric conditions in which deception is a factor. From an analytic perspective, it also offers the possibility of investigating not only such instances of intentional deception, but also the biological basis of unintentional deception—of the sort seen when humans manage to convinc