Hi all,
My sister e-mailed a link to me about a new study conducted using MRI brain scans in showing differencves in brain reaction when one lies vs. telling the truth.  I'll add the link as well as the contents of the article.

OfficerWannabe

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041129/sc_nm/science_lying_dc

From Reuters:

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Brain scans show that the brains of people who are lying look very different from those of people who are telling the truth, U.S. researchers said on Monday.



The study, using functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI, not only sheds light on what goes on when people lie but may also provide new technology for lie-detecting, the researchers said.

"There may be unique areas in the brain involved in deception that can be measured with fMRI," said Dr. Scott Faro, director of the Functional Brain Imaging Center at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

"There may be unique areas in the brain involved in truth-telling," Faro added at a news conference.

Faro and colleagues tested 10 volunteers. Six of them were asked to shoot a toy gun and then lie and say they didn't do it. Three others who watched told the truth about what happened. One volunteer dropped out of the study.

While giving their "testimony," the volunteers were hooked up both to a conventional polygraph and also had their brain activity imaged using fMRI, which used a strong magnet to provide a real-time picture of brain activity.

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.

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.

An article about Dr. Scott Faro's research currently appears on the website of the Radiological Society of North America here:

http://www.rsna.org/daily/monday/fmri.html

The full text of this article is cited below:


Quote:

Daily Bulletin - Monday, November 29 fMRI Uncovers Deception TELLING A LIE and telling the truth require different actions in the human brain, according to research presented yesterday at RSNA 2004 in Chicago. Study author Scott H. Faro, M.D., said his team is the first to combine functional MR imaging (fMRI) with a traditional polygraph examination to measure changes in brain activity while study subjects lied or told the truth. "There are more areas of the brain activated during the lying process compared to the truth telling condition," said Dr. Faro, a professor and vice-chairman of radiology and director of the Functional Brain Imaging Center and Clinical MRI at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. The research group used 11 volunteers and asked six to shoot a toy gun with blank bullets. Five other participants did not shoot the gun. In two experiments, both shooters and non-shooters were asked to alternately lie and tell the truth about their participation. Scientists then examined the individuals with fMRI, while simultaneously administering a polygraph exam. The polygraph tests measured blood pressure, respiration and changes in perspiration. The team found that both fMRI and polygraph accurately identified cases where participants had lied about their involvement in the shooting. Dr. Faro said his team's work is the most comprehensive to date because of the level of questioning done. The team used a method called positive control questioning where inquiries such as "Is your name John Smith?" are mixed in with questions pertaining to the shooting. "In the subjects who are being deceptive, we see several areas of brain activation in three different regions, the frontal lobe, temporal lobe and limbic lobe. This is group analysis. These are general patterns of brain activation demonstrated," said Dr. Faro. "The statistical analysis is the challenge and the strength of our approach. It's not simply a poker bluffing test. It's a complicated methodology to understand this complex behavior." Will fMRI stand alone as a test for deception? Dr. Faro admits he's not yet sure: "The polygraph looks at only peripheral stimulus as the end result of a long chain of primary central areas of activation of the brain. We're now getting to the origin of the activation." Dr. Faro called the results "promising" and said he hopes to gain the interest of major organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Administration or the CIA to help fund further research and larger group studies using the same methods, but he says the technology is expensive. "It's probably going to be used on the academic side to understand psycho-social behavior, and on the criminal side, it's going to be used for major criminals," said Dr. Faro. "We're looking at areas of tremendous concern with terrorism, where the expense is minimal compared to the potential disaster. Looking at industrial or business-related crimes, certainly Martha Stewart could afford this test if she was truly interested."

I posted this link to the AntiPolygraph.org e-mail discussion list (to subscribe, send an e-mail to antipolygraph@topica.com), and in reply, Professor John J. Furedy of the University of Toronto posted an insightful commentary to the list, which is reproduced below (with minor proofreading changes):


Quote:

George,    This quite rushed, but it's an example of being seduced by hi-tech dependent variables into thinking that garbage independent-variable manipulation problems are eliminated by going from GSR to fMRI.  In addition, medicos who have an inadequate background in psychology and psychophysiology are prone to perpetuate prior blunders.  Finally, even psychophysiologists who should know better fail to distinguish between the applied problem of detecting deceivers (this is the classification of individuals) and the basic psychophyisological problem of differentiating the psychological process of deception from other psychological processes such as memorial difficulty, mental effort, etc.    The latter set of problems would seem to be of special interest to psychologists and psychophysiologist, as deception is important in terms of evolution, and is manifested in such behaviors as hiding, freezing, and even changing shape among animals.  These problems have been neglected by most psychophysiological researchers, perhaps because of a desire not to be involved in the detection-of-deception, polygraph controversy.  But there has been some work done with the GSR (e.g., Furedy, et al., 1988, on "Differentiation of Deception" in the reference list on my CV), which has suggested that when the experimental/control comparison only involves the presence vs. absence of deception, there is an emotional component in deception, over and above any memorial-difficulty or mental-effort factors.  Potentially, the fMRI is an excellent tool for this sort of differentiation-of-deception investigation, as it reflects activities in different parts of the brain, some of which are more involved in emotion than others.    But this has nothing to do with what antipolygraph.org is concerned about, i.e., the detection of deception or the classification of individuals as "deceptive" or "honest", or rather "guilty" or "innocent". And the work done here has all the weaknesses of those manifested in the *Nature* article that I criticized, plus some others.    Specifically, and in order of the text:    1.  The polygraph doesn't measure "changes in perspiration" (i.e., sweating, but changes in skin resistance or conductance).  That's a relatively minor point, but for someone who is reporting results both from fMRI and "polygraph testing", it's a sign that they don't understand what's involved in the latter, entrails-reading-like procedure.    2.  In what the investigator calls the "most comprehensive" work to be done, perhaps that's right for the fMRI but not for the "polygraph test".  The term "positive control questioning" may sound impressive, but when I look at the actual comparison question, it's clear it's the old irrelevant comparison that polygraphers used up to the 60s, when even they realized it was stupid to compare such emotionally neutral questions to crime-related question.  Then they came up with the so-called "control" question, with all its associated mumbo jumbo (see George's electronic book, or some of my papers) that includes the examiner making up the "control" questions on the basis of an in-depth, dynamic interview with the examinee.  More recently polygraphers advocate the so-called "Directed Lie" method, and no longer talk about "control".  I guess the so-called "positive control" method completes the circle in the sense that it is back to the irrelevant-question comparison which lacks any plausibility whatsoever.  So, for example, suppose I'm falsely charged with child sex abuse, and two weeks later I take the "polygraph test" where the relevant question is "Did you lick X's vagina" (a real case, where X was a four-year old) and the "positive control" question is "Is your name John Furedy".  Assume I'm completely innocent, but as naive about how the "polygraph test" works as Dr. Faro.  Is it likely that I'll give a bigger GSR to the relevant question (and show more fMRI activity) than the "positive control" question?    3.  For the differentiation of deception, as I said above, the fMRI is more promising than the GSR.  But for the detection of deception (or guilt, or terrorist intentions), the crucial point is that the procedure must be a standardized test based on a scientific rationale. The "polygraph test" that Dr. Faro appears to have used is neither.  The parallel is between two ancient Roman entrails readers, one of whom is able to provide a more precise description of the entrails than the other. Both are engaged in superstitious prophecy, not science-based prediction.    4.  With regard to the last paragraph, I think North American security and other organizations are just superstitious enough to buy these ideas, and no doubt many a large "research" grant will be allocated. But the Romans allocated a lot of money for entrails reading ...    All the best, John