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Lying Makes The Brain Work Harder
Ant writes "This Wired News article says it seems to take more brain effort to tell a lie than to tell the truth according to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. 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. During a truthful response, the fMRI showed activation of parts of the brain's frontal lobe, temporal lobe and cingulate gyrus."
It seems like it'd require more effort to fabricate something than to recite truthful memories. I wonder if these lies were cooked up ahead of time, and if so, how well learned they were when they were recited?
The reason they're seeing so much more activity is because a person who's lying is actively thinking, rather than just "regurgitating" information.
Pretty simple concept IMHO.
"No honey I'm not lying to you, just practicing for my MENSA exam tomorrow"
http://www.commaecho.com
That would be correct, I have done several studies on this, since I am a doctor and all. Definatly more brain activity occurs when you lie. For that groudbreaking information I ask a mere $25 from each and everyone of you via Paypal... since I am a doctor and all...
A BBC News article on the same topic:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4051211.stm
Sauer
In other news, 'laying' discovered to have the same effect.
They can't tell if we're lying, MRIs are notoriously unreliable when faced with tinfoil hats.
Now I know why sometimes I feel like the hardest working man on the planet.
You can't handle the truth.
When I'm lying, I'm usually trying to think about what I'm lying about and how it should change my story. Essentially, I'm making sure that what I'm lying about is, for the most part, reasonable and I'm not going to get caught.
When telling the truth I don't have to do this, so activity is likely lower.
No it doesn't!
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
Yes, terrorists aren't trained at lying, only FBI agents are.
No it's not, at least not in my experience. Polygraphs that I've seen measure respiration, heartbeat, blood pressure, and sweat. The goal is to measure your physical tension, with the idea that you tense up when you lie. I won't vouch for its accuracy (in my experience, pretty low), but I've never seen one which measures anything about the brain directly.
Lies require thought and planning.
The truth requires citing specific knowledge.
Vonal Declosion
... I bet they knew this earlier!
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
... to why I am to gosh darn smart !
- I run a 40-yard dash in 2 seconds
- I compleded college by the age of 18
- I have climbed the Everest - naked
- I became Mr Universe AND Miss Universe, in the same year
I wonder if this study can be universally applied of if it only applies to personal experiences.
That is, if someone wants me to recall a fact from highschool biology, I can probably work hard to remember it. However, I could probably work a lot easier and just make something up.
This sort of thing has happened to me before. My parents once gave my sister and I a math problem, some multiplication of two large numbers. Much to my chagrin, my sister came up an answer the fastest, to which my parents replied "Wow! That's right!" I worked so quickly to try to come up with the right answer, and I fumed about her getting it right until I realized that she had just made up a number...my parents really didn't know the answer either, but by acting confidently like they did, I couldn't see the lies until a minute later.
I'm quite certain that my brain was working a lot harder to do the multiplication than my sister's, which had only to pull a reasonable-sounding number from thin air.
The lie-detector episode that ends with Beavis arrested as the "Hippie Ripper". "When asked how a teenage boy could have committed the brutal murders over twenty years ago, a police spokeswoman said, quote, "He's very clever.""
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Well, the marketting department has to earn its keep one way or the other...
You can't handle the truth.
I don't need a MRI to tell me that lying is harder than telling the truth. When you lie, you need to invent a story and make it convincing. The fear of getting caught kicks in, as does the guilt of lying: the mind starts racing. Perhaps it would be interesting to see how the MRIs of habitual liars differ from "normal" liars. Does the absence of fear and guilt change the amount of work done by the brain, or do lawyers and such work just as hard as we do?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Those Microsoft brains must be working really hard... just look at the Slashdot advertisements that are running with this story.
t _336x260_25k_v3.gif
MS's "Get the Facts"
http://m3.doubleclick.net/790463/mrs03111_VeriTes
Oh the irony!
Maybe that content-based advertising system really does work!
Hmm...my wife is always tired and exhausted from "working so hard". This may explain a few things...
"Lying Makes The Brain Work Harder"
I was halfway through writing an email to my boss with the subject "Siesta" before I read the second line and slapped my forehead.
"Derp de derp."
Obviously, when you're telling the truth you're just recalling, but when you're lying you're both recalling the truth and inventing a lie, which involves creativity, logistics, etc. Of course your brain will be used differently.
What's harder to do? Sing a song you already know, or make up a new one?
You mean that having to create a fiction that's close enough to the truth to be believable and memorable (so you don't forget the lies you tell!), yet far enough off to achieve the desired effect (be it avoiding trouble, personal gain, whatever) is more difficult than simply recounting a fact?
Good to see it confirmed, I guess, and I do believe in pure research for research's sake, but even I am moved to say "well, duh!".
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Is this going to be another polygraph??. Cant these activities in the frontal brain happen anytime else, say when u r tensed?? Do these activities suggest a definite lie??
Just get out a yardstick and measure their noses.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
According to media reports, brains of :-)
Pastor/Brother George Bush and some of his engineers are reaching the absolute infinity temperature
God bless US of Jesus ( formerly USA )
I don't believe them. They're lying.
... fiction writers are brainy people. (Ok, biased observation)
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
You sez:
"It seems like it'd require more effort to
fabricate something than to recite truthful
memories"
Well
It doesn't take a lot to say "I am lying"
Am I fabricating anything ?
Or am I telling the truth ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No sir, I wasn't lying. I was merely exercising my hippocampus. My progesterone receptors needed the workout, you understand.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." --Albert Einstein
This makes a lot of sense. Not only because as the first poster says does the person have to think, but they're not just thinking up information, they also must connect that information with a logical and sensical situation. So, if I were to lie to my teacher about my math homework, the truth would take little to no activity (didn't do it), a nonsensical lie would take a little thinking (the moon is green), but a logical lie requires an entire story to back it up (well, my dog was hungry cause he didn't have dinner so he decided to eat it, and...). Makes sense to me.
- dshaw
I got laid today...
whew. I'm pooped.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
I must be exercising more than I thought!
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
It could be quite pertinent to find out if this were ever to be used seriously as a truth detection mechanism, as it could trip up in some situations, such as for instance a man who's just killed his wife, sitting in his car thinking to himself all the things he did today not killing his wife, essentially fabricating a story or lying to himself. When brought in for a lie detector test you really wouldn't want it showing that a murderer could indeed lie about comitting such an act without any sign showing that he was indeed lying. Of course, this method would be quite useless for questions which the subject hasn't had ample time to manufacture the truth for.
On the other hand - we must be very lazy bums !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This sentence is a lie.
???
My life in the land of the rising sun.
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.
Ah, now I know what my girlfriend has been using her big head for!
... my brain is so slow! Signed - Pinocchio
Free Firefox news reader.
My brain must be really strong now!!
There is no sig
"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. During a truthful response, the fMRI showed activation of parts of the brain's frontal lobe, temporal lobe and cingulate gyrus."
And in other news. Reading articles with big words that no one knows the definitions to, makes the brain hurt.
...I can't find the accurate definition of Work Harder. 1. Does it means "causes more activity"? or. 2. Does it means "needs more energy"? While I think the 2nd makes sense. Maybe the editor needs us to pay more attention to the title than the experiment itself. PS: Did the editor's brain worked harder? :)
Wouldn't it be nice to test this theory on the great W. Bush?
... Can you make sure they're on tight? I'm not getting a reading here.
Doctor: Ok, put the probes on the president, Norma.
Norma: They are on, sir.
Doctor:
Norma: Yes sir, they're on tight.
Doctor: Mr. Bush, can you please tell us why we are at war with Iraq.
Dub'ya: They are a terrorist harboring nation with weapons of mass destruction! Yeehaw!
Doctor: Norma, can you turn down the sensor sensitivity, please? My reader just crashed.
Dub'ya: Yee-haw!!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
This issue was well covered in the NewScientist a while ago.9 91543
t icle.jsp?rp=1&id=mg18324585.500
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
Also longer article here (subscription required)
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/ar
because he uses his brain a lot?
The solution is to think of your lies in advance in considerable detail and regurgitate them when needed. Only when a question is unexpected can this method work and if you actually need to lie to a serious question then you probably should have realized it was a likely question like "What were you doing the night of the murder?"
Keep your lies consistent too.
It just takes more energy for me to believe my lies than my truth...
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
In Soviet Russia the truth tells you!
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Is this or will this become part of lie detector technology?
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Why not fork?
They burn most of their calories with common lies like 'maybe', 'I've had 3 previous partners only', and my favorite 'I'm 18!'
You can tell an honest girl by how fat she is.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
yes it takes more effort to lie (ie make something plausible up, than to just regurgitate what is known)
i cant beleieve they tested this. its obvisious
For some reason I don't think James Bond would get done by this machine. Good spies actually convince themselves of the lie so much so that they don't even think about it when they're questioned about their cover.
How we know is more important than what we know.
...so has anyone thought to do this with poker players?
So here's what I want to know:
Since it takes more "brain power" to lie then does that mean that smart people are better liars?
Nik
-This sig has been discontinued after a sudden realization.
The quote at the bottom of the page when this article was posted was:
:P
"One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true."
It's soo true! I do *ALL* the damn work around here.
"Be afraid to die until you have won some victory for humanity" -Horace Mann
"Liars have alot to remember."
-- an unknown but astute source
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
So lie as much as you can, gives you brains.
Oh, wait..
gtkaml.org
I wonder how accurate a "lie detector" made using this would compare to, say, a more standard polygraph test.
Also, I wonder what differences would be observed if you tested somebody who is more used to lying in a convincing manner, such as a a politician or undercover cop.
"A lie must be made with great effort, it's a thing of beauty and precious like a rare diamond. Do not waste lies when truth will do." Anonymous
"Silence is often the best thing to say." Bene Gesserit Axiom
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.
This experiment isn't symmetric - the conditions for each group are entirely different. A proper experiment would consist of:
1. a group who committed the act and lies
2. a group who committed the act and tells the truth
3. a group who witnesses and lies
4. a group who witnesses and tells the truth
Also, they should probably have a control group of people who didn't witness anything.
PimpMyMazda.com - Crazy mods to a 2002 Mazda Protege DX.
...Bush sounds just as dumb as he did four years ago. hmmmm...wonder how they'll explain this one...
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
So let me get this straight - recall requires no effort, even if it's the first time you're discussing a truthful event that happened? C'mon man.
Maybe you should consider "thinking" a little more.
PS - I have a 14 inch Cock. (I was testing the frontal lobe activation theory, forgive.)
Obligatory antipolygraph link.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Lying Makes The Brain Work Harder
I wonder how hard they had to think to bring us this lie?
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Now I know why politicians' hair seems to go grey so early.
Table-ized A.I.
Why does my uncle like to watch me taking showers? Is he gay, or am I just paranoid?
The Samuel Pepys diary is published day by day on the web.Today it is the notation of 29 November 1661:
a quote:
but I could say nothing to it, which I was sorry for. So indeed I was forced to study a lie, and so after we were gone from the Duke, I told Mr.
Nothing new it seems.
http://www.pepysdiary.com/
...it's not a lie if you believe it.
Sometimes, I get the feeling that scientific research grants could be spent with a little more wisdom.
Because, MRIs are fun, but no one should need that much tech to come to the conclusion that "making something up based of recollections and saying it" takes more brain power than "just saying it".
Also useless, making a study about how gummy bears pick up dirt when dropped on the floor (really, sticky stuff picks up dirt when dropped on floor? amazing, please tell me more).
Digging up corpses from the first american colonies and deducing that the cause of death was scurvy, when the survivors described the signs and symptoms in disgusting gory details, etc.
No, come to think of it, these studies are crucial!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to draft my proposition to do a study about the effect of gravity around the equator: I will go to tropical countries ans verify that neither I nor my kaluha float off into space...
You can't take the sky from me...
R: "I'll pay you $50 to be in this experiment"
S: "Sweet!"
R: "Just lie down under this scanner..."
S: "Is this gonna give me cancer?"
R: "No no, it's perfectly safe. Just a moment... ok, main screen turn on."
S: "Can I go now?"
R: "No, first you have to tell me who fired the gun"
S: "What gun?"
R: "The gun that was fired about 10 minutes ago"
S: "But I only just got here!"
R: "Is that so... where were you 10 minutes ago?"
S: "I was on Slashdot!"
R: "You're lying!"
FBI busts down the door, carts the test subject off to Cuba. Another day, another victory in the War On Terror.
fish and pipes
breathing makes you live longer.
it was worth the effort :).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It says:
:)
One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true.
Does it mean that the article is B/S or what?
Polygraphs attempt to measure a physiological response to lying. This line of research is attempting to measure brain activity, which is a whole level "above" a physical reaction. Right now their are a plethora of flaws with measuring physiological reactions (I really enjoyed the book http://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detect or.pdf)
Alhtough this research is still in its earliest stages, it is definetly promising. Although, this eventually (in a very long time) evolving into near mind reading does scare me.
The fortune at the bottom of this page says (for me anyway): "One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true." Certainly Darl and Co. must have the hardest working brains in the US.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Is a sci-fiction book, detailing the ... oddly enough based upon
creation and proliferation of truth
machines
digital processinng of MRI (like) brain
scans. The machines are instituted around
the world, and the whole human society changes.
I can recommend the book.
Truth is beauty, beauty truth;
:)
That is all ye know on earth; and all ye need to know.
Guess Keats was right
Lying may be difficult, but telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" isn't exactly easy.
The problem lies in editing. For any complex situation, there are several truths that can be said, some relevant, and some not. You have to decide what your questioner really wants to know and think about that stuff.
You also have to turn that stuff into a coherent sentence. In my case, my mind generally works in a very fuzzy way. I don't really categorize things until someone asks me a question, so It is hard to untangle the fuzz and put it in a nice, complete package.
The final problem with telling the truth is the spin. You have to describe things in such a way that you look good and can't get trapped. Like the old "does this dress make me look fat?"-type questions, or pretty much anything you say to your boss.
With lies, these problems kind of solve themselves. When you make up a lie, you build in the spin and story from the start.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
...that W has a brain after all...
Do you never think when asked to tell the truth? This was a simple test where people knew what was true and what was false. What if you're asked to recall details of an incident 6 months ago? Are you not piecing together information, reconstructing the memory from other snippets you know, retrieving long-buried information? While it may be true that fMRI can detect lies, I'm sceptical of the "common sense" explanation that you have to work more to lie. Furthermore, what about people who believe they have some guilt, but actually don't, say in the case of a death where they're not sure about suicide or murder. Do not the nearest and dearest of a suicide often blame themselves? What if they're asked whether they were responsible for their loved one's death? They might answer yes, even if they were not responsible in the case in question. You can pick holes in that example, but the point is that the whole issue becomes messy when one recalls that people have beliefs and interpretations of situations, and that will significantly affect their answers.
Sounds like a fabrication to me. How would you know the difference, if you're used to lying? Ask any monk, and I'm sure they'll tell you the difference is quite obvious, when you know how a mind without lies feels.
Apart from being aware of the extra effort to fabricate something and maintain that in an ongoing conversation, apart from being aware that filtering thoughts to be sure that nothing you say will betray you, you also develop a stronger moral compass and become more aware of the guilt etc., too.
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Carl McBride :)
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
This means that Bush is not stupid... His brain just works a lot. No time for thinking. Only lies.
I knew it - I knew Steven Hawking was lying to me when he said his wheelchair could fly, must be why he's so brainy!
What about when the person is convinced that the lie is real? (ie: Bush convinced that Iraq possesed WMD.) That would also be an interesting study.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
The smartest monkey I ever saw runs the company! He must practice hard...
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Keep your lies consistent too.
I thought this reminded me of something, along with a quick Google search here it is:
(Bashir tells the story of the boy who cried "Wolf")
Bashir: If you lie all the time, no one is going to believe you, even when you're telling the truth.
Garak: Are you sure that's the point, Doctor?
Bashir: Of course. What else would it be?
Garak: That you should never tell the same lie twice.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Hmm... maybe, its the other way around, and its actually easier to lie than it is to tell the truth! And the reason they're telling us this is just because its easier.
OMG OMG it's the matrix!
~ Crummy
I knew this without someone telling me.
No matter how funny you may think this comment of yours was, it doesn't excuse the bigotry contained therein. For shame.
This was reported months ago in New Scientist.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
It would be very difficult to use an fMRI system as a reliable lie detector. These kind of findings tend to come from groups of experimental subjects rather than individuals. Different people can exhibit activations in different places for the same mental processes, and they may not even be using identical neural processes at all. Additionally, the more frontal you go the less well-defined are the theories as to what the cortex is actually doing, and prefrontal cortex is the most high-level of all, being recruited as a kind of supervisory system in many mental processes. If someone accused me of lying on the basis of a pattern of frontal activation, I could claim to have been performing all kinds of mental tasks to increase my cognitive load, and indeed I could do just that to make sure the differences between lie and non-lie scanning epochs were not useful.
But I'm sure someone will get rich off the back of this.
Actually, it's the neuromarketing bullshitters that really piss me off.
The creative areas of the brain would naturally use more processing power than the memory areas.
Like computing an MD5 hash versus looking it up in an SQL table. Kind of a -- pardon the pun -- no-brainer.
Today in South Korea Steve Balmer from Microsoft was at a conference denouncing open source. But little did he know of the reason he was invited. Korean Man 1. wow we save lot of money on heating when Mr Balmer here. Korean Man 2. yeah he so full of crap, he have enough brain heat to end the ice age.
Oddly, enough lying is pretty easy. It's one part "The Last Boy Scout" and one part common sense. Especially now days, with the informal culture and the emphasis on image (which generally supplants truth). The last part first. "Every lie [should] have about 80% truth to it." But coming up with the whole shot at once, isn't going to work. Forget about the fMRI, it's probably not going to fool a person. On image: People only have what you give them to go on, and maybe a little bit of data they've collected. While you might not know what that data is, there is a FANTASTICLY large spectrum of possibility you've got to play in. Feel free to give short answers. "Yes." "No." "It's not that simple." "You're not tracking on the important information." "Too many results. Rephrase your query to narrow the search." Or a divergant emotional outburst, whatever. People just want a story that makes sense. I've you've a reputation for unreliability or whimsy, you can get away with nearly anything. Just say it with the expectation that the other person will believe, without anything that blatently contradicts what they are likely to be able to be certain about.
I read the above and thought that I might like to see the results of Bush talking (lying) about the reason why the USA is in Iraq and then I realized it would never work. From what I understand of this process, there needs to be a brain in the subject's skull before you can get any results.
I finally kow... it's not the sex part that makes me tired....
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Instead, I sometimes just don't answer the question, or essentially answer another question such that there was no lie, technically, or at least there was no untruth spoken that now needs scaffolding and its own support system to maintain it. And it's easy to say that I thought they asked something else.
Of course, when backed up against the wall, I 'fess up, or I'll say to the person, depending upon the situation, that perhaps they'd rather not know. Or I'll say what a wonderful day it is.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
I remember finding stuff on the web stating that politicians tend to have a higher I.Q. than average. Some say politicians are just great liars, no offense (especially to good politicians). It kind of makes you wonder.
fMRI uses a strong magnet? This is perhaps the oversimplification of the year. It leaves one with image of a hanging bar magnet and the more the N end points toward your brain the greater the chance you are lying.
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
man, I heard about this on quirks and quarks on the weekend. what is this, slowdot?
-- http://vectorvector.tumblr.com/
This is your boss.
You're fired.
And these are not the droids I'm looking for.
Move along. Move along.
.
"You have liberated me from thought."
You mean making shit up is more work than just remembering? Next thing you know, those wacky scientists will discover that creating is harder than copying, running is harder than walking, and water is actually wet!
If, for some reason, you find yourself being MRI probed or whatever, you simply think up a lie for EVERY SINGLE QUESTION, but then answer normally.
This doesn't measure "are you lying" as much as it measures "are you thinking", so going through the mental motions of lying and telling the truth should get all your responses to look identical.
Alternatively, you could do what has been suggested and make your lies look like truths, but the lack of a discriminating factor is the important part.
I mean, that should work, right?
I'd like to see some studies on how much brain activity is used during the act of sex with different subjects. you'd think that your brain would be workign over-time for that.
1001100 1100101 1100001 1110110 1100101 1001101 1111001 1000010 1101001 1110100 1110011 1000001 1101100 1101111 110111
I saw this TV show one time where a police department teamed up with scientists and devised a better polygraph test.
They strapped a suspect in a chair and showed them a carefully laid out sequence of images on a TV screen, some benign images (like bowls of ice cream or a beachball) but some are details about the crime (if murder, show police photos of the corpse, or show some evidence left behind like a scarf or jewelry that the victim didn't own, or possible accomplises already linked to the crime). While this went on, the scientists measured brain activity and they could tell when a suspect "remembers" pictures, the parts of the brain fire off and the scientists can see it. When the suspects brain indicates it remembers and it's on a crime photo, they can reasonably presume the suspect had something to do with it.
Of course this has limitations, like what if the suspect was under the influence of something, or the materials about the crime aren't effective enough, but it's much harder to fool your brain.
"Yer criminals are basically stupid."
I used to be a pathological liar, so this is an area of some interest to me.
I tell my kids that a lie forces the liar to construct and maintain two universes: the one the lie would work in and the one the truth occupies. Since telling one lie usually forces liars to tell another, a repeated doubling effect occurs, forcing them to maintain exponentially increasing sets of information.
Liars try to overlay these false realities on top of one another, keeping track only of the differences. Since they aren't aware that they are trying to juggle an exponentially expanding set of universes, or because it's a losing proposition anyway, they always miss something.
All lies can be detected by some inconsistency. They are either internally inconsistent or externally inconsistent. That is, a liar either contradicts himself or some known fact, either directly or by logical inference.
It also seems there is a small set of people who have the innate ability to detect a lie. The rest of us don't see the lie, and tend not to care.
sigs, as if you care.
Ok, I understand very much the theory you are proposing, but you're actually supposing it. You don't have evidence. It sounds good, but we have started, with the article, to examine evidence of lying/truthtelling and its effect on brain activity. I don't think we can just toss around this kind of "common-sense" theory as if it were true, when we actually have the means now to test it.
Also, have we looked at the methodology of the study? Did it include efforts to fool the fMRI? I've seen a lot of smug answers and comments like the parent here, but seriously, they're not working from data, they're working from presuppositions on how the brain works, or even how lying works.
Why is the possibility that the mind know truth from falsehood so hard to accept? Maybe you're right, maybe it can be fooled, but let's at least be open to the possibilities and get impirical data to prove or disprove it.
i - This sig provided by
No wonder those High School jocks that can smooth talk their way into and out of anything end up packing my groceries when I am living in a nice house with a decent family... I despise stupid people.
_
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Doctor: Norma, I thought I told you to hook up the... reader.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Not to mention those involved in sequence completion (hippocampus) and configural learning (hippocampus). Configural learning has some similarities to what-if scenarios, as does sequence completion. Naturally, this is why the hippocampus is good at both.
And yes, I am a huge fan of the hippocampus.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I doubt this test shows anything more than if you are recalling a recent event under no stress you use very little brain power. I'd like to see it preformed on people that are trying to remember something 6 months ago and if they answer wrong could go to jail (or some other stress induced consequence.) I am will to bet there would be a ton of brain activity.
Here's my version of the test: have a pretty girl listen to a nerdy guy and decide if he is telling the truth or lying. Shock him if he is lying. You can probably post an ad for this test in the personals of your local free newspaper.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Thus, zombies would make ideal political candidates.
Wait...
"it seems to take more brain effort to tell a lie than to tell the truth "
That gives a very clear indication of how intelligent politicians really are!
- "They misunderestimated me."
Remember... "It's not a lie, if you believe it."
"the truth" is already consistent in our heads
While this is a rather disturbing perspective (that there is some quantifiable, objective truth out there - sounds like some red-state-neck-speak), I do buy the whole "lying requires more brainpower" argument.
Consider all the intelligence in blue states and the candidates supported. No red-state idiot could understand nuance. It takes intelligence to understand how a discussion can be on one side of an issue today, and the other side tomorrow, by the same candidate. True liberalism requires significant intellectual comprehension. Understanding how to delude others, and self-delude in ones pursuit of nihlism requires near genius in cases.
i cant be lazy AND dishonest...
this sig has been discontinued.
I half-expected that this story would be categorized under Politics.
Debriefing by MRI?
Twain didn't need no stinkin' grant to figure this out. As much respect as I have for the scientific establishment, sometimes it's a wonder any of them can find their own butt.
Always tell the truth; then you don't have to remember anything.
-Twain
George W is absolutely certain that Iraq caused this war upon themselves. He is certain about WMD. The evidence doesn't matter, it is only his belief.
The idiot also says he believes in a strong dollar.
considering it takes more effort to lie, and effort must be paid for with calories...
I wanna call my diet "Lie Your ASS Off". literally. =)
"All that glitters is not gold"
Obviously, this suggests an application as a lie detector that actually works (as opposed to the existing ones, which pretty much don't). Only problem is that MRI machines are too expensive for almost everybody (although I expect some government agencies will be using them).
Currently, companies that make MRI scanners have a business model that involves selling large, expensive devices to hospitals and clinics. They have no great motivation to make them cheap, because the market is not all that large. On the other hand, a lie detector has to be much less expensive.
So if it is possible to make cheap functional MRI scanners, we'll be seeing them, and that technology will feed back to make medical scanners cheaper as well.
...Bill Gates recent MRI scans. They were off the charts.
At first, I thought it was due to exceptionally high intelligence. Now we know "the rest of the story."
Dr. Tim
One step closer to implanting everyone with a buzzer that will go off when they're telling a lie! Imagine a society where everyone must always tell the absolute and perfect truth! OR BE IMPALED! Muahahahahahaha!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
People can be [self] trained to practice deception easily all the time. Then it wouldnt take more efforts. Spies are trained in this technique.
And I can go into a very emotional state.. By the time the baseline was over, I'd have their data soo messed up.
It takes me usually 5 minutes to actively change my brain-state. And Ive went under poly and lied successfully. Tis not that hard.
Because lying would make me have to do some work by being creative and thinking up of the lie, it's scenarios, and counters to questions. Again - I have to create things that didn't happen and then remember them AND finally recite the lie. Since a lie is something that sprung up from my mind, it does not have the reality support (touch, taste, smell, sight, etc.)
Now, if I told the truth, I just had to recite something that I remembered. A few less steps that are supported by reality...
Just my non-scientific educated guess.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I think you underestimate the skills of the examiners. Trust me, a doctor/scientist that studied brain functions for a long time and performed countless fMRI scans can outsmart folks with some off-the-cuff comment on how they think they can fool the test.
It's a lawyer's job to do the lying for you -- no wonder Chris Sontag got hired by MS to do what he's doing. Sorry for the lawyer joke. But in all seriousness, it's no wonder law schools churn out so many. With high turnover and burnout, the ones that drop out have to be replaced right? They should do an MRI on lawyers (no wait, maybe just do it on Chris Sontag), to see if their brain activity is different than the average joe when lying.
Linux at home
Truth is merely recall. Lying requires recall of the truth, creative narration, and corroboration between the truth and the narrative.
It's like saying that buying a car is easier for you to do than digging up the metals and petrochemicals in your back yard and using them to build a car.
Who would have known he thinks this hard?
Get up!
That would be self-defeating. If you're going to "modify the truth" you should begin early and spread your version to others as rapidly as possible. Even eye-witnesses.
Very few people (if any) have "solid" memories. Most people can't even keep facts straight about private events in their own lives, slightly modifying the memory over time. This is common knowledge to those who take statements from witnesses at the scene of an accident or a crime. In a matter of minutes, an uninvolved witness who hasn't spoken with anyone else can completely change significant details of their account.
It's suspected that this has to do with how we recall memories; that there is no separate area of the brain for them, no division between our active thinking processes and the incomplete impressions stored among them. As we try to recall details, the brain may "approximate" based on other experiences, similar things, attitudes, expectations, personal biases, as well as social pressures and recent vicarious information.
There are a few examples of this sort of thing in Carl Sagan's book, "A Demon Haunted World". One of the more memorable was how Voltaire once went among a crowd of people who were listening to some speaker saying, "I saw the Holy Spirit descend on him like a dove!" Sure enough, people later turned up who claimed to have been eye-witnesses of that lie and who seemed completely convinced that they had actually seen it.
So if you're going to lie, don't worry about eye-witnesses. Worry instead about recording devices, which are becoming increasingly ubiquitous.
From Demons:
Honest is easy.
Fiction is where genius lies.
It's a neat song, all about how much fun it is to lie. It's good. Go download it.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Took me forever to find the damn thing. Dr. Faro works for Drexel, not Temple, and this was presented at the 2003 meeting of the American Society for Neuroradiology, so it's actually old news Wired is picking up. The official press release is here. The abstract is as follows:
Functional MR Imaging of Truth and Deception
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to investigate the regions of brain activation during truth-telling or deception by functional MR imaging using blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast while simultaneously recording the physiologic signals using a standard polygraph machine and control question technique (CQT) inside the MR scanner.
Materials & Methods
The experiments were performed on 4 normal healthy volunteers using a standard 1.5 T Siemens Vision scanner. The physiologic responses from the normal subjects were measured by using a four-channel polygraph machine. Three different types of physiologic responses were measured: The rate and the depth of respiration; blood pressure; and galvanic skin response. An event-related functional MR design was used for collecting the functional MR images. A standard quadrature head coil was used. The stimulus presentation was controlled from outside the scanner using a neuropsychologicsoftware (NeuroBehavioral Systems) and displayed through the MR compatible goggle. The subjects' responses were measured using a response box. Contiguous oblique axial images were positioned and aligned parallel to the AC-PC line covering the entire brain. Functional images then were acquired with echo planar (EPI FID) pulse sequence. The imaging parameters were: matrix size = 128*128; FoV = 22 cm; slice thickness = 5 mm; TR = 4000 ms; TE = 54 ms, and NEX = 1. The functional imaging was performed using an even-related functional MR imaging (e-functional MR imaging) design and the questions presented were set by the rules of the classically used CQT polygraph technique. The subjects were presented with 13 relevant and control questions. A relevant situation was created prior to the functional MR scanning and the subjects were asked to either lie or tell the truth pertaining to the relevant questions. Of the two subjects analyzed in this study, one of the subjects was asked to tell the truth and the second subject was asked to deliberately lie to the relevant questions. Event-related functional MR imaging was performed with a rest period of 30 seconds during which a blank screen is presented, followed by 20 seconds period for presentation and collection of the responses. Continuous scanning was performed until all the 13 questions are completed. The volunteers were cued with a brief fixation period before presentation of each question. These questions were randomized and repeated four times and separate e-functional MR data was collected. The data then was analyzed using SPM software and statistical parametric maps [SPM(t)] were generated to show visual representation of the areas in the brain wherein statistically significant differences between BOLD contrast during truth-telling and deception conditions are present.
Results
The results show areas of frontal lobe (BA 9), (BA 47), temporal lobe, sublobar, extra nuclear, and inferior frontal gyrus to be active during the deception process. However during truth telling, activation regions were predominantly seen in the temporal lobe (BA 41) as well as in superior temporal gyrus.
Conclusion
These results suggest that there may be unique area(s) in the brain involved in truth-telling or deception process that can be measured using functional MR imaging. The results also show that we can measure simultaneously the physiologic signals using the polygraph machine inside the MR scanner while acquiring echo-planar images without noticeable artifacts on the MR images. The polygraph results correlated well in the truth telling subject, however, was inconclusive in the deception subject due to insufficient GSR data. These results are preliminary and warrant further investigation.
OASIS - Online Abstract Submission and Invitation System(TM) ©1996-2004, Coe-Truman Technologies, Inc.
To be a good liar you have to have a good memory.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The only downfall of such methods is that when the subject actually believes in the lie then there is not way to tell the difference.
Of course this takes prior effort on the subject to not believe in the truth.
On these occasions usually the subject has been told by a third party that what he believed to be true to be false with some help (like torture or falsified evidence).
One in effect could train themselves to actually believe a lie that they themselves perpetuated.
Of course this is all 1984 speak here and not some one just making up a story they know to be false.
I'd be interested for them to test this with people clinically diagnosed as compulsive liars.
I don't need your big-city "diag-nosed"; this compulsive liar is just big-nosed.
I've always hypothesized about a method of beating the lie detector test... And it employs telling the truth. Hypothetically speaking, let's say you stole a diamond ring and are being interrogated about it on the lie detector. You are asked: 1) Did you steal a diamond ring? (you want to lie, obviously, and say no. You also happen to be wearing a white shirt). So inside your head you ask yourself, "Am I wearing a black shirt?" 2) Then you answer "No." but in response to your own question to yourself, thus telling the truth. And the the lie detector test you've answered the question regarding the diamond. Perhaps speed can be a limiting factor, but you can probably come up with two quick and easy questions to ask yourself.
Lose weight. Lie now!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I learned this watching sitcoms as a kid, and formed a school of ethics around it. I noticed that lying to people meant you had to pretend to be gay whenever your landlord was around, all sorts of annoying unintended consequences would pop up, and usually the truth came out anyway despite all your efforts.
It's much easier to simply be honest (except at work, where honesty kills you - I haven't found a good solution to that yet. Might have to learn to lie to my management).
This ties into something I read in Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Philosophy (a nice introductory text), about a school of thought that says that good people have easier lives, and that the Universe is set up to ensure this.
sure, your brain may work harder when you lie, but they're not considering the effect telling the truth has on the rest of your body. For instance the beating you'll receive if you were to tell your best friend the truth, that you did in fact sleep with his girlfriend.
When they ask you a real question, like "Is your name [name]?"
Pause and think, answer in your head, "NO it is not. My name is not [name]." but then answer correctly.
As long as there's activity on each question you answer, there's no way for them to detect which ones are lies.
This works on normal polygraphs too. Just make yourself tense up on the easy questions: hold your breath, bite your tongue, rip your toenail off and push UP against the top of your shoe to generate uncomfortable pain.
Machines: 0
Humans: 2
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Right - that is why the good polygraph examiners attempt to verify your "levels" of tension, so that they can see if there is enough variation in your responses for the test to be valid.
The same thing would need to be applied in this case as well, so that the relative levels of brain activity could be measured to see if the differences measured are significant or not.
Neither of these tests will work correctly on Narcoleptics.
Everything I've ever told you is a lie. Except that. And that. And that. And that. And that.
And that.
"It's not a lie if you believe it."
- George Costanza
"It takes two to lie... One to lie, and one to listen."
- Homer Simpson
It reminds me of a story I read in some "World's dumbest criminals" book. The cops picked up a burgler and took him to a room for questioning. They took a colendar and glued some wires to it, and glued the other end of the wires to a copy machine. Inside the copy machine, they placed a sheet of paper with the words "HE'S LYING" written on it. They sat the crook down in front of the machine with the colendar strapped to his head and questioned him. Whenever the cops suspected his answers were full of BS, they pushed the copy button and it spit out a page that said "HE'S LYING". The crook believing it was a legit lie detector then confessed to the crime.
"It's Hard Work."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It has been reported that thinking, yup you heard right THINKING makes the brain work harder.....
big shocker huh????
This reminds me of a bit of poker wisdom: if you think an opponent could be bluffing, if you talk to him and his responses seem non-sensical, slow, or if he stumbles and searches for words, he probably is. (Applies mostly to inexperienced players.)
Just to join the chorus to say how intuitively obvious this is.
The Science Channel had a good program recently about the stages humans have to go through in order to learn how to lie. A big part of it is the ability to model what other people know and what is detectable as differences in reality.
For instance, in the show, children age 3 and under couldn't fathom that anyone had information they didn't, and also couldn't understand that others didn't know everything they do. So when they lie, they make up information about things they know nothing about, and assume you know nothing about, either. One example is, you play Guess Which Hand? and they just show you which hand the object is in because they know which it is, and think therefore that you automatically know that which hand it is, also.
Clearly, a lot more of the brain is absolutely going to be involved in lying than in truth-telling. That is, if you're actually trying to deceive someone and aren't just being sarcastic:
--You have to recall events as they were, so you're doing exactly the work there that you would if telling the straight truth.
--In addition, you're modeling the physical characteristics of events and whether they could fit with what the other person has and will experience during the time period affected by the lie.
--And on top of that, the emotive portions are going to be relied on for modeling the emotive characteristics of those you're lying to so you can figure out A) are they buying it? B)if suspicious, how far might they go to unravel the deception?
I'm sure really bad liars use less of their brain to make their lies, and are thus less succesful.
How many times has someone lied to you, and your reaction was, "They lied to me" AND "They think I'm stupid!" It isn't so much they think you're stupid, it's that it's very hard for people to lie successfully to people who are smarter than they are.
. . . this demonstrates why women are smarter than men.
"A liar must have a good memory." -- Quintilian (35-79 AD)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The best liar group aren't available for scans; they're too busy being in office. And as a plus they don't admit to lying even if caught red-handed.
The second best liar group is trying to get elected, too busy for a scan. They also don't admit lying even when 5 year olds say "Dad, why is the presidental candidate lying?"
The third best group of liars are millionaires on paper due to association with a software monopoly (*) backed by gigantic donations to the first two groups. If caught lying, they won't even admit being asked about it.
(*) Yes, that's the company everybody is thinking about so I don't even have to name it.
So how do you expect any world-class liar to submit to a scan so we know more about competent lying??
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
There's very little really good liars, because the ones that are smart enough to be good at it, are smart enough to know when to tell the truth.
How can they tell the difference? They can't.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
I love Microsoft.
I love SCO.
I love RIAA.
I love MPAA.
I don't know about you, but I feel dumber lying.
[/tin foil hat on]
Since we are all (secretly) being told what to say anyway, not to mention the constant monitoring by big brother, why would anyone have any reason to lie?
Damn! The RFID chip in my neck just started beeping...
Homer no function beer well without.
I thought it was rather funny that there seemed to be little discussion around a common area of lying. Most of the time it requires several lies to get a piece of A without getting a serious relationship. When you tell them that you love them, but you don't. That lie is a common one. In order for that lie to succeed, you usually have to lie to yourself about it.
The fun part is when you start to believe that lie yourself. Then you are f*k'd.
men, this now gives us justification to further investigate/dump our women when they use the headache excuse for not putting out.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
How about lying while talking on a cell phone while driving an SUV with six kids playing soccer in the back while someone is doing an MRI measurement?
So for the ADD brain, does lying provide the stimulation it seeks?
And how does lying affect levels of seratonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine? Could lying be addictive or reinforcing in this way?
Hmmm . . .
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Is it even worth publishing a study where 6 people shooting a toy gun were tested for lying and 3 observers for telling truth ? They din't even try swapping their roles..couldn't brain activity be different because of the different role(shooting/observing) performed itself. I don't think this study/results are good enough for serious consideration :-(
ravinder
I dont understand first off , if this is something amazing discovery to be reported by slashdot. .So its a double step work . However being truthful is just a single step of answering to the other person.
When someone lies , common sense tells us that he has to think abt what other man has to think abt it
more steps , more work.
Agree?
Scully: (giving the lie detector test) "You just answer truthfully. Do you understand?"
Homer: "Yes!" (explosion)
I see 57005 people
Well, that's something that I had always figured anyhow -- to lie, you have to use your brain and think. When you tell the truth, you're telling straight from memory. And even though sometimes you may have to think, it's a lot easier to recall from memory than it is to just create a new section of memory. But all in all though, I still think us Social Engineers are the most intelligent! After all, even the article says that we have to use our mind the most. ;)
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Another study found out that lying is not harder if you are too silly to tell the difference between a truth and a lie. The study was conducted with 12 top SCO executives.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I was tryin to do a follow up on this article and I found it interesting that in May 2003 Dr. Scott Faro released almost identical findings.l .docS w4z8J:ww w.asnr.org/press/PR_ASNRDrexel.doc+Dr.+Scott+Faro& hl=en&client=firefox-a
http://www.asnr.org/press/PR_ASNRDrexe
or via google cache:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:sIzaZQ
Is this actually new news?
There's a joke -
Q: How do you know a politician is lying?
A: His lips are moving!
How about -
Q: How do you know a politician is lying?
A: He's showing signs of brain activity!
There was a Father Brown story along those lines... The lord of the house had apparently been kidnapped and they'd found a suspicious drifter nearby. He wouldn't talk, but whenever they started talking about the lord and his disappearance, his pulse rate and perspiration set off the machine, and therefore they were sure he was guilty. In actuality, he was the lord in question, who was trying to skip town due to massive debts.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.