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."

Comments

Makes Sense

[dshaw858]

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

Then you must...

[Facekhan]

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.

Re:Then you must...

[SerpentMage]

I think you are incorrect here. Intelligent liars are not people who just lie. Intelligent liars create stories around their situation. To an intelligent liar the lie is the truth, and hence they are not lying. This means if an unexpected question arises then the question will be unexpected like a person who is not lying. There will be no difference in reaction.

It is not possible to catch intelligent liars using machine detection. This is the crux of my problem with the use of technology to catch criminals.

Re:Then you must...

[hey!]

I think it's also the case that expert problem solvers in a particular area recruit fewer brain areas -- at least I think I recall reading this in Science News. This would mean that a beginning geometry student works harder to solve a given problem than a person who has been doing ruler and compass constructions for years.

Lying is just another form of information processing. I'd guess that an accomplished liar -- a master liar if you will, is going to have a number of well learned strategies for deception, and thus work much less hard than a truthful person.

Of course, very few people are wholly truthful. I wouldn't be surprised if each person were a master liar in some topical area, such as why my term paper is late.

Re:Thinking

[InternationalCow]

Well, it's not that simple actually. Thinking "harder" does not necessarily cause more brain activity in any kind of linear relation. Rather, what you see in the case of lying is specific activity in the areas of the brain that are involved in the regulation of the emotional response, including ones (such as the amygdala) involved in fear and planning (prefrontal cortex). Lying lights up these areas because the liar fears being found out, which involves a kind of "planning" and an emotional response following from it. Could be useful for lie detection, if you get the scanner down to a manageable size :)

Re:Err, of course?

[TheRaven64]

To quote Mark Twain:

I always tell the truth. I'm too lazy to lie

Obligitory Star Trek Quote

[T-Kir]

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.

Re:On the contrary

[golgotha007]

It doesn't take a lot to say "I am lying"

Keep in mind that when you lie, your brain will be more active, weighing the impact the deception might/would have regarding other memories and any possible future situations involved with those memories.

I'm going to go out on a limb and attempt some sort of comparison...
when you tell the truth, it's almost like the answer is cached, no thought is really required other than recalling that direct memory which holds the data.
when you attempt to deceive, the answer is no longer cached; the brain must actively retrieve the data and then worry about dependencies, children, etc.

It's no surprise that to lie or deceive requires more brain power than simply reciting truth.

Duh.

Re:On the contrary

[v01d]

Keep in mind that when you lie, your brain will be more active, weighing the impact the deception might/would have regarding other memories and any possible future situations involved with those memories.

All that can be true when you tell the truth too. For instance, imagine your wife asking "Are you cheating on me?"

You're starting with the assumption that the truth can't hurt, and that assumption seems quite obviously false.