fMRI for Lie Detection ?

[Anasazi23]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Interesting article on how fMRI is being used to study the potential effectiveness in detecting lying in people...much like a polygraph.

Their theory is that it takes more brain power to lie, than to tell the truth, and the preliminary results are interesting.

Here's the link.

 

[MDhasbeen]

Interesting article on how fMRI is being used to study the potential effectiveness in detecting lying in people...much like a polygraph.

Their theory is that it takes more brain power to lie, than to tell the truth, and the preliminary results are interesting.

Here's the link.

oh yeah. dr faro was at my med school. he's become a celeb of sorts. on my neurorads rotation, he was always in and out of the reading room doing interviews about his research. it is indeed very interesting. i asked him if he's looked into any physiologic lying differences in psychopaths versus non-antisocial individuals and, as yet, he has not investigated it. but what a great day it would be if we could tease out malingering with a mere scan!

 

[Anasazi23]

Of course the ethical police are already after this. "What if you find a tumor, aneurysm, etc, that should be private information...."

Oh well...

 

[Psyclops]

I don't know about private info. but it should be disclosed to the person.

 

[watto]

i asked him if he's looked into any physiologic lying differences in psychopaths versus non-antisocial individuals and, as yet, he has not investigated it. but what a great day it would be if we could tease out malingering with a mere scan!

I recall an article in some pediatrics journal that compared physiologic responses of kids with ODD and young adults with antisocial personality disorder, the differences between normal subjects were striking. The ODDs and antisocials had much lower baseline heartrates and blood pressures, and when aroused emotionally did not have the big upward changes in the variables that resulted from the normals. The idea that they had this very low baseline and a coldness about their responses leads me to believe that their fMRI responses might also be muted.

 

[PublicHealth]

Watto beat me to it. What we know about antisocial/psychopathic individuals suggests that they will likely not show these differences. The nature of the signal is important: are the extra regions lighting up because of an affective, cognitive, or some other response? What are these other regions?

Individuals with ASPD show no remorse for their actions, so theoretically they should exhibit less or no brain activation when lying about something that would be considered remorseful among healthy individuals. What's more, what is the ecological validity of a lie detecting test that involves having people lying prone in a noisy tube?

Lawyers will love this: "Doctor, is this pattern of brain activation unique to lying and only lying?" In a sense, much like specificity of sympathetic arousal is a problem for polygraph interpretation, specificity of fMRI activation in a lying paradigm will be a problem.

 

[PublicHealth]

Have fun: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...uids=16436822&query_hl=27&itool=pubmed_docsum