Brain scans can reveal liars — ‘Brain scans can reveal whether someone is lying or telling the truth, US researchers have discovered. When people lied, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans revealed significant increases in activity in several brain regions.

Daniel Langleben and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania hope fMRI could be used for more accurate forensic lie detection.’

“The fact that deception requires extra work in a number of brain regions may indicate that the deception involves inhibition of the ‘default’ response – truth,” adds Langleben. “Interestingly, this agrees with the traditional definition of deception dating back to Saint Augustine: ‘Deception is denial of truth’.”

New Scientist

A particularly bad time for the development of such an intrusive technology, with the massive abrogation of rights underway in the US. And a saintly notion that there is nothing between total candor and outright deception, demonizing the private spaces between, won’t help.