Liars have different brains - it's true !

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/30/liars_brains/

All participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans so that researchers could assess how much grey vs. white matter each group had.

The liars had between 22 and 26 per cent more white matter than either of the other groups. The researchers say the difference could not be accounted for by variations in age, ethnicity, IQ, head injury or substance misuse.

The findings, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, are in line with similar research into autism. Autistic people have more grey matter than non-autistic people, and generally find it much harder to lie.

Can't wait till they have MRI scans in job interviews and in courts :rolleyes:

John

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Can't wait till they have MRI scans in job interviews and in courts :rolleyes:

Actually I think that is a very real Orwellian fear. fMRI is a very powerful research tool but it has the capability to be frighteningly misused.

democrates

"The issue is always how much of our behaviour is under voluntary control and how much is innate. The finding of brain abnormalities lends weight to the idea that a strong component of such difficulties may well be beyond voluntary control at least in part."
The research team says more work is needed to find out at what stage in the brain's development these differences appear.

The last part raises the nature/nurture question, maybe there's other research available on aborted foetus's that can clarify if grey/white differences are there right from the start, or whether they reflect years of lying. If it is the case that lying causes more white matter and more white matter makes it easier to lie, it could occur almost randomly due to childhood experimentation.

From wikipedia -

White matter is composed of nerve cell processes, or axons, which connect various grey matter areas of the brain to each other and carry nerve impulses between neurons. Cerebral and spinal white matter does not contain dendrites, which can only be found in grey matter along with neural cell bodies and shorter axons.
White matter is distinguished in that it is composed of axonal nerve fibers, covered by a myelinsheath. Grey matter is composed primarily of nerve cell bodies. Generally, white matter can be understood as the parts of the brain and spinal cord responsible for information transmission; whereas, grey matter is mainly responsible for information processing.

Anyone care to hypothesise as to how more transmission than processing can make lying more likely?

I share the concern about relying too much on science to explain behaviour. Our concept of justice is predicated on the notion of free will. A wealthy defendant in an adversarial court system can afford to pay enough experts to make the case that the defendant was so subject to the laws of physics that they effectively had no choice, and therefore cannot be held responsible for the offshore account tax swindle.

Much as I wince at that scenario, if it's true then we can't judge deceitful and manipulative behaviour so harshly, though society still has to be protected and there must remain the threat of sanction to dissuade wrong-doing.

Then there's the question of rehab. Can these people be trained to overcome their disposition? And if so will their grey/white balance change to reflect their new mode? Could it be identified at a young age and specialist education applied to help the person access their free will more easily?

While the group tested who have antisocial personality disorder engage in deception by mimicking emotional reactions, they do so to interact with others more easily in pursuit of their goals, and they were found to have 'normal' grey/white.

The liars however, could be fearful of their true self being exposed, assuming others would judge them badly. This lack of confidence could have started in early life. They lie to hide the inner self, and to present a false self to others. I'm not sure if the manipulative tendency supports this hypothesis though. It would be interesting to see an analysis of the type of lies people tell and the manipulation they engage in to see if there's a common thread.

Fascinating stuff btw, tks.

John

democrates wrote:

Anyone care to hypothesise as to how more transmission than processing can make lying more likely?

Maybe there is more efficient communication between the cell bodies considering there is less of them. I don't even want to try and think how this would work right now because it's too early in the day (I'm only up).

I think the main thing about science predicting behaviour is that a lot of people see headlines in the newspaper like:

"Scientists discover gay gene"

or

"Liars have less grey matter"

and assume that this is the only cause of these behaviours when it is in fact a combination of many many factors both genetic and environmental.