![]() The liars in Yang's study had on average 22 percent to 26 percent more white matter in their prefrontal cortex than both the normal and antisocial controls. Roughly, gray matter is where the processing happens, and white matter connects different parts of the brain, helping us to bring different ideas together. But nearly half the brain is composed of connective tissues that carry electrical signals from one group of neurons to another. Most neuroscience studies focus on gray matter. Gray matter is the groups of brain cells that process information. If you could look into this part of the brain, which sits right behind your forehead, you would see two kinds of matter: gray and white. ![]() ![]() They chose to focus on this area of the brain because previous studies had shown that the prefrontal cortex plays a role in both lying and in antisocial behaviors. Yang and her colleagues put all 49 people, both the liars and the non-liars, into a magnetic resonance imaging scanner and took pictures of their prefrontal cortex. For control groups, they identified 16 people who had antisocial tendencies but no history of lying and 21 people with no history of either lying or antisocial behavior. In the end, the team found 12 people who showed strong evidence of repeated and compulsive lying. Then they ran 108 volunteers through extensive interviews and a battery of tests that measure patterns of deception. The idea was that liars would be over-represented at these agencies a history of repeated lying would likely make it hard to keep a steady job. The researchers began by gathering volunteers from temporary employment agencies in the Los Angeles area. So Yang and her team chose to focus their study on people who have a history of repeated lying and seem not to be able to control their lying (hereafter called simply, "liars"). The label "pathological liar" gets used in a variety of ways, and there's no standard psychological definition or test to measure if someone is a pathological liar. But surprisingly, the liars in their study actually had a surplus - specifically, they had more connections in the part of their brains responsible for complex thinking. ![]() ![]() They expected to see some kind of deficit in the brains of these liars, Yang says. The study was led by Yaling Yang, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Southern California, and Adrian Raine, an expert on antisocial disorders who is now at University of Pennsylvania. In 2005, a study published in The British Journal of Psychiatry provided the first evidence of structural differences in the brains of people with a history of persistent lying. But some people lie repeatedly and compulsively, about things both big and small. But usually we tell little lies, like "your new haircut looks great!" And most of us can control when we lie or what we lie about. We all lie - once a day or so, according to most studies. 'British Journal of Psychiatry' Commentary: Sean Spence, a professor of psychiatry at University of Sheffield, shares his view of the study ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |