Word: brained
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That is the question that Joshua Greene, 35, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard University is trying to answer. More specifically, Greene is trying to identify the particular pattern of brain activity that distinguishes people who are simply telling the truth from those who are resisting the temptation to lie. His findings, which are based on functional-magnetic-resonance-imaging (fMRI) data, shed light not only on the workings of the human mind but also on the controversy over using fMRI technology outside the lab in the detection of lies. (Check out a story about how to spot...
...researchers then divided the volunteers into groups on the basis of their answers. Those who reported an improbably high number of correct answers were labeled dishonest. Most of the others were classified as honest. Researchers then averaged the fMRI data - which monitors blood flow and, therefore, activity inside the brain in real time - for each group to try to establish a neural signature that represented truth-telling and one that characterized lying. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
Compared with the lying group, honest volunteers had relatively quiet minds - that is, they showed no distinctive activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for planning and decision-making. In the dishonest group, however, areas within the volunteers' prefrontal cortices registered vigorous activity - and the activity persisted whether they were lying...
What does this mean? Greene suggests that in some circumstances, real honesty is not about overcoming the temptation to lie but about not having to deal with that temptation in the first place. On an fMRI image, at least, the lying brain may look no different from one that's simply contemplating whether to lie. "Within the dishonest group, we saw no basis for distinguishing lies from honest reports," says Greene...
...mixes Evangelical-style self-help with insurgent peasant slogans reminiscent of the Mexican Revolution. "I ask God for strength and he gives me challenges that make me strong; I ask him for wisdom and he gives me problems to resolve; I ask him for prosperity and he gives me brain and muscles to work," Moreno writes, using terms that could be found in many Christian sermons preached from Mississippi to Brazil. But on the next page, there's a switch to phrases strikingly similar to those coined by revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. "It is better to be a master...