Law Lab Speaker Series
Brain Bases of Deception: Why We Probably Will Never Have a Perfect Lie Detector
Stephen M. Kosslyn, Dean of Social Science and John Lindsley Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Associate Psychologist in the Department of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital
Different brain systems are used when one produces lies in different ways, such as by fabricating lies spontaneously "on the fly" versus fabricating them on the basis of a previously memorized story. This discovery indicates that there is no single "lie center" in the brain, and makes it unlikely that a single neural pattern of activation can distinguish deception from telling the truth.
