Originally published October 7 2005
USC study finds brain abnormalities in pathological liars
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
MRI studies of participants' brains have yielded clues to researchers that lying may depend on the amount of white matter in a person's brain.
While previous research has shown that there is heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex -- the area of the brain that enables most people to feel remorse or learn moral behavior -- when normal people lie, this is the first study to provide evidence of structural differences in that area among pathological liars.
The research -- led by Yaling Yang and Adrian Raine, both of the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences -- is published in the October issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.
A series of psychological tests and interviews placed 12 in the category of people who had a history of repeated lying (11 men, one woman); 16 who exhibited signs of antisocial personality disorder but not pathological lying (15 men, one woman); and 21 who were normal controls (15 men, six women).
"We looked for things like inconsistencies in their stories about occupation, education, crimes and family background," said Raine, a psychology professor at USC and co-author of the study.
Aside from having histories of conning others or using aliases, the habitual liars also admitted to malingering, or telling falsehoods to obtain sickness benefits, Raine said.
The liars had significantly more "white matter" and slightly less "gray matter" than those they were measured against, Raine said.
Specifically, liars had a 25.7 percent increase in prefrontal white matter compared to the antisocial controls and a 22 percent increase compared to the normal controls.
You have to be able to understand the mindset of the other person.
You also have to suppress your emotions or regulate them because you don't want to appear nervous.
Yang, the study's lead author, said the findings eventually could be used in making clinical diagnoses and may have applications in the criminal justice system and the business world.
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