How to make a person speak the truth and nothing but the truth? This question is asked by many people: investigators, educators, jealous wives and parents of difficult teenagers. Estonian neurophysiologists suggest that they have discovered a new way to "disable" a person's ability to lie. However, not everyone is convinced that this way you can re-educate any liar.
Researchers from the University of Tartu claim that the magnetic field affects the human brain like a truth serum.
At the level of concepts, a lie is the communication of a deliberate untruth in a direct or indirect way, with or without a purpose (as, for example, pathological liars do). But what is a biochemical lie? Does the brain react to the fact that the facts we say do not coincide with what we actually know?
Any conscious action causes a number of psychophysiological reactions in the human body. The reactions that occur in the nervous system when false information is reported are significantly different from those that accompany ordinary truthful speech. This well-known principle is the basis for the operation of a polygraph, otherwise - a lie detector.
Ten years ago, in October 2001, neuroscientists from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine presented a report on how the brain activity of a person who lies differs. They asked a group of volunteers to "trick" the computer, and a control group of participants had to answer the questions truthfully. Brain scans of the subjects during the experiment showed that the anterior cortex of the brain, namely, its areas responsible for concentration and error control, were more active when the participants lied.
The organizers of the current experiment took the opposite assumption as a basis: in their opinion, the lie manifests itself not in additional activity of the cortex, but in a decrease in the activity of the "truth-loving" areas of the brain. Sixteen volunteers underwent transcranial magnetic stimulation at the Estonian University of Tartu: their cerebral cortex was stimulated without direct contact with it, using short magnetic pulses. General forced stimulation of any area of the brain was supposed to weaken the possible "conscious" activity in this area.
Participants were asked to name the color of the figure that was shown to them on the computer screen; at their discretion, they could lie or give a truthful answer. In the first series of experiments, the researchers stimulated the prefrontal cortex of the brain with magnetic radiation, which is precisely associated with the functions of processing and controlling information, and for the second time, the parietal zone, which has nothing to do with these abilities. According to the data obtained, the first time the subjects lied much less often.
However, critics argue that one cannot draw any serious conclusions based on the data of such a small group of subjects. In addition, looking at the results of an experiment with magnetic radiation, one cannot help but recall another study of cognitive processes. In 2009, Harvard psychologists discovered that people who are prone to lies and dishonest behavior react differently, even when they say the truth. In the first series of the study, using a clever experiment, Dr. Greene, the study leader, gave participants the opportunity to lie. Thus, he divided the volunteers into prone and not prone to lying.
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In the second series of the experiment, it was revealed that the "inveterate liars" have an increased brain activity even when they tell the truth! Moreover, all the same areas responsible for information control and concentration of attention were active. Where a more honest person did not see other options, the liar was forced to make a conscious choice - whether to tell the truth this time or not, which caused additional activity of the cortex. This begs the assumption: perhaps stimulation with magnetic impulses will "weaken" the ability to lie to the greatest extent in those who are used to telling lies often - after all, their brain is more active when choosing between two options.
It is not known whether doctors will ever be able to discover a reliable way to distinguish truth from lies and encourage people to speak the truth. So far, according to numerous experiments, it is possible to distinguish the truth by eye only in 54 percent of cases. That is, the result of "conscious" recognition is approximately the same as if you were tossing a coin, deciding whether a person was lying or not.
Surprisingly, depressed people are more honest than healthy people. Perhaps because they are less motivated to achieve life in life, they do not seek to make a good impression of themselves and benefit from what has been said. But when a person immersed in melancholy recovers, they begin to lie with a normal, "healthy" frequency.
YANA FILIMONOVA