Brain Scans May Be Used as Lie Detector Tests

In an attempt that could have massive repercussions for both the legal system of the United States and the field of neuroscience, an attorney from Brooklyn plans to introduce brain scans as evidence that a witness is being truthful. The trial is scheduled to take place this week and, if admitted, the scans would represent the first time brain-imaging methods are used in courts of law. The scan has been produced using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), a technique that gages blood flows between various areas of the brain, and pinpoints which of them are activated at a given time, Wired reports.

Attorney David Levin plans to use the fMRI data to demonstrate that a key witness in an employer-retaliation case is telling the truth. If the evidence is accepted, then this could break the stalemate the trial currently finds itself in. This in turn would establish a legal precedent, on which a large number of other similar decisions could be based. Levin says that scientific evidence obtained from numerous studies indicates that fMRI is 76 to over 90 percent efficient in discovering lies.

Neuroscientists have discovered in studies that they can tell which test participant is lying. The way they do that is by checking whether more blood is being sent to the ventrolateral area of the prefrontal cortex, when respondents answer a question. If the correlation is positive, then that particular person is lying. But, despite the high success rate this method produced, there are still scientists who believe that fMRI should not be taken out of science lab, and into court rooms, just yet.

“The data in their studies don’t appear to be reliable enough to use in a court of law. There is just no reason to think that this is going to be a good measure of whether someone is telling the truth,” says Elizabeth Phelps, who is a neuroscientist at the New York University. ”I always come down hard on these companies that are selling [fMRI results]. But these companies are going ahead and making claims already, based on some data that’s not so great, that they can do things that they can’t really do,” the expert adds.