14 DAY TRIAL // Older people who are seriously gullible without even having to make the slightest effort may be suffering from a form of dementia, the results of a new scientific study show. The work shows that people with one of these conditions have a hard time detecting sarcasm or lies.
The new research was conducted by investigators at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF). They say that Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions have the same effect on the human mind, and that the new tool can be used to test for their presence as well.
During the investigation, a group of test participants, all of them seniors, but only half of them suffering from neurodegenerative disorders, were made to watch videos showing conversations.
In some cases, the people being depicted were being truthful, whereas in others they were lying very often. While they were watching the video clips, all participants had their brain activity recorded via Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).
Identifying sarcasm and lies was found to be an ability headquartered in the frontal lobe of the brain. In people who were sick, neural activity patterns were different in this region than in healthy individuals.
The sick “patients cannot detect lies. This fact can help them be diagnosed earlier,” explains Dr. Katherine Rankin, a neuropsychologist and a member of the Memory and Aging Center at UCSF.
She is also the senior author of a new study detailing the findings, which was presented on Thursday, April 14, at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Hawaii.
The presentation, which was made by Rankin and her postdoctoral fellow Tal Shany-Ur, PhD, was called “Divergent Neuroanatomic Correlates of Sarcasm and Lie Comprehension in Neurodegenerative Disease,” PsychCentral reports.
“We have to find these people early. If somebody has strange behavior and they stop understanding things like sarcasm and lies, they should see a specialist who can make sure this is not the start of one of these diseases,” Rankin explains.
Dementia, Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative conditions are currently putting a huge toll on national healthcare systems around the world. Experts are hard at work in finding a solution to deal with this array of disorders once and for all.
Until that becomes a reality, coming up with new methods of diagnosing the conditions early on is the most efficient way of ensuring public health and cost efficiency.