Posted on 09/09/2011 10:59:55 AM PDT by Fractal Trader
Magnetic interference with the brain can make it impossible to lie, and polygraphs and "truth serums" will soon be obsolete, say Estonian researchers.
Inga Karton and Talis Bachmann worked with 16 volunteers who submitted to transcranial magnetic stimulation, which can stimulate some parts of the brain and not others.
The team discovered that when magnets were applied to either the right or left side of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the front of the brain, depending on which side was stimulated, the subjects would either lie or tell the truth. But while when magnetic interference was directed at the parietal lobe, their decision-making remained unchanged.
The volunteers were presented a series of coloured discs, and told they could tell the truth or lie about the objects' colours while half were being stimulated on the left and half on the right.
Results showed that the eight volunteers who had their left DPC stimulated lied more often, while the ones with the right DPC stimulated were more likely to tell the truth, researchers said.
The experiment was then repeated with the parietal lobe stimulated, and there was no effect.
"Spontaneous choice to lie more or less can be influenced by brain stimulation," researchers Karton and Bachmann wrote in Behavioural Brain Research.
Last year, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also used powerful magnets to disrupt the area said to be the brain's "moral compass," situated behind the right ear, making people temporarily less moral.
Critics point out that study was only based on 16 volunteers, but it nonetheless indicates that despite common public assumptions, the sense of right and wrong is based not only on social constructs such as cultural or religious beliefs, but rather our brain mechanisms.
"You think of morality as being a really high-level behaviour. To be able to apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgements is really astonishing," said Dr Liane Young, who led the study.
That’s a ridiculous conclusion from a ridiculous test.
I cannot tell a lie!......
Isn’t that the truth...his lips couldn’t even move.
Or, How to Render a Liberal Speechless
he got protection........
Are there magnets in those geekoid blue tooth headsets?
Ethanol works for me.
If you are thinking of slipping a magnet behind the right ear of some lady (I did) you should first ask yourself; “is her moral compass filtering out lustful desires or homicidal desires?” ;^)
There is some empirical evidence that transcranial stimulation by a varying magnetic field can have antidepressant effects, akin to the highly controversial “electroshock” but without any of its physiological or procedural dangers. Maybe people who feel better are less likely to want to lie.
“Is there really global warming?”
“Were you born gay?”
“Will more government spending create jobs?”
“Is George Soros paying you in any way?”
“Do you think Michelle is well-dressed / hot / honest?”
lol.
I think by telling the participants that they could either tell the truth or lie, they changed it to a game rather than a moral compass, since they already said that either response was “acceptable” for the study.
I was just in a classroom not long ago where the teacher told the kids to make up a back jacket for a book about their life - but that it could be about their real life or about a fictional life. The kids who wrote about a fictional life had no reason to believe that they were lying, since they had already been given permission to make it fictional. Same thing would apply here, I think.
They're measuring the effect of magnetism on the brain, or on the ability to lie. The sample size is 16. The response is binary. The study's a joke.
He would just stand there silent.
BUT what if you think a lie is the truth?..
You know like with almost all democrats..
And not a small amount of republicans..
People believe what they want to believe...
It has nothing at all to do with logic or benefit..
All right! The reason for a future business for making Faraday Caps has been born.
Eat your heart out tin foil.
?
?
I was hoping there would be a "Power" setting on the thing. Like they have for lasers that allow you to adjust between "delicate eye surgery" and "vaporize jeep."
>>> Strap this to Obama’s brain: <<<
Assuming IT had one, this would the answers:
>>> Where were you born? <<<
In a hole but I wasn’t privy as to where it was.
>>> Who’s your daddy? <<<
They wouldn’t tell me; however, I look like Malcolm X.
>>> Are you still smoking? <<<
All kind of things, my speeches, crack and all my records. I put them in my pipe and smoke them. (Nah, the other pipe doesn’t exist.)
>>> When’s the last time you had gay sex and who was it with? <<<
Reggie...Reggie...Reggie... Never Wookie, she has her own. I only regret that I was too young to sleep with Che. That’s what Jane Fonda told me.
>>> Are you losing weight because of cocaine usage, or do you have AIDS? <<<
A little bit of both. That is what an 0h0m0tologist informed me.
So no more use for lie detectors and truth serums..but stick 2 blocks of magnets on the perp and he’ll sing like a canary?
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