Lying in the Brain

Some liars are not just lying because they are trying to prevent a conflict. To a pathological liar it is actually easer to lie than telling the truth. Pathological liars usually lie without thinking about it. Their lying is so subconscious that most pathological liars never correct this mental disorder.

A study was done in 2005 by neuroscientists Adrian Raine and Yaling Yang. These two scientists took 21 normal people that did not have a history of pathological lying, 16 people with antisocial personalities, and 12 people with a history of pathological lying. All of these 29 test subjects brain’s where scanned and examined by a MRI. Adian and Yaling found that the pathological liars had more white matter and less gray matter in the prefrontal cortex of their brains than the rest of the test subjects; the normal test subjects had more gray matter and less white matter than the rest of the test subjects. They also found that pathological liars have about 26% more white matter in their prefrontal cortex than most people with other mental disorder.

Although there is no cure for a pathological liar, medication and therapy helps reduce the frequency of lies for some of them. Yet some times these techniques do not work due to the patient lying about taking their medications or lying in their therapy sessions.

Author: Nick Pederson