Newswise — Two companies--Cephos and No Lie MRI--are now offering commercial lie-detection services that use functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to look for activity of what they claim are the brain's deception centers. The idea is that such measurements of neural activity are more reliable than the various physiological changes that are tracked by conventional polygraphy.
fMRI has shown itself to be a very powerful tool in neuroscience, and the concept of using it for lie detection is reasonable enough. But so far, the technique has fallen short of what would be required for a practical lie detector. The scientific community certainly hasn't been convinced that it will ever work as well as would be required. And U.S. courts are far from embracing it. The author's informal testing of No Lie MRI also raises doubts.
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