Don’t lie to me

Forget “the check’s in the mail,” “we’ll finish your project tomorrow,” or “it’s not you, sweetheart, it’s me. I think maybe we need a break.” A neuroscientist thinks he’s cracked the lie detector problem.

The functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI), a tool that identifies brain activity while you’re doing stuff, apparently can also show when you’re lying. According to a story on NPR.com, Dr. Daniel Langleben of the University of Pennsylvania reasoned that, since ADD children have trouble lying, it might be possible to correlate the areas of the brain most often affected by ADD with truth or lies.

Turns out that lies happen when we’re tightly controlling our behavior, which is what ADD kids have trouble doing. And that the part of the brain that controls our behavior is in a different spot than the part we use to blurt out the truth. An fMRI that shows activity in the “controlling” section probably indicates untruthfulness to some degree, says Dr. Langleben.

So far, the company formed to commercialize the discovery, No Lie MRI in Tarzana, California, has a single lie detector center. They say that most of their current liar-scan customers want to convince a significant other that they’re not cheating. But NLM is working to open lie detector centers and develop government, commercial and private customers around the world.

Interesting story. I’m imagining a portable version of the No Lie scanner installed in every corporate boardroom and conference table, all over Capitol Hill, on pulpits, in brokerages, press rooms, master bedrooms, etc.. No Lie acquires Microsoft and Apple, builds an API for lie detection into MacWindows 2010 (“Jackal”) and incorporates it into the Microsoft Surface table.

No Lie gets bigger than IBM, and liar scans become a way of life. Truth becomes a habit because it’s so embarrassing when those damn scanners blink red and beep at you. So…The check isn’t in the mail. Those pants DO make you look fat. No, honey, it wasn’t good for me. I DID have sex with that woman. Profits are down because I put my brother-in-law in charge of production. I don’t give a rip about healthcare for children, I just want to get re-elected.

Truth becomes the new universal. Polished social veneers vanish, Uzis become the sidearm of choice and nobody ever, ever has to worry about dying of old age.

Hmmmm. On second thought, maybe the guys who wear aluminum foil on their heads to keep out the alien rays know what they’re doing…

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