Italian researchers have pinpointed a part of the brain which, if observed with sophisticated equipment, gives away the intention to lie about something that happened.
A team of scientists led by Alberto Priori of Milan University has demonstrated that a bit of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex comes into play when someone denies something that actually happened.
This can be spotted thanks to a painless technique which involves passing a small electrical current through the head. It is called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and has already been shown to make fully-functioning brains work better.
The researchers put volunteers to the test, asking them to tell this specific type of lie and tell the truth while undergoing dDCS.
The results showed plainly that when people were about to tell a lie, the electrical current for some reason made the functioning of their brain slowed down noticeably.
The results of the research, which have obvious implications for police interviewing suspects, were published in the latest edition of the international journal Cerebral Cortex.
