NPR Justice Talking, January 14, 2008
Reporter Reid Frazier speaks with neuroscientists on whether brain imaging technology could replace the polygraph lie detector. Listen to this show.

The New Yorker, July 2, 2007
A liar’s testimony is often more persuasive than a truthteller’s. Liars are more likely to tell a story in chronological order, whereas honest people often present accounts in an improvised jumble. Similarly, according to DePaulo and Bond, subjects who spontaneously corrected themselves, or said that there were details that they couldn’t recall, were more likely to be truthful than those who did not—though, in the real world, memory lapses arouse suspicion. Read more...

The New York Times, August 26, 2007
While fMRI dates back to the early 1990s, hitherto it has been used mainly by doctors in hospitals to make diagnoses. The commercialization of brain scanning is a recent development, spurred by the refinement of the technology. Read more...

The New York Times Magazine, March 11, 2007
Laken says he hopes to reach the 90-percent- to 95-percent-accuracy range — which should be high enough to satisfy the Supreme Court’s standards for the admission of scientific evidence. Judy Illes, director of Neuroethics at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, says, “I would predict that within five years, we will have technology that is sufficiently reliable at getting at the binary question of whether someone is lying that it may be utilized in certain legal settings.” Read more...

Washington Post, October 30, 2006
In the pipeline are several cheaper, faster, easier-to-use brain-examining technologies, all intended as major improvements on the unreliable chicken-scratching polygraph we use now. Some seem to identify mental preparations for telling a lie even before the liar opens his mouth -- verging on mind-reading. Another is meant to work from across the room, even if you do not wish to cooperate. Think of it as the "mental detector" at your airport screening, and not without good reason. Much of this research is being funded by the military as part of the anti-terror juggernaut. Read more...

USA Today, January 29, 2006
"The lab I was visiting recently reported catching lies with 90% accuracy. And an entrepreneur in Massachusetts is hoping to commercialize the system in the coming months. "I'd use it tomorrow in virtually every criminal and civil case on my desk" to check up on the truthfulness of clients, said attorney Robert Shapiro. Read more...

Wired Magazine, January 2006
"FMRI lie detection, however, has evolved in the open, with each new advance subjected to peer review. The Supreme Court has already demonstrated that it is inclined to look favorably on brain imaging: A landmark 2005 decision outlawing the execution of those who commit capital crimes as juveniles was influenced by fMRI studies showing that adolescent brains are wired differently than those of adults. The acceptance of DNA profiling may be another bellwether. Highly controversial when introduced in the 1980s, it had the support of the scientific community and is now widely accepted in the courts. Read more..

The Current, Canadian Broadcast Network, January 17, 2006
Because MRI can scan the brain, some researchers see MRI machines as a sophisticated kind of lie detector test. And they're asking if a scan can make a map of how the brain thinks, what it remembers, and how it senses thing --- why not a picture of how it tells lies?
Lately the research has received an influx of funding from the US departments of defense and homeland security which has boosted both the pace of the research as well as some suspicions among critics as to how the technology might be used in the future. Listen to the show...

Business Week, November 7, 2005
Polygraph tests are used with caution these days because they are known to be highly unreliable -- accuracy rates can dip below 70%. Cephos, a Pepperell (Mass.) startup, says that a standard MRI machine, used properly, could serve as a lie detector that tells the truth. People use more brainpower when they lie, and that increased activity can be detected when the brain is scanned in a magnetic resonance imaging machine, says Cephos Chief Executive Steve Laken. In a recently completed test with the Medical University of South Carolina, 61 subjects were told to take a watch or a ring from a drawer. They then were asked a series of yes/no questions while undergoing a 40-minute MRI exam -- with some subjects instructed to lie. Using software developed by Cephos to analyze images of brain activity, researchers could tell who was lying 90% of the time. Cephos is now doing a follow-up study funded by the Defense Dept. to see whether it can improve the accuracy rate. Results are expected next spring. Read more...