Business Wire, March 25, 2008
After eight years of extensive research, numerous published studies and presentations to the scientific community, Cephos announces the availability of functional MRI-based lie detection/truth verification services to the general public. Read more

BBC, March 15, 2010
People have used functional MRI for everything from understanding diseases, things like Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson’s disease to understanding political preferences in determining what makes a person like a specific candidate, to even understanding why it is that we choose the things that we choose - something called neuromarketing. Read more

Nature, March 17, 2010
Last year, functional magnetic resonance imaging made its debut in court. Virginia Hughes asks whether the technique is ready to weigh in on the fate of murderers. Read more

Popular Science, February 24, 2010
It was a courtroom first. Late last year, an Illinois judge allowed functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI) as evidence during the sentencing phase of a murder trial. Defense attorneys argued that the scan showed signs of mental illness and hoped it would convince the jury to show mercy. It didn’t. Read more

Science, November 23, 2009
For what may be the first time, fMRI scans of brain activity have been used as evidence in the sentencing phase of a murder trial. Defense lawyers for an Illinois man convicted of raping and killing a 10-year-old girl used the scans to argue that their client should be spared the death penalty because he has a brain disorder. Read more

Forbes, October 9, 2009
Neuroscience has, for the first time, demonstrated that there may be ways to directly access human thought-even, perhaps, without the thinker's consent. Read more

Time, July 20, 2009
Compared with the lying group, honest volunteers had relatively quiet minds — that is, they showed no distinctive activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for planning and decision-making. In the dishonest group, however, areas within the volunteers' prefrontal cortices registered vigorous activity — and the activity persisted whether they were lying or not. Read more

Times Online, February 28, 2009
But most commercial attention is fixed on the premise that brain-scanning can divine truth from falsehood. Dr Steven Laken, the founder of Cephos, a company using fMRI-based lie detection, says more than 300 people have already been tested in the company’s scanner at Framingham, Massachusetts. Laken believes that American judges are on the verge of making scanning tests admissible – despite questions over their accuracy. Read more

Stanford Lawyer, Fall 2009
Neuroscientific evidence has already influenced court outcomes in a number of instances. Brain scan data is showing some purchase in death penalty cases, after a defendant has been found guilty, says Robert Weisberg ’79, the Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law and faculty co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. Read more

The Oprah Magazine, October 14, 2008
In 2005, the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for criminals under 18, in part based on data showing that the brain is still developing up to that age. That's one example of how neuroscience is redefining the American legal system. A second is the increasing inclusion of brain scans and other neurological evidence in the courtroom. Read more

San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 2008
Neuroscience has some real potential to be used as important evidence in cases and give broader insights into the law," Hank Greely said. Read more

New Scientist, October 3, 2008
A polygraph test proved unsatisfactory: every time Marie's name was mentioned Donna's responses went sky-high. But when Donna approached Cephos of Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, for an fMRI scan, which picks up changes in blood flow and oxygenation in the brain, it was a different story. Read more

Telegraph.co.uk, October 1, 2008
Steven Laken, founder of Cephos, the US company behind the machine, said fMRI is harder to fool than the polygraph because it monitors changes in the brain during the formulation of a lie rather than the stress responses associated with lying. Read more

Cleveland.com, September 28, 2008
Laken and some other scientists believe that the same "functional magnetic-resonance imaging" devices being used for advanced medical research and diagnosis can be used as the most accurate lie detectors ever devised. Read more

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

The New Yorker, July 2, 2007
A liar’s testimony is often more persuasive than a truth teller’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

ABC News, August 30, 2007
Here's how it works: When someone lies, the brain first stops itself from telling the truth, then generates the deception. When the brain is working hard at lying, more blood rushes to specific portions of the brain and that's what can be detected on the machine. 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