People Who Habitually Lie and Cheat may Have Abnormal Brains.
Neuroscientists have discovered that pathological liars have less gray matter and more white matter in their prefrontal cortex, as reported in The British Journal of Psychiatry, October 2005 issue.Gray matter comprises cells that think and white matter comprises connector cells.Thus, pathological liars have more networking in the prefrontal cortex.
According to one of the study’s co-authors, Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, "The more networking there is in the prefrontal cortex, the more the person has an upper hand in lying…Their verbal skills are higher. They almost have a natural advantage."
A next step may be research to identify more effective ways to tell when such an individual is lying.
Geraldine Merola Barton, Ph.D.
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