Deception: neurological foundations, cognitive processes, and practical forensic applications

Deception is a foundational part of everyday interactions, and everyone will be deceived and will be a deceiver at some point in their life. When examining the brain while telling a lie, neuroimaging studies have shown an increased activity in the prefrontal cortex. While some evidence does not find a correlation between deception and prefrontal activity, different types of deception activating different brain regions could explain this. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for planning and executive control, which appears to be the main cognitive process associated with deception. This is evidenced by the ability to lie increasing as executive function develops in young children, and that lying becomes more difficult when executive function is strained. Lie detection in forensic settings is the most applicable use of the cognition of deception, and interviewers that use cognitive methods to detect deception do so at a significantly higher rate than chance (50%). Despite this finding, law enforcement and other investigative careers have not fully implemented cognitive deception detection into practice