MRI Scans May Someday Replace Lie Detectors In Court

By Lori Fullbright, The News On 6

TULSA, OK -- Jurors in criminal court cases often have a hard time figuring out who is telling the truth. Traditional lie detectors aren't allowed in court because they're not always accurate.

Scientists say MRIs could be the unbeatable lie detectors of the future.

The concept: someone commits a crime, so you scan their brain while asking them if they did it, and you can tell if they're lying.

This technology is closer to reality than you might think.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging scanners or F-MRIs to see if someone is telling the truth, is different than using an MRI to find a brain tumor. When looking for a lie, scientists are looking for an area of the brain that's working harder.

The harder the area works, the more oxygen it uses and the brighter it shows up on the scan. In other words, the brain is basically working harder to fabricate a story.

"We've consistently found in the literature, because we're not the only ones studying this, that you can pretty consistently tell if someone is telling the truth," said Andrew Kozel of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Andrew Kozel has been studying MRIs as lie detectors for 10 years and did a study where people committed mock crimes and then were asked questions about it during an MRI.

"It caught all the people who attempted to do the mock crimes, but it also caught people who did not do the mock crimes as if they had."

An MRI was used in a murder case last year, not as a lie detector, but to try to convince the jury the suspect was mentally ill.

Most people believe that opens the door for using MRIs as evidence in other cases.

What about accuracy rates?

"In our laboratory, we were able to do studies that replicated 90 percent," Kozel said.

Kozel says it will take more research before people use MRIs to make life and death decisions, but he does believe that time is coming.

He assures people MRIs cannot read their thoughts.

"It looks at points in the brain: how hard it's working when responding to certain questions," said Dr. Andrew Kozel, M.D., of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center."

The reason the MRIs not only caught 100 percent of the people who were lying plus some people who were telling the truth is because the same part of the brain works harder when you're both telling a lie and trying to remember something.

More research is needed to fully understand how to tell the difference.