Polygraphy and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Lie Detection: A Controlled Blind Comparison Using the Concealed Information Test.

Objective: Intentional deception is a common act that often has detrimental social, legal, and clinical implications. In the last decade, brain activation patterns associated with deception have been mapped with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), significantly expanding our theoretical understanding of the phenomenon. However, despite substantial criticism, polygraphy remains the only biological method of lie detection in practical use today.

Low message sensation health promotion videos are better remembered and activate areas of the brain associated with memory encoding.

Greater sensory stimulation in advertising has been postulated to facilitate attention and persuasion. For this reason, video ads promoting health behaviors are often designed to be high in "message sensation value" (MSV), a standardized measure of sensory intensity of the audiovisual and content features of an ad. However, our previous functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study showed that low MSV ads were better remembered and produced more prefrontal and temporal and less occipital cortex activation, suggesting that high MSV may divert cognitive resources from processing ad content.

A tail of two monkeys: social housing for nonhuman primates in the research laboratory setting.

Despite great adaptability, most nonhuman primates require regular tactile contact with conspecifics for their psychological well being. By illustrating the inherent value of social contact and by providing clues to the best ways of satisfying this need, behavioral studies are useful in designing social enrichment programs. Although group housing is ideal for most gregarious primates, space constraints and protocol requirements may preclude such environments for macaques housed indoors.

The effect of memory load on cortical activity in the spatial working memory circuit.

Accumulating evidence from electrophysiology and neuroimaging studies suggests that spatial working memory is subserved by a network of frontal and parietal regions. In the present study, we parametrically varied the memory set size (one to four spatial locations) of a delayed-response task and applied time-resolved fMRI to study the influence of memory load upon the spatial working memory circuit. Our behavioral results showed that performance deteriorates (lower accuracy and longer reaction time) as memory load increases.