Science Shows Lying Is Hard Work

说真话 科学表明 说谎不易

A convicted sex offender¹, released on parole, submits to a polygraph test.

一位因性攻击被定罪的犯人在假释时做测谎试验，

"Have you ever told even one lie?" asks the examiner. "No," says the man - and the needles on the polygraph machine barely shift from their rhythmic² movements.

检查人员问：“你曾经说过谎吗？”这个男子说：“没有”。这时，测谎仪的针头仅仅有规则地运动着

You can guess, of course, whether the man was answering truthfully - but today's polygraphs cannot. All they record are pulse, respiration³, skin temperature, and other signs that may suggest whether someone seems nervous when asked a damning question.

当然，你可能猜想这家伙在说假话，但今天所用的测谎仪却不能。它们所能记录的脉搏、呼吸、皮肤温度和其它信号，只能提示某人在回答一个非常不利的问题时似乎有些紧张。

Machines can be fooled, but it may not always be that way.

机器可能被愚弄，但它不会总是那么傻。

"I suspect that it may be much harder to manipulate brain blood flow," says Dr. Daniel Langleben, an assistant professor of psychiatry⁴ at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.

宾夕法尼亚大学医学院的精神病学副教授Daniel Langleben博士说：“我想控制脑血流是非常难的。”

Langleben and his colleagues have been experimenting with computerized brain scans - functional⁵ magnetic resonance⁶ imaging. This giant machine can show the amount of blood flow to different sections of the brain in precise detail.

Langleben博士和他的同事已经试验了一种计算机脑扫描即功能性磁共振成像。这种巨大的机器能精确显示出流到脑不同部位的血流量。

They wanted to see what changes could be measured inside the brain when people are deceitful. They asked people to lie inside the scanner and lie through their teeth .when answers from many test subjects were combined and averaged by a computer, they clearly showed that when people lie, they use more sections of the brain than when they tell the truth.

他们想知道能否测定出说谎者的脑内变化。他们要求受试者在此机扫描时说谎。用电脑将许多受试者说谎的测试结果加权和平均，结果清楚表明当人们说谎时比说真话时要多用某部份大脑。

"The question it raised for me is whether, in order to tell a lie, you need to inhibit⁷ something, and whether that something is the truth," he says. In other words, people may naturally be truth tellers⁸. The brain works harder to lie."

“它提出的问题是，是否为了说谎，你必需抑制某些东西，是否这东西就是真实，” 他说。“换言之，人的本性是要说真话的，说谎对大脑并非易事。”

Langleben was never out to make a better lie detector⁹, but his research, along with others', could someday lead to one.

Langleben并未打算制造出一台更好的测谎仪，但他的研究和其它研究成果最终会催生这种机器。

AP

美联社