MRI lie detectors – brain scans to identify liars

Picture this: Your boss is threatening to fire you because he thinks you stole company property. He doesn’t believe your denials. Your lawyer suggests you deny it one more time, in a brain scanner that will show you’re telling the truth.

Wacky? Science fiction? It might happen this summer.

Just the other day I lay flat on my back as a scanner probed the tiniest crevices of my brain and a computer screen asked, “Did you take the watch?”

And two outfits, Cephos and No Lie MRI, say they’ll start offering brain scans for lie detection later this year.

“I’d use it tomorrow in virtually every criminal and civil case on my desk” to check the truthfulness of clients, said attorney Robert Shapiro, best known for defending O.J. Simpson against murder charges.

Shapiro advises entrepreneur Steven Laken and has a financial interest in Cephos, which Laken founded to commercialize the brain-scanning work at the Medical University of South Carolina. That’s where I got scanned.