You talk to a friend. Then you talk to Siri on the iPhone. Does your brain function differently when interacting with a machine versus another person? According to a recent study, there might be one small brain region dedicated to dealing only with people – in order to lie to them.
Researchers had 18 subjects play poker against a variety of human and computer opponents. The participants were encouraged to bluff – they’d get money if their bluffs were successful.
Sometimes they were given a weak hand. The researchers evaluated functional MRI signals of the players’ brains. Could they tell by looking at the brain patterns whether the player was about to bluff a human?
They found that most regions of the brain that have been previously identified with social interactions lit up regardless of whether the subject was playing a person or a machine. But one small region – the temporal parietal junction, or TPJ – seemed to activate only when participants contemplated bluffing another human being.
The study was published in the journal Science. [R. McKell Carter et al, A Distinct Role of the Temporal-parietal Junction in Predicting Socially Guided Decisions]
Says study author Scott Huettel, “Social information may cause our brains to play by different rules than non-social information.” At least when it comes to deception.
—Cynthia Graber
