Neuroscientist Review

NAME - Colin Mak

OCCUPATION - Neuroscientist

PERFORMANCE REVIEW - Lies

A Review of LIES

- by a neuroscientist, Colin Mak

From the very beginning, it was clear that this was to be no ordinary experiment. The participants were seated facing a grey blank wall, with two stages set up on either side (one to the left, and one to the right). It was as if the participants acted as the corpus callosum, providing the necessary neural pathways to connect the left and right brain hemispheres. As the actors quietly entered the testing environment from multiple entry sites, the dopaminergic networks of participants were activated in anticipation of reward. The actors then suddenly began to accelerate in a stochastic manner, and the participants were plunged into fight-or-flight mode, activating adrenergic receptors in the subcortical areas of the brain.

One notable part of the experiment was when the actors, Jones and Haren, were placed on the stages on either side. While they both attempted to give a monologue, they appeared to have motor aphasia, possibly indicative of a lesion in the left Broca's speech areas. However, they were able to help each other by copying mouth movements and sounds, using mirror neurons as described previously (Gazzaniga et al, 2008). In fact, Gazzaniga stated that the foundation of language in humans was built upon the voluntary control of mirror neurons. When two individuals mirror each other's speech, either by acting or by imagining, the brain connections in the respective speech areas are strengthened.

Throughout different stages of the experiment, the setting ranged from sensory deprivation to maximal stimulation. Fischel-Chisholm described her encounter with an unidentified creature while in near complete darkness, only illuminated by a single lamp manipulated by Croft. This was in contrast to a latter stage of the experiment when they and their colleagues hastily set up the apparatus in different areas of the environment, delivering a multisensory experience of sight and sound to all participants. This experiment, cleverly designed by Bain and Madhan, is reminiscent of those performed by Hannan et al (2004), which indicated that a more enriched environment is conducive to the production of more brain cells, ie. adult neurogenesis.

The sad irony of human life is that with more brain cells, cortical expansion and cognitive ability comes a grave price: the greater ability to tell LIES, to cheat and to manipulate. But, however dark the con of man may be, humans also have the ability to see through lies, and to make their own judgement.