Lie Detection Technology: Evolutionary Trend In The Science of communication with The Ultimate Truth Bearer

Introduction

About some days ago, I came across an interesting movie, 'Red Sparrow' . In the movie, a young lady was arrested in a conspiracy against her country that led to the death of one of their army staffs. She was questioned casually and she lied wonderfully, she was tortured and none of those mattered at all to her, she was threatened to be shot dead and I tell you, she did not even care much for her life. Finally, she was released and still allowed to go by her normal duty.

I would never have been really interested in this story if it ended here. After her release, she played a major part in the killing of their main Hit man and framed up another top military officer who happened to be her uncle in the movie. At this point, I could only imagine how much could have been prevented by the application of just one technology during her interrogation, the Lie Detection Technology.

_{everybody lies? No wonder We Really Need The Lie Detection Technology (License: CC-BY 2.0, Author: Kay Kim]:
Flickr}

Lie detection technology is based on the ability to capture as much information as possible that the body can give away when someone lies. It hovers around the interpretation of the responses your body gives as you try to fake what is not real or try to give a wrong answer to a question. This, in other words, means that no matter how good one is and no matter how hard one may try to lie successfully, one can never lie to oneself.

As a matter of fact, there are different techniques applied in Lie Detection Technology. These techniques are based on the parts of the body that give responses when one lies, the types of responses given and the manner in which these responses are elicited
Please join me, as I take a walk through the ways in which these signals were harnessed even before my ancestors were born, how they are harnessed now and how they may be better harnessed in the nearest future.

Can We Say Hi to the Oldest?

From time immemorial, lying has been one of man’s best inborn talents and man has always been so generous at displaying it. Man has also been in a constant quest on ways to detect when this beautiful skill is being displayed.

Different cultures across the globe have had their different non-scientific means of detecting lies and this was mostly by way of ‘trial by ordeal’. In these methods, the accused would be subdued to a very dangerous situation which under normal circumstances would kill or cause harm. If the accused came out alive and unhurt after the exercise, they were said to be innocent but when the otherwise was seen to occur, and the accused died or got hurt, they were confirmed to be guilty.

This was the cruelest but most reliable technique at the time. An example is the trial by fire where the accused were made to walk some distance in fire to retrieve a piece of object. If they were unhurt at the end, they were pronounced innocent but in a situation where they got hurt, they were condemned and labeled guilty.

Administration of oaths and making of declarations was also extensively relied on. This also had the same ending as the trial by ordeal in that if the accused died after the oath or declaration, they were said to be guilty.
This form of lie detection was not based on science or technology and always had nothing to do with the physiology of the person in picture.

More so, one of the used methods applied as early as 1000BC that was actually based on scientific facts was the technique used by ancient China. This was one of the pioneer ways in which the information given by the body was interpreted to detect when a person is lying. In this technique, some amount of dry uncooked rice was administered into the mouth of the victim and allowed for some time. If the rice was retrieved dry from the victim’s mouth, then the victim was said to be guilty but if the rice was wet on retrieval, the victim was said to be innocent.

This is explained by the fact that fear and anxiety inhibits production of saliva. A guilty person in such condition will be full of fear and anxiety and will fail to produce enough saliva needed to wet the rice in his mouth. this I would say, is where the science in lie detection began.

As a matter of fact, this technique was not highly reliable as different factors and conditions could lead to the feeling of anxiety and fear. some of those factors include the stress of being beaten and the fear of having to face execution after failure.

How About a Round of Applause for the ‘Currently In Extensive Use’?

In our modern world, technology has found a way of awarding more efficiency to the process of lie detection. One of the major technological developments that has brought about this wonderful improvement is the use of the polygraph machine.

The polygraph technique, just like the rice technique used by the early Chinese, uses the physiological information given off by the body during the act of lying to decipher if a person is telling the truth or is actually trying to be creative with his/her inborn talent. This machine measures three distinct parameters: chest enlargement rate (breathing rate), blood pressure and the electrodermal activity (rate of electrical activity on the skin of the fingers).

A polygraph is a machine that converts multiple signals into one and records it on a single sheet of paper.

In the use of a polygraph machine, two rubber tubes (pneumographs) filled with air are wrapped around a person’s chest and abdomen, a blood pressure cuff, just like the one tied around the arm during a blood pressure check is tied around the arm, and two electrical detectors known as galvanometers are plugged to two fingers; the ring finger or the index finger.

When the chest and abdominal cavities expand, they cause the displacement of air which was filled in the rubber tubes. When the air is displaced, it leads to the movement of a small device known as a bellows in which the rubber tubes are attached to. Movement of this bellows causes the movement of an inked pen which is fixed to a paper (polygram) and this produces a form of graphical recording on the paper

About the same mechanism is applied in the blood pressure measurement. When blood rushes through the brachial artery in the arm, it causes a displacement of some amount of air which then causes a movement of the bellows and engineers the pen to write on the polygram.

Nevertheless, this movement of bellows and inked pen is only applicable to an analogue polygraph. The digital polygraph utilizes the method of transduction where the energy from the displacement of the air is converted to electrical signals and recorded.

The galvanometers on the fingers use a different approach entirely. During anxiety, which is seen when someone is lying, the body tends to sweat a lot. The fingertips happen to be one of the most porous places in the body in that they are the easiest to get hydrated at any time. However, a moist skin conducts more electricity than a dry one thus; the galvanometers detect the amount of sweat on the fingertips by the amount of conductance they tend to exhibit.

Lets Make Welcome, the Young and Promising!

In a world endowed with so much technology like ours, it does not really look strange to notice development in certain aspects of life. In fact, the strange thing is when there is no noticeable development or progress. In respect to Lie Detection Technology, there has been as series of developments.

In the previous techniques of lie detection, the methods have always dwelt on how much information can be gotten from peripheral responses sent off by the body while the most recently discovered techniques of lie detection focus on the central nervous system, the brain precisely and not the body as in other methods. these techiques include the use of Positron Emission tomography (PET) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

When an area of brain increases in activity, blood supply to that area is observed to increase. These changes are captured by the fMRI and the PET techniques to determine if the person is telling a lie or not, from the area of brain being activated.

In an experiment where the subjects were involved In a crime, It was observed that upon interrogation and scanning, some prefrontal and anterior cingulate regions were seen to be activated in those telling a lie than in those telling a truth. This forms a basis for the use of the PET and fMRI scanning in detection of lies. Thus, in an interrogation where areas of the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulated regions of the brain are seen to be activated, lying by the subject has just been confirmed.

Though this technology is the most promising, it is hindered by some factors which include, the refusal of the subject to enter the scanner or machine as compare to the easy and flexible use of the polygraph machine.
Another is the refusal of the suspect to answer questions as this is the only way through which the scanner can capture images during the interrogation.

summary

Lie Detection Technology has been in existence as early as 1000BC, from the most primitive scientific method used by the Chinese to the very sophisticated method of brain scanning yet to be fully embraced in this present world. These amazing developments hopefully will bring to reality the possibility of detecting every single lie told during interrogation.

References

Red Sparrow retrieved on June 12th, 2018

Ancient methods of lie detection retrieved on June 13th, 2018

The Polygraph Machine retrieved on June 12th, 2018

History of Trial by Ordeal retrieved on June 13th, 2018

Functional Brain Imaging retrieved on June 13th, 2018

Lie Detection With fMRI scan retrieved on June 13th, 2018

Image Sources

All images are from flickr and wikicommons licensed under creative commons and eligible for commercial use.

Thanks for reading