Patrick Couwenberg's staff and fellow judges in the Los Angeles County Superior Court believed he was an American hero. By his account, he had been awarded a Purple Heart in Vietnam. He'd participated in covert operations for the Central Intelligence Agency. The judge boasted of an impressive educational background as well -- an undergraduate degree in physics and a master's degree in psychology. None of it was true. When confronted, Couwenberg's defense was to blame a condition called pseudologia fantastica, a tendency to tell stories containing facts interwoven with fantasy. The argument didn't save him from being removed from the bench in 2001.
在洛杉矶县高级法院，法官帕特里克·库文伯格的同事们相信他是美国的英雄。据他介绍，他曾在越南被授予紫心勋章。他参加了中央情报局的秘密行动，有着令人印象深刻的教育背景：物理学本科学位和心理学硕士学位。然而，以上经历纯属捏造。当库文伯格的谎言暴露时，他的辩护是把这种情况称为幻想性谎语癖--一种在叙事时将幻想编入事实中的倾向。然而2001年，这种借口并没有帮他免受革职。
There appears to be no agreement among psychiatrists about the relationship between mental health and lying, even though people with certain psychiatric disorders seem to exhibit specific lying behaviors. Sociopathic individuals -- those diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder -- tend to tell manipulative lies, while narcissists may tell falsehoods to boost their image.
精神科医生似乎对心理健康和谎言之间的关系缺乏一致意见，即使有精神障碍的人似乎也表现出特定的说谎行为。那些被诊断为反社会人格障碍的人，倾向于说出操纵性的谎言，而自恋者可能会利用谎言来提高他们的形象。
But is there anything unique about the brains of individuals who lie more than others? In 2005 psychologist Yaling Yang and her colleagues compared the brain scans of three groups: 12 adults with a history of repeated lying, 16 who met the criteria for antisocial personality disorder but were not frequent liars, and 21 who were neither antisocial nor had a lying habit. The researchers found that the liars had at least 20 percent more neural fibers by volume in their prefrontal cortices, suggesting that habitual liars have greater connectivity within their brains. It's possible this predisposes them to lying because they can think up lies more readily than others, or it might be the result of repeated lying.
但是，那些比常人说更多谎的人的大脑有独特之处吗？2005年，心理学家杨亚玲和同事比较了三组被试的大脑扫描图，这三组人员包括12名经常说谎的成年人，16名具有反社会人格但不是经常说谎的人，21名既不是反社会也没有说谎习惯的人。 研究人员发现，说谎者的前额皮质中多出至少20%的神经纤维，这表明习惯性的说谎者在大脑内具有更大的连通性。这可能会让他们撒谎，因为他们可以比其他人更容易思考谎言，或者这可能是反复说谎的结果。
Psychologists Nobuhito Abe at Kyoto University and Joshua Greene at Harvard University scanned the brains of subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and found that those who acted dishonestly showed greater activation in the nucleus accumbens -- a structure in the basal forebrain that plays a key role in reward processing. "The more excited your reward system gets at the possibility of getting money -- even in a perfectly honest context -- the more likely you are to cheat," explains Greene. In other words, greed may increase one's predisposition to lying.
通过使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）扫描被试的大脑，京都大学的心理学家阿部修士和哈佛大学的约书亚·格林发现，那些不诚实行动的人的伏隔核表现出更大的活跃，伏隔核是在奖励处理中发挥关键作用的基地前脑中的一个结构。格林解释道：“即使在完全诚实的情况下，奖励系统对获取收益的兴趣越大，就越有可能作弊。”换句话说，贪婪可能会增加人们对撒谎的倾向。
One lie can lead to another and another, as evidenced by the smooth, remorseless lying of serial con men such as Hogue. An experiment by Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist at University College London, and colleagues showed how the brain becomes inured to the stress or emotional discomfort that happens when we lie, making it easier to tell the next fib. In the fMRI scans of the participants, the team focused on the amygdala, a region that is involved in processing emotions. The researchers found that the amygdala's response to lies got progressively weaker with each lie, even as the lies got bigger. "Perhaps engaging in small acts of deception can lead to bigger acts of deception," she says.
正如霍格这样的连环诈骗犯的自然而又毫无悔恨的谎言一样，编织的一个谎言只是以后无数个谎言的开始。伦敦大学学院的神经科学家塔利·沙罗和同事们的一个实验表明，当我们说谎时，大脑如何变得习惯于压力或情绪上的不适，从而更容易地说下一个谎。在被试的fMRI扫描中，团队专注于杏仁核的研究，这是大脑中处理情绪的区域。研究人员发现，即使谎言逐渐升级，杏仁核对谎言的反应逐渐变弱。她表示：“也许参与到小的欺骗行为可能会导致更大的欺骗行为。”
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