Deceptive but Not Honest Manipulative Actions Are Associated with Increased Interaction between Middle and Inferior Frontal gyri

Abstract

The prefrontal cortex is believed to be responsible for execution of deceptive behavior and its involvement is associated with greater cognitive efforts. It is also generally assumed that deception is associated with the inhibition of default honest actions. However, the precise neurophysiological mechanisms underlying this process remain largely unknown. The present study was aimed to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to reveal the underlying functional integration within the prefrontal cortex during the task which requires that subjects to deliberately mislead an opponent through the sequential execution of deceptive and honest claims. To address this issue, we performed psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis, which allows for statistical assessment of changes in functional relationships between active brain areas in changing psychological contexts. As a result the whole brain PPI-analysis established that both manipulative honest and deceptive claiming were associated with an increase in connectivity between the left middle frontal gyrus and right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ). Taking into account the role played by rTPJ in processes associated with the theory of mind the revealed data can reflect possible influence of socio-cognitive context on the process of selecting manipulative claiming regardless their honest or deceptive nature. Direct comparison between deceptive and honest claims revealed pattern enhancement of coupling between the left middle frontal gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus. This finding provided evidence that the execution of deception relies to a greater extent on higher-order hierarchically-organized brain mechanisms of executive control required to select between two competing deceptive or honest task sets.

Neural mechanisms of deception in a social context: an fMRI replication study

“…The TOM network is considered to be associated with inferring thoughts and beliefs of other people [43][44][45][46][47] . Additionally, PPI analysis in the fMRI study, with a similar game design in which participants performed deceptive and manipulative honest claims according to free choice with the aim of defeating an opponent, revealed the involvement of this brain area 19 . During both manipulative actions, regardless of their truthfulness, the rTPJ was involved in interaction with the left middle frontal gyrus (lMFG), and no significant difference in functional interactions between the rTPJ and lMFG was observed when comparing deceptive and truthful conditions.…”

“…In neuroimaging studies, the bilateral TPJ was reported to be associated with the judgement of deception 55,56 . However, only the rTPJ was demonstrated to increase activity during deception 3,19,30,48,49 . Therefore, the current results confirm the involvement of socio-cognitive processes in deception and expand the existing fMRI data, demonstrating that BOLD signal increases in both the right and left TPJ during the execution of deception.…”

“…In particular, deception is usually accompanied by increased activity in the frontal and parietal areas, which are associated with a combination of processes. All of these processes can explain higher cognitive load of deception: conflict monitoring, working memory, action selection, and inhibition 2,8,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] . Another reported neural correlate of deception is the error detection mechanism 25,26 .…”

Distinct Patterns of Cognitive Conflict Dynamics in Promise Keepers and Promise Breakers

“…Similar results have been obtained in a related research field, i.e., deception/dishonest behavior. A consistent finding of studies in this field ( Priori et al, 2008 ; Greene and Paxton, 2010 ; Kireev et al, 2017 ; Sun et al, 2017 , for a review see Abe, 2011 ) is that the deceptive act goes along with increased activation of brain regions involved in conflict detection and resolution, as the ACC and DLPFC. Interestingly, some brain studies have also provided evidence for the opposite pattern (e.g., Zhu et al, 2014 ; Maréchal et al, 2017 ).…”

Functional Connectivity Pattern Analysis Underlying Neural Oscillation Synchronization during Deception

“…Studies on the neural basis of deception have important theoretical and clinical implications [1, 2]. Abundant evidence from neuroimaging has revealed how the brain processes deception [3, 4]. Most studies support the hypothesis that greater cognitive control and conflict suppression (i.e., the inhibition of honest reaction) are required during deception [5, 6].…”