Cognitive Science & Psychology Division, ULAB

fMRI has the potential of being able to differentiate between false memory and deception, but to apply this ability to real life situations, such as court cases or in neurodegenerative studies involving the brain's ability to recognize memory, it is vital that fMRI can detect the differences between general memory1 and deception, as false memory is often mixed in with true memory during recollection. To determine whether fMRI can do this, the prior study, “Can fMRI discriminate between deception and false memory? A meta-analytic comparison between deception and false memory studies” (Yu et al., 2019) [18] was extended. Yu et al., 2019 found that true memory and false memory, independently, could be distinguished from deception. This extension aims to determine if brain activity resulting from deception can be distinguished from activity caused by general memory as opposed to false memory. Given the broader scope of general memory compared to false memory, the prediction is put forth that general memory recollection will not be distinguishable from deception due to broader regions of activation in the brain. Appropriate meta-analyses for deception and general memory recollection were selected and used to determine z-scores and voxel coordinates of activity in different regions of the brain. The brain structures with the highest z-scores during general memory analysis were the caudate, the medial frontal gyrus, and the insula. The brain structures with the highest z-scores during deception analysis were the inferior frontal gyrus, the supramarginal gyrus, and the insula. After further analysis, it was determined that activation for general memory vs deception can be distinguished by looking at the activation of the cingulate gyrus and the precuneus.