Meta-analytic connectivity modelling of deception-related brain regions

Abstract

Brain-based deception research began only two decades ago and has since included a wide variety of contexts and response modalities for deception paradigms. Investigations of this sort serve to better our neuroscientific and legal knowledge of the ways in which individuals deceive others. To this end, we conducted activation likelihood estimation (ALE) and meta-analytic connectivity modelling (MACM) using BrainMap software to examine 45 task-based fMRI brain activation studies on deception. An activation likelihood estimation comparing activations during deceptive versus honest behavior revealed 7 significant peak activation clusters (bilateral insula, left superior frontal gyrus, bilateral supramarginal gyrus, and bilateral medial frontal gyrus). Meta-analytic connectivity modelling revealed an interconnected network amongst the 7 regions comprising both unidirectional and bidirectional connections. Together with subsequent behavioral and paradigm decoding, these findings implicate the supramarginal gyrus as a key component for the sociocognitive process of deception.

Fig 1. PRISMA diagram.

This diagram depicts the inclusion criteria and study selection process [22].

Fig 2. Deceptive > Honest ALE results.

Activation is visualized in Mango on a standard MNI brain template (A: horizontal slice, B: coronal slice; FWE < 0.001, p < 0.001, at 5,000 permutations). Z and Y values correspond to the brain slice label. The activation color (red-yellow) corresponds to the ALE value listed in Table 2. Left and right are accurately depicted. The ALE image can be found on Neurovault (https://identifiers.org/neurovault.collection:10420).

Fig 3. Meta-analytic model of connectivity between Deceptive > Honest peak regions.

A: horizontal slice and B: coronal slice. Data were visualized with the BrainNet Viewer [34] (http://www.nitrc.org/projects/bnv/). Key (ROI Labels): 1: left insula (L Ins); 2: left superior frontal gyrus (L SFG); 3: right insula (R Ins); 4: right supramarginal gyrus (R SMG); 5: left supramarginal gyrus (L SMG); 6: left medial frontal gyrus (L MFG); 7: right medial frontal gyrus (R MFG). (C) The matrix depicting connectivity from seed regions (left column) to the whole brain (“1” dark blue: bidirectional; “1” light blue: unidirectional; “0”: no direction implied). Each individual MACM (P value map) can be found on Neurovault (https://identifiers.org/neurovault.collection:10420).

Fig 4

Z-scores of (A) paradigm class or (B) behavioral domain analyses. In the Behavioral Domain panel (B), the Emotion and Interoception domains are abbreviated as “E” and “I” respectively. Only paradigm classes or behavioral sub-domains passing the threshold of z > = 3.0 are depicted.