New article on causal involvement of DLPFC in honesty

Our paper on the causal involvement of DLPFC in honesty has just been accepted at Nature Neuroscience! This will hopefully be one in a long line of papers by us and others applying signaling games to the study of honesty and deception.

Damage to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex affects tradeoffs between honesty and self-interest

Lusha Zhu, Adrianna C Jenkins, Eric Set, Donatella Scabini, Robert T Knight, Pearl H Chiu, Brooks King-Casas, and Ming Hsu

Substantial correlational evidence suggests that prefrontal regions are critical to honest and dishonest behavior, but causal evidence specifying the nature of this involvement remains absent. We found that lesions of the human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) decreased the effect of honesty concerns on behavior in economic games that pit honesty motives against self-interest, but did not affect decisions when honesty concerns were absent. These results point to a causal role for DLPFC in honest behavior.