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As far as I am concerned, my severely abusive Borderline mother was a pathological liar.  Call it a ‘psychosis’ — the fact is everything she EVER said about me was a lie.  Everything she ever believed about me was a lie.  She was an absolute expert at twisting the truth.  And she justified in her own mind every single horrible thing she ever did to me.

As I work on my studies about my mother’s brain, I look for what seeming non-related research says about things that I know mirror my mother’s ‘disease’.  This article I just found on pathological liars fascinates me!

The fact that my mother could so deceive herself about me is far past puzzling.  That she could convince my father, my grandmother, my school teachers, etc. that I was a truly awful child was a part of the environment of terror she maintained for me to live in throughout my own childhood.  My mother was not only a professional liar, she was a convincing one.

also wonder about the connection with pathological liars and malingering — wouldn’t borderline self harm be a form of malingering (liars admitted to lying about physical illness in order to reap financial gain), possibly showing some of the same brain patterns?  I need to look at BPD and white/gray brain matter….

I also wonder about a correlation with high white matter and liars with their corresponding increased verbal abilities (in this research study) — connected to how mother’s beatings were always accompanied by extremely high rates of continual and lengthy verbal abuse, i.e. her LITANY of abuse

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CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THIS RESEARCH PROJECT ON LIARS:

• Pathological lying is associated with changes in the prefrontal cortex.This also has implications for psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder.
• The possibility of a clinical conceptualisation of malingering is raised.
• We propose a neurodevelopmental theory of pathological lying that also helps explain the onset of proficient lying in children.

Link to the FREE ONLINE abstract and research article article:  Prefrontal white matter in pathological liars

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Easier to read synopsis article based on this research study:

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4 October 2005

Liar, Liar, Your Prefrontal Cortex Is On Fire

by Kate Melville

“A study appearing in the British Journal of Psychiatry documents evidence of structural brain abnormalities in people who habitually lie, cheat and manipulate others.

The researchers, from the University of Southern California, built on previous research that showed there is heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex – the area of the brain that enables most people to feel remorse or learn moral behavior – when normal people lie. The new study provides evidence of structural differences in that area among pathological liars.

The subjects for the study were taken from a Los Angeles’ temporary employment pool. The researchers conducted a series of psychological tests and interviews that categorized the subjects according to their propensity for mistruth. “We looked for things like inconsistencies in their stories about occupation, education, crimes and family background,” said Adrian Raine, co-author of the study. After categorization, Raine and co-researcher Yaling Yang used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to explore structural brain differences between the groups.

What the researchers found was that the liars had significantly more “white matter” – the wiring in the brain – and slightly less “gray matter”, than the truthful subjects. The researchers explained that white matter is the “networking” tissue that holds together and links the grey matter. Apparently, pathological liars have a surplus of white matter and a deficit of gray matter, meaning they have more tools to lie, coupled with fewer moral restraints. When compared to the normal control subjects, liars had a 22 percent increase in white matter and a 14 percent decrease in prefrontal gray matter.

“Our argument is that the more networking there is in the prefrontal cortex, the more the person has an upper hand in lying. Their verbal skills are higher. They’ve almost got a natural advantage,” said Raine. In normal people, it’s the gray matter – or the brain cells connected by the white matter – that helps keep the impulse to lie in check. “They’ve got the equipment to lie, and they don’t have the dis-inhibition that the rest of us have in telling the big whoppers,” he added.

“When people make moral decisions, they are relying on the prefrontal cortex. When people ask normal people to make moral decisions, we see activation in the front of the brain,” he explained. “If these liars have a 14 percent reduction in gray matter, that means that they are less likely to care about moral issues or are less likely to be able to process moral issues. Having more gray matter would keep a check on these activities.”

Interestingly, the researchers noted that autistic children – who typically have trouble lying – show the converse pattern of gray matter/white matter ratios. “The fact that autistic children have difficulty lying and also show reduced prefrontal white matter constitutes the opposite but complementary pattern of the results compared to adults with increased prefrontal white matter who find it easy to lie,” the researchers commented. “

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