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People With Parkinson's are an Honest Lot Wednesday May 20, 2009 "White" lies or lies that harm no-one are ubiquitous in life. Everyone sometimes lies a little in order to avoid some greater harm or inconvience to self or others. But these white lies take some mental agility to accomplish and a lot of memory power to keep track of. Now a group of Japanese scientists have shown that people with Parkinson's disease find it more difficult than healthy people to tell these sorts of white lies. When persons with PD show difficulty in telling white lies they demonstrate less metabolic activity in the prefrontal cortex than do healthy people when they are telling white lies. Apparently you need a certain level of dopamine activity in the prefrontal cortex to tell a convincing white lie and because persons with PD find it more difficult to reach that level of dopamine activity in the prefrontal cortex they also find it more difficult to lie. Source: Nobuhito Abe et al. "Do parkinsonian patients have trouble telling lies? The neurobiological basis of deceptive behavior." Brain 2009 132(5):1386-1395; Rayilyn Brown Director AZNPF Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn