Daniel D. Langleben

Daniel Langleben is an American psychiatrist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his MD degree from Hadassah School of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1989 and completed postgraduate training in Psychiatry at The Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, followed by fellowships in Addiction Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco (1995-1997) and Nuclear Medicine at Stanford University Medical Center (1997-1999). He is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Studies of Addiction.

Langleben pioneered a technique for using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as a means of lie detection. His interest in deception detection was inspired while studying children with Attention Deficit Disorder at Stanford University, where he found that these children have a more difficult time inhibiting the truth, leading him to postulate that lying requires increased brain activity compared to truth because the truth must be suppressed. His landmark 2002 study demonstrated brain activity patterns during simulated deception using event-related fMRI, while his 2005 work achieved 78% accuracy in discriminating lie from truth on a single-event level. His studies showed that the inferior and superior prefrontal and anterior cingulate gyri and the parietal cortex showed increased activity during deception. His 2016 study compared fMRI and polygraphy in a controlled blind comparison using the Concealed Information Test, finding that fMRI experts were 24% more likely to detect concealed information than polygraphy experts.

Langleben has been a central figure in debates about neuroimaging lie detection at the intersection of science, law, and policy. In 2002, he licensed his methods for lie detection to the No Lie MRI company, though he has also been among the first to elaborate comprehensive understanding of the new technologies' errors and potential societal risks and benefits. His frequent collaborators include Jonathan G. Hakun, Ruben C. Gur, Kosha Ruparel, and Warren B. Bilker from Penn, as well as legal scholar Jane Campbell Moriarty, with whom he co-authored influential policy analyses examining whether fMRI-based lie detection meets legal standards of reliability.

While best known for deception detection research, Langleben's broader work spans multiple domains within psychiatry and neuroscience. His research portfolio includes studies on addiction psychiatry, examining brain responses to drug cues in opioid-dependent patients treated with extended-release naltrexone, as well as investigations into the neural basis of advertising effectiveness and infant facial attractiveness. This interdisciplinary approach reflects his training in both psychiatry and neuroimaging, positioning his polygraph-related work within a larger program of research on behavioral control, inhibition, and brain-based credibility assessment.