Participants were told to predict the outcomes of a series of coin tosses, and were told that the researchers believed predicting the future was more likely when given a monetary incentive and when the prediction wasn't shared in advance of the outcome.

This gave the participants the opportunity to lie and say that they had correctly predicted the coin toss to win the money.

Individuals who reported improbably high levels of accuracy were classified as dishonest, and participants reporting statistically feasible levels of accuracy were classified as honest.

Using fMRI, Greene found that the honest individuals displayed little to no additional brain activity when reporting their prediction of the coin toss, said a Harvard release.

However, dishonest participants' brains were most active in control-related brain regions when they chose not to lie.

The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.