The Law and Neuroscience Blog

Welcome to the Law and Neuroscience Blog

Welcome to the The Law and Neuroscience Blog--which we have created to provide an on-line forum where the members of the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project (LANP) can share their ideas and interact with not only other researchers but also with the interested public more generally.  One of the main goals of the blog is to provide people with a resource for finding out about cutting edge research at the cross-roads of neuroscience, law, and philosophy.  Hopefully, readers will be as interested in the recent and future developments in the growing field of neurolaw as we are.  For now, we thought it might be helpful to say a bit more about both the mission and goal of the LANP more generally (taken from our homepage)--which can be found below the fold.  That being said, welcome aboard!  We look forward to hearing from you in the months and years ahead.

 

Around the Web

Here is the latest installment of Around the Web.  Once again, I have picked a few of the posts or articles I found to be particularly intriguing or illuminating.  Hopefully, they peak your curiosity as well:

1. The Situationist has a great post on The Situation of Violence.
2. The Neuroethics and Law Blog has a helpful post about some new abstracting services on SSRN.
3. New Scientist has a piece about brain imaging and mind reading.
4. Nature News has a piece about "total recall."
5. Wired has an article about recent work on how the brain processes language.
6. Neurological Correlates has a post on how good psychopaths are at selected victims and getting away with murder.
7. Machines Like Us has a post about the purported incoherence of free will.

As always, happy reading!

Neurolaw in the News

Neuroscience has taken center stage in two recent criminal court cases--one in Italy, the other in Chicago, IL.  In the former case, a convicted murderer got a reduced sentence based on evidence concerning his low activity MAOA (see here for a brief discussion about MAOA).  The case was discussed recently in Nature News.  Here is an excerpt:

An Italian court has cut the sentence given to a convicted murderer by a year because he has genes linked to violent behaviour — the first time that behavioural genetics has affected a sentence passed by a European court. But researchers contacted by Nature have questioned whether the decision was based on sound science.

Abdelmalek Bayout, an Algerian citizen who has lived in Italy since 1993, admitted in 2007 to stabbing and killing Walter Felipe Novoa Perez on 10 March. Perez, a Colombian living in Italy, had, according to Bayout's testimony, insulted him over the kohl eye make-up the Algerian was wearing. Bayout, a Muslim, claims he wore the make-up for religious reasons.

During the trial, Bayout's lawyer, Tania Cattarossi, asked the court to take into account that her client may have been mentally ill at the time of the murder. After considering three psychiatric reports, the judge, Paolo Alessio Vernì, partially agreed that Bayout's psychiatric illness was a mitigating factor and sentenced him to 9 years and 2 months in prison — around three years less than Bayout would have received had he been deemed to be of sound mind.

But at an appeal hearing in May this year, Pier Valerio Reinotti, a judge of the Court of Appeal in Trieste, asked forensic scientists for a new independent psychiatric report to decide whether he should commute the sentence further.

Recent Neurolaw-related Papers

There have been several interesting neurolaw-related papers posted recently on SSRN.  So, I have decided to start a new series of posts that will contain links to the ones that I find to be particularly illuminating. For now, here is the first installment:

Dave Marcotte and Sara Markowitz, "A Cure for Crime? Psycho-Pharmaceuticals and Crime Trends."

Abstract:

In this paper we consider possible links between the advent and diffusion of a number of new psychiatric pharmaceutical therapies and crime rates. We describe recent trends in crime and review the evidence showing mental illness as a clear risk factor both for criminal behavior and victimization. We then briefly summarize the development of a number of new pharmaceutical therapies for the treatment of mental illness which diffused during the "great American crime decline." We examine limited international data, as well as more detailed American data to assess the relationship between crime rates and rates of prescriptions of the main categories of psychotropic drugs, while controlling for other factors which may explain trends in crime rates. We find that increases in prescriptions for psychiatric drugs in general are associated with decreases in violent crime, with the largest impacts associated with new generation antidepressants and stimulants used to treat ADHD. Our estimates imply that about 12 percent of the recent crime drop was due to expanded mental health treatment.

Michael Perlin, "And I Can See Through Your Brain: Access to Experts, Competency to Consent, and the Implact of Antipsychootic Medications in Neuroimaging Cases in the Criminal Trial Process."

Abstract:

This paper considers the implications of neuroimaging in three under discussed aspects of criminal procedure - the implications of Ake v. Oklahoma (an indigent defendant's access to expert testimony) in cases where neuroimaging tests might be critical, (2) the defendant's competency to consent to the imposition of a neuroimaging test or examination; and (3) the impact of medications - specifically, antipsychotic medications - on a defendant's brain at the time that such a test is performed. Given the warning signals that have been raised by commentators as to the potentiality of juror misuse and misinterpretation of neuroimaging testimony, it is critical that we take seriously the issues raised here. I conclude that there are hidden landmines inevitably present when we think about the use of neuroimaging in criminal trials - landmines that go can infect the fairness of the trial process itself.  If an indigent criminal defendant is refused access to an independent expert in an area where jurors may uncritically accept neuroimaging testimony (because of its visual appeal and its apparent lack of falsifiability), the fairness of the entire trial remains in question. If no attention is paid to the difficult and complex ethical issues that should surface if the question of the defendant's competency to consent to being tested is not raised, trial fairness is a concern. And finally, if we ignore the reality that the neuroimaging evidence shown to jurors may not be an accurate depiction of the defendant's brain at the time of the offense - but rather, a depiction of his brain at a later time when his brain biochemistry has been altered by the imposition of medication - we willfully blind ourselves to the possibility (perhaps "likelihood") that the database presented to the jury is potentially fatally flawed.

Brave Thinker

Congratulations to our own Hank Greely, who was recently selected by The Atlantic Monthly as one of 25  "Brave  Thinkers" for his research on neuro-enhancement!    Given some of the other folks who were also selected--ranging from Barack Obama and Jim Webb to Ralph Nader--Greely finds himself in some impressive company. 

Around the Web

I have come across tons of interesting interviews, articles, and blog posts as of late.  So here are some of the ones that I found to be the most illuminating or intriguing:

1. The Stanford Report has a piece entitled "The Court Will Call Its Next Witness to the Stand:  The Brain."
2. The DANA Foundation Blog has a post about a new Apple i-Phone Application called 3-D Brain.
3. Cognitive Daily has a post about Martin Reuter's recent work on the genetic and neural correlates of anger and DARRP-32.
4. Neurophilosophy has a post about the so-called "virtual body illusion."
5. The Dana Centre has a video posted of a conference back in 2005 entitled "Neuroethics:  The Ethics of Brain Research."
6. Mail Online has a piece about the prospect of psychic mind-reading computers.
7. Straight.com has a piece on neuroethics which contains an interview with our own Judy Illes.
8. The Los Angeles Times ran a brief piece on the possibility that criminal behavior is "hard-wired in the brain."

As always, happy reading!

The Future of Neuroimaged Lie Detection and the Law

Joelle Anne Moreno has an interesting new article entitled, "The Future of Neuroimaged Lie Detection and the Law."  The abstract is as follows:

Neuroscience will certainly change law. In fact, neuroscience research has the potential to influence a vast range of legal decisions. To the extent that neuroscientists increasingly make claims that neuroimaging reveals cognition, even the most unimaginative prognosticator might predict: (1) the preliminary investigative use of neuroimages to enhance witness interviews and police interrogations (including but not limited to lie-detection), (2) jury selection based on neuroimages that appear to reveal jurors' unconscious stereotypes or biases, and (3) arguments about intent or sentencing based on neuroimage-enhanced explanations of behavior and predictions of dangerousness. In anticipation of a brave new world of neuroscience 'enhanced' law, this Article suggests that if we want to predict or control future social and legal responses to cognitive neuroscience research, we must carefully and explicitly consider two basic preexisting realities: (1) our shared assumptions about the validity of the medical field of neuroscience and the accuracy of diagnostic neuroimaging technologies; and (2) our increasingly frequent exposure (even within the mainstream media) to uncritical reports of cognitive neuroscience research that purports to correlate brain activity with cognition, deception,or social behavior. The risk, is that if we ignore these realities, judges, jurors, and the general public will likely view all or most neuroscience-based evidence as legitimate 'hard' science because researchers rely on technologically sophisticated neuroimaging tools of demonstrated accuracy. The problem is that judges and jurors will mistakenly assume that technologies that are demonstrably valid medical diagnostic tools yield equally valid conclusions when they are used to map the neural correlates of deception and other forms of cognition.

As always, happy reading!

Neurolaw and the Fallacy of Composition

A few weeks ago I posted some brief comments about an interesting new piece by Steven Erickson entitled "Blaming the Brain."  Upon reading his article, I made the following remarks:

I am always a bit skeptical when the critics of neurolaw treat the nascent field as if it were a monolithic entity.  Take, for instance, the 40+ fellows and post-docs who make up the Law and Neuroscience Project (LANP).  Given the way critics often talk about "the" field of neurolaw, one would think the LANP would have attracted an ideologically homogeneous group of radicals and revolutionaries who are determined to transform the criminal law.  In fact, however, LANP is composed of people from a variety of disciplines who have wide ranging views concerning the transformative potential (or lack thereof) of neuroscience.  In practice, neurolaw is a field that includes both those who think neuroscience will radically alter the criminal law (e.g., Joshua Greene) and those who think neuroscience will have a much narrower effect on our notions of agency and responsibility (e.g., Stephen Morse).  Moving forward, I think the heterogeneous nature of the growing field of neurolaw needs to be kept in mind by both critics and advocates alike.

I have subsequently frequently encountered what I take to be a similarly misplaced approach towards the nascent field of neurolaw.  From the otherwise important and influential work of Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson on neuroscience and the law to other critical reviews of neurolaw around the web (see here, here, here, here, and here), I find what appears to be a recurring instance of the fallacy of composition.  In short, critics of neurolaw assume that because some people working in the field of neurolaw claim that current and future advancements in neuroscience are sowing the seeds of a moral and legal revolution, all people working in the field share this view. Unfortunately, this not only flies in the face of the actual debates that are presently unfolding within the field of neurolaw, but it also makes it far too easy for critics of the revolutionaries to dismiss the entire field as a whole.  By my lights, this fallacious line of reasoning--much like the burning of straw men more generally--has shed more heat than light (to borrow a phrase from P.M.S. Hacker).

President's Council on Bioethics (2004)

I recently stumbled upon the on-line transcripts from the 2004 meeting on Neuroethics by the President's Council on Bioethics.  There are several interesting things to read.  Here are the ones I found to be the most useful/illuminating (the full list is here):

1. Neuroscience, Neuropsychiatry and Neuroethics: An Overview (Robert Michels)
2. Neuroscience and Neuroethics: Reward and Decision (Jonathan Cohen)
3. Emotional and Cognitive Development in Children (Jerome Kagan & Elizabeth Spelke)
4. Brain Imaging (Michael Gazzaniga and others)
5. Neuroscience and the Law (Stephen Morse)
6. Understanding Aggressive Behavior Through Neuroscience (Emil Coccaro)

As always, happy reading!

Society for Neuroscience and Neuroblogging

For those of you who missed the recent meeting of The Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, this year they introduced an exciting new feature called "Neuroblogging."  In short, they officially commissioned certain blogs to cover the proceedings.  A list of their preferred neurobloggers can be found here.  Follow the links and you will find tons of interesting posts about the talks, posters, and discussions at the conference.

Around the Web

In order to make up for the dearth of posting in the past few weeks, we are bringing you an expanded edition of Around the Web--with over a dozen links to interesting and newsworthy posts and pages! 

1. WIRED has a piece entitled "Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain."
2. Interior Traces is a curious and fascinating "six-part radio drama, video, performance, and debate"!
3. Brain Stimulant has a recent piece on "Transformative Brain Projects."
4. Research Digest Blog has a post entitled "Resting State Brain Networks Are Stable."
5. IEEE Spectrum has a post entitled "The Brain Machine Interface, Unplugged."
6. New Scientist has two interesting articles: (a) "Free Flying Cyborg Insects," and (b) "My Little Zebra: The Secrets of Domestication."
7. Neurological Correlates has a piece entitled "Manic Monday: Grouchy Before Coffee?"
8. Penn's recently formed Center for Neuroscience & Society has announced an exciting upcoming conference on Clinical Neuroscience and Society.
9. Paul Wolpe has a piece in Forbes entitled "Is My Mind Mine?"
10. Practical Ethics has an post on "The Ethics of Mind-Reading."
11. Adam Kolber has posted an interesting new paper entitled "The Experiential Future of Law."
12. Over at Experimental Philosophy, there are two recent posts about upcoming events that some of you might find of interest: (a) Experiments in the Humanities, and (b) Experiment Boot Camp.  If you live in the NY/NJ area, you should check them out!
13. David Brooks has an interesting op-ed in the NY Times about social cognitive neuroscience entitled "The Young and the Neuro."

OK, that's it for now.  As always, happy reading!

Attend Neuroscience Boot Camp in 2010

If you read this blog in August, you know that I raved about my experience at Penn's Neuroscience Boot Camp. Now it's your chance to experience the same 9-day Neuro thrill ride.  The 2010 edition of Neuroscience Boot Camp, run by the Univ. of Pennsylvania's Center for Neuroscience and Society, is now accepting applications. The deadline to submit an application is February 1, 2010. I highly recommend this program!