Neuroethics & Law Blog

Neurolaw in the NYT (Again)

The NYT tells the story of Peter Braunstein, a media columnist for Women's Wear Daily, who is accused of molesting a woman for 13 hours:

As the trial opens today in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, jurors will be asked to decide whether he was a sadistic man preying on an unsuspecting woman or whether his actions were the result of mental illness.

The defense has conceded that he committed the crime, and is working on a risky defense that will combine traditional psychiatric testimony with the burgeoning field of “neurolaw,” which holds that there is a biological basis for behavior. [(italics added)]

That's sort of an odd way to put it.  It's hard to doubt that there is a biological basis for behavior!  The article continues:

Mr. Braunstein’s lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, has said he would show color images of his client’s brain, called positron emission tomography, or PET, scans, that he said show that Mr. Braunstein had undiagnosed and, until his arrest, untreated paranoid schizophrenia that drove him to behave as he did.

During jury selection last week, and in his court papers, Mr. Gottlieb said he planned to argue that Mr. Braunstein was so psychologically impaired that he could not form the intent to commit a crime. He has hinted that Mr. Braunstein’s attack on the woman was part of an elaborate fantasy over which he had little conscious control.

It will be interesting to see how this progresses.  Meanwhile, you may be interested in this post at the BrainEthics blog about efforts to detect psychological disorders (in particular, OCD) using neuroimaging.

Neurofeedback Toys

Toy manufacturers are starting to incorporate crude neurofeedback devices in toys to make them more fun and/or lifelike.  Some say the devices may also help children develop concentration skills.  Story here.  Here's the intro:

A convincing twin of Darth Vader stalks the beige cubicles of a Silicon Valley office, complete with ominous black mask, cape and light saber. But this is no chintzy Halloween costume. It's a prototype, years in the making, of a toy that incorporates brain wave-reading technology.

Behind the mask is a sensor that touches the user's forehead and reads the brain's electrical signals, then sends them to a wireless receiver inside the saber, which lights up when the user is concentrating. The player maintains focus by channeling thoughts on any fixed mental image, or thinking specifically about keeping the light sword on. When the mind wanders, the wand goes dark.

Engineers at NeuroSky Inc. have big plans for brain wave-reading toys and video games. They say the simple Darth Vader game — a relatively crude biofeedback device cloaked in gimmicky garb — portends the coming of more sophisticated devices that could revolutionize the way people play.

Slate Special Issue Notice (Connors)

Online magazine Slate is hosting a week-long special feature on the brain, "a series of articles about how laboratory research on the brain makes its way into our daily lives."  Up first, William Saletan (father of the phrase "neuroethics") on the five biggest neuroscience developments of the year and Max Linsky's experience with "neurobics."  Also on the agenda later this week: neurological self-improvement, "brain-enhancing" supplements, interviews with Steven Pinker and Oliver Sacks, and two articles focused on  "neurotheology."

The magazine will also several run online neuroscience discussion events, starting tomorrow (you can submit questions and comments here in advance):

Slate science writer Daniel Engber will be online Thursday, April 26 at 2 p.m. ET to discuss this week's pacakge of articles about the human brain and recent research, including looks at brain scans, what religion does to your neurons, mental workouts and more.

Blumenthal on Crime Perception

Jeremy A. Blumenthal (Law & Psychology, Syracuse) has posted "Perceptions of Crime: A Multidimensional Analysis With Implications for Law and Psychology," McGeorge Law Review, Vol. 38, 2007, to SSRN.  Here's the abstract:   

In the last forty years, the study of social perceptions of crime in general, and the seriousness of criminal offenses in particular, has been of substantial interest to policymakers, courts, and social scientists. As a matter of criminal justice policy, consensus about how severe a crime is can serve as both a legal and societal foundation for certain criminal justice policy decisions, or about the proper punishment for that crime. From a social psychological perspective, studying individual differences in the perceptions of crime can supply valuable information both for basic knowledge about the thinking of individuals who differ on, for instance, gender, race, age, education, or political ideology, and for applied knowledge that can be used in a judicial or legislative arena. Alternatively, a hierarchy of the perceived seriousness of various criminal offenses can give insight into what is valued in a particular culture.

The difficulty of defining seriousness, however, has led to substantive and methodological critiques of this literature. The present study is the latest to investigate the dimensional nature of perceptions of crime seriousness or severity, through multidimensional scaling techniques (MDS). MDS is a procedure that helps researchers uncover hidden structures in existing data by graphically plotting respondents' perceptions of perceived similarities (or dissimilarities) among various stimuli. When these stimuli are located on a plot based on such perceptions, underlying dimensions that respondents may have used (consciously or not) can be inferred.

In two empirical studies I identify and validate three dimensions underlying perceptions of crime seriousness: amount of harm, infringement or deprivation of autonomy, and recklessness. I discuss implications for psychology, law, and policy.

Privacy and Surveillance Cameras in Britain

According to this story from the BBC, Britain, already known for its extensive use of closed-circuit surveillance cameras, has been increasing their functionality.  Those observed violating appropriate rules of conduct by viewers in a control center can now be reproached via a message sent through speakers connected to the cameras.  This should be good fodder for an upcoming conference on informational privacy at USD.  Here's an example of how it works:

(via BoingBoing).

PLoS Neuroethics (Connors)

Heads up: The May 2007 issue of PLoS Biology features a neuroethics and law review essay Law, Responsibility, and the Brain.  Happily, it's one of the editor's picks for the month.  The article is available for open download and distribution under Creative Commons licensing, so feel free to forward it on to interested friends and colleagues.

Law, Responsibility, and the Brain Mobbs D, Lau HC, Jones OD, Frith CD PLoS Biology Vol. 5, No. 4, e103 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050103

 

Clinical Neuroethics Call for Papers

There is a call for papers on "Ethics Consultation for Clinical Neurosciences" in a special theme issue of HEC Forum:

Abstracts Due: June 18, 2007

Papers Due: August 30, 2007

Expansion of the clinical neurosciences (neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry, psychology, neuroimaging, neurogenetics, etc.) poses increasingly specialized ethics questions in the medical care of patients.  The functional complexities of the brain have necessitated an interdisciplinary approach to diagnosing and treating diseases of the central nervous system (CNS) which in turn adds to the challenges of providing ethics consultation services.  Although many ethical issues related to CNS diseases have been raised in other contexts, there are important variations and permutations that necessitate further discussion of how these new types of neuroscientific knowledge and activity continue to pose challenges to ethics consultation services provided for clinicians and patients.

For a special issue of HEC Forum, we invite authors to reflect on the practice of clinical ethics consultation related to complex illnesses of the central nervous system.  Papers might reflect on a particularly complex ethics consultation centered on a patient with a neuro-related illness or on broader challenges of ethics consultation related to some aspect of clinical neurosciences.  Potential areas include trauma, stroke, rehabilitation, genetics, clinical research, psychiatric illness, degenerative disorders, innovation, surgery, implants, imaging, augmentation, or pain.

Please submit a 300 word abstract by June 18, 2007 to Paul J. Ford (fordp@ccf.org ).  Include email contact information and institutional affiliation. Full papers will be due by August 30, 2007.  Length of full papers should be between 2500 and 4000 words.   

Papers will receive blinded peer review.  Hence, publication cannot be guaranteed for those who are invited to write full papers based on submitted abstracts (the editor will work with all authors to facilitate the publishing process).

Informal inquiries to the guest editor are welcome (fordp@ccf.org ).

Strategic Trends, Trendy Neurotech (Connors)

The UK's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre - part of the Ministry of Defense - just issued its 2007 Strategic Trends Report.  The ambitious Report is intended as a forecast of military world developments over the next 30 years and serves as "essential input into policy development."  I thought I'd share some highlights from the grab-bag of predictions in neurotech and general biotechnology - some of which are more far-fetched than others.

Broadcasts to the Brain: By 2035, an implantable information chip could be developed and wired directly to the user’s brain. Information and entertainment choices would be accessible through cognition and might include synthetic sensory perception beamed direct to the user’s senses. Wider related ICT developments might include the invention of synthetic telepathy, including mind-to-mind or telepathic dialogue. This type of development would have obvious military and security, as well as control, legal and ethical, implications.

Cognitive Science: ...Mapping of human brain functions and the replication of genuine intelligence is possible before 2035.

New Humans: The application of advanced genetics could challenge current assumptions about human nature and existence. Initially employed for medical purposes, breakthroughs in these areas could be put to ethically questionable uses, such as the super-enhancement of human attributes, including physical strength and sensory perception. Extreme variation in attributes could arise between individuals, or where enhancement becomes a matter of fashion, between societies, creating additional reasons for conflict.

Biotechnology: ...Quality of life will also improve through, for example, the development of bionic implants, memory enhancing drugs, increased use of animal transplants, development of artificial sensors capable of interfacing with the human mind and prosthetics capable of mimicking human actions precisely, improving human performance beyond current levels.

Genetic Treatments to Prevent the Effects of Ageing: Developments in genetics might allow treatment of the symptoms of ageing and this would result in greatly increased life expectancy for those who could afford it. The divide between those that could afford to ‘buy longevity’ and those that could not, could aggravate perceived global inequality. Dictatorial or despotic rulers could potentially also ‘buy longevity’, prolonging their regimes and international security risks.

...and, last but not least:

Doomsday Scenario: Many of the concerns over the development of new technologies lie in their safety, including the potential for disastrous outcomes, planned and unplanned. For example, it is argued that nanotechnology could have detrimental impacts on the environment, genetic modification could spiral out of control and that AI could be superior to that of humans, but without the restraining effect of human social conditioning. Various doomsday scenarios arising in relation to these and other areas of development present the possibility of catastrophic impacts, ultimately including the end of the world, or at least of humanity.

I found it interesting that one of a dozen figures in the 106-page report was dedicated to a half-page picture of a bisected brain in formaldehyde - which was somewhat irrelevant to any of the actual neurotech predictions.  Neuroscience as governmental buzztopic, indeed.

Comments, anyone?

Neuroethics across the pond (Connors)

For those of you in the area, London's fantastic Dana Centre is hosting a neurotechnology-focused public science event on April 26th.  Among the topics up for discussion at Brainy Brave New World: forensic brain imaging, neuropharmacological enhancement, chimera embryo research, and genetic engineering. The BIOS program's Ilina Singh will be one of the speakers at the event (her work on stimulant medication for ADHD has plenty of neuroethics crossover), and Stanford's Judy Illes will be participating via remote link. 

Like all Dana Centre events, the talk is open to the public and will be followed by open discussion with the panel experts.  I'm planning to attend and am very much looking forward to gauging the public response to some of these issues.  Say hello if you stop by!

FYI: The Dana Centre requests that you notify them of attendance in advance, which you can do here.

Sexual Desire in the NYT

The science section of the NYT last week (see here, for example) was principally devoted to research on sexual and romantic desire.  According to the article, there has been some debate over whether physiological arousal proceeds or follows sexual desire, and the suggestion is that recent research supports the former view.  I suspect a lot will probably turn on what one means by "desire" and that the discussion could benefit from some more conceptual clarity.  In any event, here's the pertinent excerpt which attempts to connect the issue to broader issues in neuroethics:

A plethora of new findings, however, suggest that the experience of desire may be less a forerunner to sex than an afterthought, the cognitive overlay that the brain gives to the sensation of already having been aroused by some sort of physical or subliminal stimulus — a brush on the back of the neck, say, or the sight of a ripe apple, or wearing a hard hat on a construction site and being surrounded by other men in similar haberdashery.

In a series of studies at the University of Amsterdam, Ellen Laan, Stephanie Both and Mark Spiering demonstrated that the body’s entire motor system is activated almost instantly by exposure to sexual images, and that the more intensely sexual the visuals, the stronger the electric signals emitted by the participants’ so-called spinal tendious reflexes. By the looks of it, Dr. Laan said, the body is primed for sex before the mind has had a moment to leer.

“We think that sexual desire emerges from sexual stimulation, the activation of one’s sexual system,” she said in a telephone interview.

Moreover, she said, arousal is not necessarily a conscious process. In other experiments, Dr. Spiering and his colleagues showed that when college students were exposed to sexual images too fleetingly for the subjects to report having noticed them, the participants were nevertheless much quicker to identify subsequent sexual images than were the control students who had been flashed with neutral images.

“Our sexual responsiveness can be activated or enhanced by stimuli we’re not even aware of,” Dr. Laan said.

By reordering the sexual timeline and placing desire after arousal, rather than vice versa, the new research fits into the pattern that neurobiologists have lately observed for other areas of life. Before we are conscious of wanting to do anything — wave at a friend, open a book — the brain regions needed to perform the activity are already ablaze. The notion that any of us is the Decider, the proactive plotter of our most lubricious desires, scientists say, may simply be a happy and perhaps necessary illusion.