Neuroethics & Law Blog

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article: The Hazards of Growing Up Painlessly, New York Times Magazine In The Popular Press Neuroscience: Under Attack, New York Times Sunday Review The Opinion Pages Am I Attacking Neuroscience? (Response to above article), Neuroskeptic Yawning Begins Early, Though No One Is Sure Why, New York Times Well Blog Thinking Clearly About Personality Disorders, The New York Times Moral Evaluations of Harm Are Instant and Emotional, Science Daily Where is your mind?, Mink Hacks Independent Neuroblogs as part of the science blogging ecosystem, The Neurocritic Learning to Accept, and Master, a $110,000 Mechanical Arm, The New York Times Four Common Antipsychotic Drugs Found to Lack Safety and Effectiveness in Older Adults, Science Daily Mind-Controlled Artificial Limbs Fusing Man and Machine Coming Next Year, Wired Science Will artificial intelligence be the end of us?, CBS News Scientists See Promise in Deep-Learning Programs, New York Times Science Advances in artificial intelligence: deep learning, Mind Hacks The man whose brain ignores one half of his world, The Guardian Notes & Theories The Fairness Principle in Nature, Sociological Images The latest buzz on insomnia, The Wellcome Trust Doing Neuroscience, Doing Feminism: Interview with Dr. Sari van Anders, The Neuroethics Blog New Treatment for ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Syndrome?, Time Health and Family A Vaccine to Curb Addicts' Highs, The Wall Street Journal Brain's 'reading centres' are culturally universal, Nature News Autism symptoms reversed in mice, Nature News From the Academic Literature: Autism-related deficits via dysregulated eIF4E-dependent translational control, Nature fMRI for vegetative and minimally conscious states, BMJ Neural embedding of stress reactivity, Nature Neuroscience Substantia Nigra Volume Loss Before Basal Forebrain Degeneration in Early Parkinson Disease, Archives of Neurology Decisions During Negatively-Framed Messages Yield Smaller Risk-Aversion-Related Brain Activation in Substance-Dependent Individuals, Psychology of Addictive Behaviors The speed of morality: a high-density electrical neuroimaging study, Journal of Neurophysiology What we remember affects how we see: Spatial working memory steers saccade programming, Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Positively Biased Processing of Self-Relevant Social Feedback, The Journal of Neuroscience Long-Term Neural Correlates of Reversible Fear Learning in the Lateral Amygdala, The Journal of Neuroscience Neural Correlates of Anticipation Risk Reflect Risk Preferences, The Journal of Neuroscience A Large-Scale Model of the Functioning Brain, Science

Subscribe to our mailing list The Program in Ethics and Brain Sciences (PEBS) is a collaborative effort of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the  Johns Hopkins Brain Sciences Institute . The goal of PEBS is to ensure that research in brain science proceeds with an informed understanding of ethical issues, and that philosophical and empirical analyses of the advances in brain research proceed with an informed understanding of the science.

"Should the Late Stage Demented be Punished for Past Crimes?"

Should the Late Stage Demented be Punished for Past Crimes? by Annette Dufner has been published in Criminal Law and Philosophy, Online First™:

Abstract

The paper investigates whether it is plausible to hold the late stage demented criminally responsible for past actions. The concern is based on the fact that policy makers in the United States and in Britain are starting to wonder what to do with prison inmates in the later stages of dementia who do not remember their crimes anymore. The problem has to be expected to become more urgent as the population ages and the number of dementia patients increases. This paper argues that the late-stage demented should not be punished for past crimes. Applicable theories of punishment, especially theories with an appropriate expressivist, or communicative element, fail to justify the imprisonment of the late-stage demented. Further imprisonment would require a capacity for comprehension on the part of the punished, and, under certain narrowly specified conditions, even a capacity to be at least in principle capable of recalling the crime again.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

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Last Edition's Most Popular Article: Classroom Ethics 101, Linkedin In The Popular Press The Hazards of Growing Up Painlessly, New York Times Magazine   Great apes go through mid-life crisis, Nature News Experimental Drug Improves Memory in Mice With Multiple Sclerosis, Science Daily A ‘Party Drug’ May Help the Brain Cope With Trauma, New York Times Health   A Few Thoughts on Neuroscience and Consciousness in Marginal Case, Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences As easy as riding a bicycle?, Wellcome Trust Blog Using Just 10% of Your Brain? Think Again, The Wall Street Journal Vicodin for Social Exclusion, The Neurocritic  Your Brain by the Numbers, Scientific American Why War Helps, Rather than Harms, Some With PTSD, Time Health & Family A Writer Who Embraces Difference, New York Times    Placebos Work Better on Stoics, Scientific American Mind-reading scan locates site of meaning in the brain, New Scientist Exposure to light at night lowers cognitive function: study, The Raw Story Younger Students More Likely to Get A.D.H.D. Drugs, New York Times Well Blog Communication with vegetative state patients: Dialogue or soliloquy?, Neuroethics at the Core Ray Kurzweil's Dubious New Theory of Mind, The New Yorker The smell of white--mixture of many distinct scents end up smelling the same, Discover Magazine Not Exactly Rocket Science Blog Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness[Excerpt], Scientific American Mind-Machine Links Researcher's Brain to Cockroach Leg, Scientific American MDMA keeps severe stress at bay, Nature News When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get…more Relief from a Placebo?, Science Daily How Far Away Is Mind-Machine Integration?, Scientific American From the Academic Literature: When Does Knowledge Become Intent? Perceiving the Minds of Wrongdoers, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies Intention concepts and brain-machine interfacing, Frontiers in Cognition  Mechanisms of reciprocity in primates: testing for short-term contingency of grooming and food sharing in bonobos and chimpanzees, Evolution and Human Behavior A high-performance neural prosthesis enabled by control algorithm design, Nature Neuroscience Aberrant light directly impairs mood and learning through melanopsin-expressing neurons, Nature  A prefrontal cortex–brainstem neuronal projection that controls response to behavioural challenge, Nature Neuroimaging during Trance State: A Contribution to the Study of Dissociation, PLoS ONE Network Cosmology, Scientific Reports  Inhibition of Glutamate Carboxypeptidase II (GCPII) activity as a treatment for cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis, PNAS

Subscribe to our mailing list The Program in Ethics and Brain Sciences (PEBS) is a collaborative effort of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the  Johns Hopkins Brain Sciences Institute . The goal of PEBS is to ensure that research in brain science proceeds with an informed understanding of ethical issues, and that philosophical and empirical analyses of the advances in brain research proceed with an informed understanding of the science.

Macho Camacho and Very Big Miracles (UPDATED)

TMZ states: "Camacho is reportedly brain-dead ... and doctors have said he will need a miracle to survive." Well, either he's not really brain dead, or he's going to need a bring-the-dead-back-to-life miracle.

UPDATE: In a new entry, TMZ continues the confusion: "According to the rep, Camacho's family made the decision to remove him from life support after doctors declared he was brain dead." Once doctors declare him dead, the family's rights to continue life support are severely curtailed; at least that's the way things generally work in the fifty states. Maybe they have rights to keep up life support for some number of hours for religious rituals or the like. I would doubt they would have much more say than that. So declaring that the family "made a decision" at least implies that the family had a substantial say in the matter when, in fact, they probably did not. TMZ reinforces the misperception that brain death is not really death. (More precisely, the law treats brain death as death; of course, one can always disagree.)

"When Does Knowledge Become Intent? Perceiving the Minds of Wrongdoers"

Recently Posted to SSRN:

"When Does Knowledge Become Intent? Perceiving the Minds of Wrongdoers" 
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Vol. 9, Issue 4, pp. 859-892, 2012
PAM MUELLER, Princeton University - Department of Psychology
LAWRENCE M. SOLAN, Brooklyn Law School
JOHN M. DARLEY, Princeton University
In a series of experimental studies, we asked people to assign appropriate civil and/or criminal liability to individuals who cause harm with various culpable states of mind and kinds of knowledge. The studies are principally aimed at two related issues. First, do people actually separate the various states of mind conceptually? How much knowledge, and what kind of knowledge, regarding something that may go wrong (understanding risk) is sufficient to count as knowing that something will go wrong (having knowledge legally equivalent to intent)? Second, to the extent that people distinguish among the states of mind that help define normative behavior, how much do those distinctions contribute to people's judgments of civil liability? Our studies show that people are able to make explicit distinctions about the states of mind of others that more or less correspond to legally relevant categories. Yet, when asked to assign consequences, their “hot” moral judgments play a larger role than do their “cold” cognitive categorizations.

"Emotion and the Law"

Recently Posted to SSRN:

"Emotion and the Law" 
Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Vol. 8, pp. 161-181, 2012

SUSAN A. BANDES, DePaul University - College of Law 
JEREMY A. BLUMENTHAL, Syracuse University - College of Law

The field of law and emotion draws from a range of disciplines in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities to shed light on the emotions that pervade the legal system. It utilizes insights from these disciplines to illuminate and assess the implicit and explicit assumptions about emotion that animate legal reasoning, legal doctrine, the behavior of legal actors, and the structure of legal institutions. In light of law's focus on influencing social norms and on structuring effective and just institutions, one development that holds enormous promise is the growing interdisciplinary interest in collective decision making and in the emotional dynamics of groups. Work in the affective sciences on how emotion and cognition interact is another rich vein for legal scholars interested in the assessment of responsibility and blame, the role of morality in law, and a host of other areas. Another important frontier is exploration of concrete solutions to the problems identified by law and emotion scholars.

Patient Thought To Be Vegetative Conveys Not in Pain

See here (though the piece doesn't say as much about the pain finding as its title suggests it would; there's a bit more in the video). We'll probably have to wait to find out more about repeatability and the like. But, nevertheless, it appears that the experiential future creeps forward....

(Hat tip: Jennifer Chandler)

"The Law and Technology Enterprise: Uncovering the Template to Legal Scholarship on Technology"

Recently Posted to SSRN:

"The Law and Technology Enterprise: Uncovering the Template to Legal Scholarship on Technology"
(2011) 3(1) Law, Innovation and Technology 31-83

KIERAN MARK TRANTER, Griffith University - Griffith Law School
 

This article explores the founding commitments of legal scholarship about technology. Through a detailed analysis of three discrete law and technology literatures — space law scholarship from the 1950-1960, IVF and law scholarship from 1970-1980 and virtual worlds and law scholarship from the 2000s — a common template for legal writing on technology, the "law and technology enterprise," is identified. This template narrows how law has engaged with technology. Through exposing the positivistic commitments to description and to law as the handmaiden to public policy, it is suggested that more sophisticated understandings of the law and technology interface can emerge.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

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Subscribe to our mailing list The Program in Ethics and Brain Sciences (PEBS) is a collaborative effort of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the  Johns Hopkins Brain Sciences Institute . The goal of PEBS is to ensure that research in brain science proceeds with an informed understanding of ethical issues, and that philosophical and empirical analyses of the advances in brain research proceed with an informed understanding of the science.

Law and Neuroscience Scholarship at Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt is offering a fantastic new scholarship to a student who simultaneously pursues a J.D. (in law, of course) and a Ph.D. (in neuroscience) at Vanderbilt:

The Vanderbilt JD/PhD joint degree in Law and Neuroscience is happy to announce that one full-tuition law school scholarship has been put into place this year for a person admitted to both the Vanderbilt Brain Institute and Vanderbilt Law School who will begin the JD/PhD track in Neuroscience in Fall 2013.

The application deadline is April 1, but see here for more information, details, and restrictions. This is a great opportunity!

"Lie-Detection, Neuroscience, and the Law of Evidence"

Recently Posted to SSRN:

"Lie-Detection, Neuroscience, and the Law of Evidence"
FREDERICK SCHAUER, University of Virginia School of Law
This paper, prepared for the “State of the Art” Law and Neuroscience Conference at the Rutgers (Camden) University School of Law, has two goals. One is to describe comprehensively the current court cases, scientific research, academic literature, and controversies about the potential use of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) for detecting deception in court and other forensic contexts. The other is to suggest that the question of the admissibility of fMRI deception evidence in court cannot be thought of as an exclusively scientific question. The appropriate use or non-use of science in the legal system involves inevitably normative questions about the appropriate levels of accuracy, reliability and validity, questions that must be answered in light of the goals of the legal system and the particular purposes to which the science would be put. The answers require getting the science right, and thus require the involvement of science and scientists, but the ultimate question of when and how the scientific conclusions so produced will be used is a question of legal policy as to which neither scientists (nor, for that matter, lawyers) should be given exclusive authority. Thus, although explicitly focused on law and neuroscience, the paper implicitly addresses a pervading issue in science policy generally – is the use to which science shall or should be put an exclusively, or even partially, scientific question?