Neuroethics & Law Blog

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): Glowing 'tattoo' captures 3D snapshot of brain activity, NewScientist In The Popular Press: Mothers’ Sounds Are Building Block for Babies’ Brains, New York Times Well Blog Outing A.I.: Beyond the Turing Test, New York Times Tune In, Turn On … and Train Your Brain?, Center for Law, Brain, & Behavior How Smartphones Hurt Sleep, The Atlantic Please Stop Making That Noise, New York Times Well Blog Scandinavians Take a Lot of Antidepressants. That Might Be a Good Sign., Vox Allen Zderad Sees Wife for First Time in Decade After 'Bionic' Eye Implant, NBC News Use of Neuroscience in Law May Face Political Resistance, ScienceDaily Why We Need a Right to Privacy for Brain Data, Gizmodo Neuroimaging in the Courtroom, The Neuroethics Blog Where There’s a Will There’s a Way: Enhancing Motivation, Practical Ethics Blog First Human Head Transplant Could Happen in Two Years, NewScientist Brain-Controlled Drone Shown Off by Tekever in Lisbon, BBC News Your Genes Help Determine How Much Money You Save, Quartz See the Men Who Got Their Hands Cut Off and Replaced With Bionic Ones, TIME Bionic Hand Project Builds Fingertip Sensors, BBC News Can We Teach Intelligence?, The Conversation Picking Up a Memoir of Madness, New York Times Right-Wing Brain Surgeons: The Case of Surgical Neurology International, Discover Neuroskeptic Blog Game-Playing Software Holds Lessons for Neuroscience, Nature News Three Men Have Had Hands Amputated and Replaced With Bionic Versions, Gizmodo Google Machine Learns to Master Video Games, BBC News How Brain Waves Guide Memory Formation, Science Daily In the Academic Literature: Neuroscience in Court: The Painful Truth, Nature Human-Level Control through Deep Reinforcement Learning, Nature Sound Symbolism Scaffolds Language Development in Preverbal Infants, Cortex Frequency-Specific Hippocampal-Prefrontal Interactions during Associative Learning, Nature Neuroscience Closed-Loop Training of Attention with Real-Time Brain Imaging, Nature Neuroscience Anomalous White Matter Morphology in Adults Who Stutter, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research A Nucleus of Fear, Nature Reviews Neuroscience Bionic Reconstruction to Restore Hand Function after Brachial Plexus Injury: A Case Series of Three Patients, The Lancet

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.

Our 10th Blogiversary!

The Neuroethics & Law Blog turns ten years old today. It was the first blog dedicated to the legal and ethical issues raised by advances in neuroscience (that I know of). Back then most people had never even heard of a blog, let alone neurolaw or neuroethics. Over the last decade, the scholarship in the field has skyrocketed. I send my thanks to our loyal readers and guest bloggers!

"PTSD in the Prison System"

Recently published in SSRN:

 

"PTSD in the Prison System"

 

JULIE ANN DAVIS, Texas Tech University School of Law

The treatment of Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder in the federal prison system has fallen in quality, if it can ever be said to have been sufficient. This work presents an analysis of PTSD in Veterans, identifies the deficiencies in prison systems to address the mental health aspects of PTSD, and presents solutions to address the needs of our soldiers.

"Happiness 101 for Legal Scholars: Applying Happiness Research to Legal Policy, Ethics, Mindfulness, Negotiations, Legal Education, and Legal Practice"

Recently published in SSRN (and forthcoming in Research Handbook of Behavioral Law and Economics, Kathryn Zeiler & Joshua C. Teitelbaum eds. (2015)): 

 

"Happiness 101 for Legal Scholars: Applying Happiness Research to Legal Policy, Ethics, Mindfulness, Negotiations, Legal Education, and Legal Practice"

 

PETER H. HUANG, University of Colorado Law School

This chapter offers legal scholars a brief introductory survey of modern happiness research. This chapter analyzes how happiness research can inform legal policy. This chapter explains how and why happiness research differs from and is related to behavioral economics. This chapter develops two conditions under which law and policy should care more about experienced happiness versus remembered happiness. This chapter develops connections among being happy, being ethical, and being mindful. This chapter illustrates how happiness research applies to and relates to negotiations and conflict resolution. Finally, this chapter considers how happiness research can improve legal education and legal practice.

"The Emergence of Law and Behavioural Science: A European Perspective"

Recently published in SSRN (and forthcoming in A. Alemanno and Anne-Lise Sibony, Nudge and the Law: A European Perspective, Hart Publishing, (2015)):

 

"The Emergence of Law and Behavioural Science: A European Perspective"

 

ANNE-LISE SIBONY, Université de Liège
ALBERTO ALEMANNO, HEC Paris

Nudge and the Law explores the legal implications of the emergent phenomenon of behaviourally informed intervention. It focuses on the challenges and opportunities it may offer to the policymaking of the European Union. This dual focus on law and on Europe characterises our endeavour. This volume has been structured by taking as a point of the departure the current nudging debate, which mainly comprises two strands of enquiry: when is it legitimate for States to use psychology to inform policy? (the legitimacy debate) and, to the extent that it is legitimate, how can behavioural insights in practice be incorporated into the decision making processes? (the practicability debate). Against this backdrop we brought together scholars who could analyse what behavioural insights might bring to EU law, both at a horizontal level and at a sectoral level. This volume endeavours to present the results of their research in a manner that is accessible both to EU law specialists who are not yet familiar with behavioural sciences and to behavioural lawyers who are not specialists in EU law.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): Was Brian Williams a Victim of False Memory?, New York Times Well Blog In The Popular Press: Just a Bit of DNA Helps Explain Humans' Big Brains, NPR Shots Blog Your Brain Is Primed To Reach False Conclusions, FiveThirtyEight - Science Your Brain May Want That Bottle Of Soda Because It's Easy To Pick Up, NPR Goats & Soda Blog Why the Speech Center of Your Brain Shuts Down When You Talk, Gizmodo How people are wrong about cognitive enhancement and how to fix it, Practical Ethics Glowing 'tattoo' captures 3D snapshot of brain activity, NewScientist Can A Computer Change The Essence Of Who You Are? NPR Shots Blog Dementia Hit Women Hardest - Study, The Guardian 5 Common Myths about the Brain, Scientific American Neuroscience: Halving it all, Nature Pain Really Is All In Your Head And Emotion Controls Intensity, NPR Shots Blog Epigenetic Modifications Are Affecting the Way We Think, The Connector Exchanging 'Reasons' for 'Values', The Neuroethics Blog New Promise of Relief for Major Depression, Scientific American Teen Brain Scans Reveal a Key to Weight Loss, ScienceDaily In the Academic Literature: Orbitofrontal Cortex Uses Distinct Codes for Different Choice Attributes in Decisions Motivated by Curiosity, Neuron Enhanced Male-Evoked Responses in the Ventromedial Hypothalamus of Sexually Receptive Female Mice, Current Biology Gamma Power Reductions Accompany Stimulus-Specific Representations of Dynamic Events, Current Biology Simulating Fiction: Individual Differences in Literature Comprehension Revealed with fMRI, PLOS One Inspiration Is the Major Regulator of Human CSF Flow, Journal of Neuroscience Is serotonin an upper or a downer? The evolution of the serotonergic system and its role in depression and the antidepressant response, Neuroscience & Behavioral Reviews Synchronous brain activity during cooperative exchange depends on gender of partner: A fNIRS-based hyperscanning study, Human Brain Mapping

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.

"Does the Theory of Insurance Support Awarding Pain and Suffering Damages in Torts?"

Recently published in SSRN (and recently published in Edw Elgar Research Handbook in the Law & Economics of Insurance (2015)):

 

"Does the Theory of Insurance Support Awarding Pain and Suffering Damages in Torts?"

 

RONEN AVRAHAM, University of Texas at Austin

This chapter asks whether THE THEORY OF INSURANCE SUPPORTS AWARDING PAIN AND SUFFERING DAMAGES IN TORTS. The answer is an unequivocal “Yes.” Many commentators have argued that individuals do not (and should not) demand insurance for losses that do not lower their marginal utility of wealth. From this perspective, tort laws that provide victims with compensation for pain and suffering harms effectively force them to purchase insurance that they don’t value. This chapter disputes this logic on several levels. First, it suggests that so-called “pure non-monetary losses” are exceedingly rare in practice, and are difficult to define even in theory. Moreover, non-monetary losses are likely to be correlated with monetary losses, and this correlation generates a demand for insurance covering both types of losses under the traditional model used by law and economics scholars. Coverage of non-monetary losses can also be demanded under many plausible alternatives to expected utility theory. The chapter also takes issue with the empirical evidence that some have interpreted as suggesting a lack of demand for coverage of non-monetary losses. Finally, the chapter suggest that future advances in neuroscience may make it possible to accurately measure mental states associated with pain and suffering, obviating the need for the subjective testimony that introduces so much noise into the assessment of these damages.

"Exposing the Myth of Consent"

Recently published in SSRN (and forthcoming in the Indiana Health Law Review (2015)):

 

"Exposing the Myth of Consent"

 

JENNIFER ANN DROBAC, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
OLIVER R. GOODENOUGH, Vermont Law School

Consent, a critical concept for law, often rests upon the ability of people to create binding changes of legal status, rights, and obligations. The law typically presumes complete and un-buffered adult capacity for binding legal consent. However, the realities of flawed information, inexperience, a lack of attention, and evidence of human limitation frequently refute notions of complete capacity. This Article posits that the law should reserve the presumption of complete and unfettered adult capacity for special cases. A more nuanced view of our actual capacities rests, in part, on the understanding that neuroscience and psychosocial evidence provides. This perspective suggests that jurists should match rules and jurisprudential approaches to the variable capacities that people exhibit in different contexts and stages of life. The strategic recognition and use of neurojuridical tools identifies at-risk parties and circumstances and sheds light on the problematic nature of consent offered on some occasions. Such a view helps jurists to develop and deploy effective enhancers and buffers around consent that reflect a more realistic treatment of capacity. This Article examines the myth of consent to add some of the tools and insights of cognitive neuroscience and social psychology to the traditional staples of psychology, economics, politics, and philosophy. It proffers innovative approaches, such as the framework of legal assent, explored in prior work and summarized in this Article. Legal reforms prompted by new defaults will facilitate optimum consensual relations and ultimately foster the Pareto enhancing goals, now mistakenly linked to a more radical vision of consent.

Paris Conference on Clinical Neuroethics

Submitted to the blog:

Clinical Neuroethics: Bench to Bedside

Wednesday, June 17, Thursday 18, Friday 19

June 2015

at

ICM

Insitut du Cerveau et de la Moelle  Épinère

Brain & Spine Institute

Paris, France

 Recognizing that the most important goal of Neuroscience is to improve patient care, the meeting will convene neuroscientists, physicians, and ethicists, to address the complex neuroethics dilemmas posed by actual clinical cases. The cases will be drawn from a variety of areas including:  genetics, disorders of consciousness, invasive and non-invasive technologies, disease diagnosis, prediction, issues of consent and coercion, addiction and anti-social behavior, as well as special issues of children and adolescents. 

For information and registration please click on www.icmbioethics.com.    Space is limited and on a first come basis. For general inquiry contact Tomi Kushner, [email protected]

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): fMRI as a Tool of Lie-Detection, Bill of Health Blog In The Popular Press: Was Brian Williams a Victim of False Memory?, New York Times Well Blog People Are Animals, Too, Mosaic How Tiny Electrodes in the Brain Could Treat Parkinson's, OCD, and Even Depression, Vox Neuroimaging as a Supplement to Self-Reporting Surveys in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, The Connector Sleep Deprivation and its Weird Effects on the Mind and Body, Healthcare Triage YouTube Channel Studying Oversize Brain Cells for Links to Exceptional Memory, New York Times You Have a Second Brain in Your Gut, and it Can Live Without You, Quartz NIH-Funded Research Lays Groundwork for Next-Generation Prosthetics, National Institutes of Health News 9 Fascinating Facts about the Science of Sleep, Vox What It’s Like to Regain Your Sense of Hearing, Smell, or Touch, Wired If the Passenger in the Seat Next to You Buys a Snack or a Movie, You Probably Will Too, Quartz Q&A: Blocks, Play, Screen Time And The Infant Mind, NPR Ed Blog Secrets of the Home: My House Made Me Do It, NewScientist This Is Your Brain on Love, Vox Dogs Can Tell Difference Between Happy and Angry Faces, BBC News In the Academic Literature: Neuroscience: Drama of Consciousness, Nature Neurodegeneration: Cold Shock Protects the Brain, Nature Instantaneously Hotter: the Dynamic Revision of Beauty Assessment Standards, Advances in Consumer Research Vocal Learning in the Functionally Referential Food Grunts of Chimpanzees, Current Biology Oxytocin Selectively Facilitates Learning with Social Feedback and Increases Activity and Functional Connectivity in Emotional Memory and Reward Processing Regions, Human Brain Mapping                Refining Deep Brain Stimulation to Emulate Optogenetic Treatment of Synaptic Pathology, Science 13-Month-Olds’ Understanding of Social Interactions, Psychological Science Building a Second Brain in the Bowel, JCI Epigenetic Modification of the Oxytocin Receptor Gene Influences the Perception of Anger and Fear in the Human Brain, PNAS Events/Calls For Abstracts: Call for Abstracts (Deadline - March 31, 2015): Neuroetherapeutics and Psychosurgery Conference. Center for Cognition and Neuroethics, University of Michigan-Flint Summer Seminar/CFP (Deadline March 1, 2015): Mirror Neurons, Empathy and Autism. Center for Cognition and Neuroethics, University of Michigan-Flint

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.

"The Case For Pain Neuroimaging In The Courtroom: Lessons From Deception Detection"

Recently published in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences

"The Case For Pain Neuroimaging In The Courtroom: Lessons From Deception Detection"

Natalie Salmanowitz

From an observer's perspective, pain is a fairly nebulous concept—it is not externally visible, its cause is not obvious, and perceptions of its intensity are mainly subjective. If difficulties in understanding the source and degree of pain are troublesome in contexts requiring social empathy, they are especially problematic in the legal setting. Tort law applies to both acute and chronic pain cases, but the lack of objective measures demands high thresholds of proof. However, recent developments in pain neuroimaging may clarify some of these inherent uncertainties, as studies purport detection of pain on an individual level. In analyzing the scientific and legal barriers of utilizing pain neuroimaging in court, it is prudent to discuss neuroimaging for deception, a topic that has garnered significant controversy due to premature attempts at introduction in the courtroom. Through comparing and contrasting the two applications of neuroimaging to the legal setting, this paper argues that the nature of tort law, the distinct features of pain, and the reduced vulnerability to countermeasures distinguish pain neuroimaging in a promising way. This paper further contends that the mistakes and lessons involving deception detection are essential to consider for pain neuroimaging to have a meaningful future in court.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): Violent Psychopaths Don’t Register Punishment, Study Says, TIME In The Popular Press: Neuroscience: The Brain, Interrupted, Nature News What Gambling Monkeys Teach Us About Human Rationality, Mind Hacks Blog fMRI as a Tool of Lie-Detection, Bill of Health Blog Leading a Mouse to Drink, or Not, New York Times Why Cambodians Never Get 'Depressed', NPR Goats and Soda Blog My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward, Pacific Standard When the Hype Doesn’t Pan Out: On Sharing the Highs-and-Lows of Research with the Public, The Neuroethics Blog How To Become Batman, NPR Invisibilia Blog Can Attention Deficit Drugs ‘Normalize’ a Child’s Brain?, New York Times Well Blog Eye-Tracking Test Enters into the Running for an Alzheimer’s Screen, Scientific American Love Hot Sauce? Your Personality May Be A Good Predictor, NPR The Salt Blog Hard Problem Defeats Legendary Playwright, Mind Hacks Programming Safety into Self-Driving Cars: Better AI Algorithms for Semi-Autonomous Vehicles, ScienceDaily In the Academic Literature: Decoding Neural Circuits that Control Compulsive Sucrose Seeking, Cell Musical Training Orchestrates Coordinated Neuroplasticity in Auditory Brainstem and Cortex to Counteract Age-Related Declines in Categorical Vowel Perception, The Journal of Neuroscience Priming Memories of Past Wins Induces Risk Seeking, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General The Development of Cortical Circuits for Motion Discrimination, Nature Neuroscience                Abstracting Meaning from Complex Information (Gist Reasoning) in Adult Traumatic Brain Injury, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology External Control of the Stream of Consciousness: Stimulus-Based Effects on Involuntary Thought Sequences, Consciousness and Cognition Functional Organization of Excitatory Synaptic Strength in Primary Visual Cortex, Nature Events/Calls For Abstracts: Call for Abstracts (Deadline - March 31, 2015): Neuroetherapeutics and Psychosurgery Conference. Center for Cognition and Neuroethics, University of Michigan-Flint Summer Seminar/CFP (Deadline March 1, 2015): Mirror Neurons, Empathy and Autism. Center for Cognition and Neuroethics, University of Michigan-Flint

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.

"Sleep Deprivation and False Memories"

Recently published in SSRN (and recently published in Psychology Science, Vol. 25 (2014) and UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2015-14):

 

"Sleep Deprivation and False Memories"

 

STEVEN J. FRENDA, University of California, Irvine
LAWRENCE PATIHIS, University of California, Irvine
ELIZABETH F. LOFTUS, University of California, Irvine
HOLLY C. LEWIS, Northern Illinois University
KIMBERLY M. FENN, Michigan State University 

Many studies have investigated factors that affect susceptibility to false memories. However, few have investigated the role of sleep deprivation in the formation of false memories, despite overwhelming evidence that sleep deprivation impairs cognitive function. We examined the relationship between self-reported sleep duration and false memories and the effect of 24 hr of total sleep deprivation on susceptibility to false memories. We found that under certain conditions, sleep deprivation can increase the risk of developing false memories. Specifically, sleep deprivation increased false memories in a misinformation task when participants were sleep deprived during event encoding, but did not have a significant effect when the deprivation occurred after event encoding. These experiments are the first to investigate the effect of sleep deprivation on susceptibility to false memories, which can have dire consequences.