Neuroethics & Law Blog

Neuroscience, Law, and Chronic Pain

Kevin Davis writes on the subject in the ABA Journal. See here.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): Risk of Dementia Is Declining, but Scientists Don’t Know Why, The Washington Post In The Popular Press: Hopkins Scientists Develop Mini-Brains in Promising Research, The Baltimore Sun Our Brains Remember the Good Stuff, The New York Times Mystery Brain Disorder Robs Patients of Their Words, The New York Times Why Brains Are Beautiful, BBC News How Meditation Changes the Brain and Body, NY Times Well Blog Being Bilingual Changes the Architecture of Your Brain, Wired Magazine Mind-Altering Parasite Blinds Chimps to Imminent Danger, Discover Magazine Our Lazy Brain Democracy: Are We Doomed?, The Neuroethics Blog Brain Implant Will Let Amputees Move Individual Fingers on Prosthetics with Thoughts Alone, Gizmodo Brain Games - The God Brain, National Geographic Robot Art Raises Questions about Human Creativity, MIT Technology Review Winter Brain, Summer Brain: Seasonality in Brain Responses?, Discover Magazine Video Games as a Prescription to Enhance Cognitive Function?, OBSSR Disabled Musicians Create Music from Brainwaves, BBC News A Penny for Our Thoughts? Copper Influx Key to Brain Cell Development, Science Daily In the Academic Literature: The Role of Dopamine in Value-Based Attentional Orienting, Current Biology Moralistic Gods, Supernatural Punishment and the Expansion of Human Sociality, Nature Dorsal Raphe Dopamine Neurons Represent the Experience of Social Isolation, Cell Amygdala Modulation of Cerebellar Learning, The Journal of Neuroscience

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.

 

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): Emotions without Emotion: A Challenge for the Neurophilosophy and Neuroscience of Emotion, The Neuroethics Blog In The Popular Press: 2016 Biennial Science of Learning Symposium Presentations, Johns Hopkins Science of Learning Institute Spelling Uses Multiple Parts of the Brain, Research Shows, The Guardian Minimally Invasive “Stentrode” Shows Potential as Neural Interface for Brain, DARPA Risk of Dementia Is Declining, but Scientists Don’t Know Why, The Washington Post You Can Train Your Body into Thinking it’s Had Medicine, Mosiac Henry VIII’s Erratic Behavior Was Likely Caused by an NFL-Style Injury, Argue Yale Researchers, Quartz Do Animals Feel Empathy? Inside the Decades-Long Quest for an Answer, Vox News Neuroscience and Free Will Are Rethinking Their Divorce, Science of Us Horses Recognise Human Emotions, BBC News Scientists Connect Neurons in the Lab for the First Time, Discover Magazine New Ways into the Brain’s ‘Music Room’, New York Times Being Sleep-Deprived Makes People Much More Likely to Give False Confessions, Vox News A Single Concussion May Triple the Long-Term Risk of Suicide, Scientific American Flashes of Light May Stop Jet Lag, BBC News Lending Her Ears to an M.I.T. Experiment, New York Times In the Academic Literature: Age-Related Changes to Oscillatory Dynamics in Hippocampal and Neocortical Networks, Neurobiology of Learning and Memory Minimally Invasive Endovascular Stent-Electrode Array for High-Fidelity, Chronic Recordings of Cortical Neural Activity, Nature Biotechnology Regulating Task-Monitoring Systems in Response to Variable Reward Contingencies and Outcomes in Cocaine Addicts, Psychopharmacology Preliminary Findings Demonstrating Latent Effects of Early Adolescent Marijuana Use Onset on Cortical Architecture, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Cortical Response to Categorical Color Perception in Infants Investigated by Near-Infrared Spectroscopy, 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.

 

The Implementation of Neurocorrectives: Coercion, Medical Ethics, and Penal Aims (Guest Post: Jonathan Pugh)

In my previous post, I considered whether there were any significant moral differences between neurocorrectives and existing penal measures such as incarceration. I also suggested that unless there is a morally significant difference between the two, it is unclear why it would not be permissible to impose neurocorrectives on criminal offenders non-consensually, in the same way that other interventions in criminal justice are imposed on offenders non-consensually.

Although I suggested that this is still very much an open question, in this post, I shall assume that there is a morally significant difference between the two interventions that gives us a moral reason to refrain from imposing neurocorrectives non-consensually. Instead, I shall be interested in the question of whether it is possible to incorporate the consensual use of neurocorrectives in the criminal justice system in a manner that is compatible with the penal aims of criminal justice.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): The Neurologist Who Hacked His Brain—and Almost Lost His Mind, Wired Magazine In The Popular Press: The Problem with Human Head Transplants, The Conversation Government Seeks High-Fidelity “Brain-Computer” Interface, MIT Technology Review Schizophrenia, Hubris and Science, Discover Magazine Deciphering the Language of the Brain, Scientific American Emotions without Emotion: A Challenge for the Neurophilosophy and Neuroscience of Emotion, The Neuroethics Blog Consciousness May Be the Product of Carefully Balanced Chaos, Science Magazine Neuro-Hit or Neuro-Myth?, Wellcome Trust New Collar Promises to Keep Athletes’ Brains from “Sloshing” During Impact, MIT Technology Review Physics of Brain Wrinkles Copied in a Jar, BBC News 23andMe Blames Chipper Mornings on Genetics, Wired Magazine The Automatic Neuroscientist, Discover Magazine This $40,000 Robotic Exoskeleton Lets the Paralyzed Walk, MIT Technology Review Could a Drug that Tamps Down Inflammation Lift the Fog of Depression?, STAT In the Academic Literature: Stability and Change in Risk-Taking Propensity across the Adult Life Span, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology On the Growth and Form of Cortical Convolutions, Nature Physics Winning a Competition Predicts Dishonest Behavior, PNAS Neuroscience and Behavioral Genetics in US Criminal Law: An Empirical Analysis, Journal of Law and the Biosciences The Use of Neuroscientific Evidence in the Courtroom by Those Accused of Criminal Offenses in England and Wales, Journal of Law and the Biosciences Neural Bases of Orthographic Long-Term Memory and Working Memory in Dysgraphia, Brain Neurobiologic Advances from the Brain Disease Model of Addiction, NEJM

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.

 

"Two Views of First Amendment Thought Privacy"

Recently published on SSRN (and forthcoming in University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law):

 

"Two Views of First Amendment Thought Privacy"

 

ADAM J. KOLBER, Brooklyn Law School

For centuries, our thought privacy has been reasonably well protected by the difficulty of deciphering other people’s thoughts. This natural protection is in jeopardy, however, as emerging technologies improve our ability to, loosely speaking, read minds. When these methods get cheaper and more accurate, the state may seek to monitor and regulate thought in ways previously impossible.

The First Amendment undoubtedly protects thought privacy, but current law leaves open two very different levels of protection: On one view, thought is only protected when intertwined with expression. If so, we have rather limited First Amendment freedom of thought, since thought often goes unexpressed. Alternatively, thought may be protected independent of expression. If so, we have more expansive First Amendment freedom of thought.

I explore these views by considering blackjack players who “count cards.” Card counters perform mental calculations on publicly available information — the cards dealt in plain sight — in order to turn the odds in their favor. Even though card counting does not obviously implicate expression, I argue that the First Amendment plausibly gives us the right to count cards in our own minds.

More controversially, I argue that the Amendment may even protect the right to count cards when combined with an overt action, such as betting in a casino. A criminal prohibition on betting while counting cards might constitute impermissible thought-content discrimination by permitting bettors to make the basic calculations required to play blackjack but not the more accurate calculations used to count cards. It is difficult, however, to predict whether courts would recognize thought-content discrimination and, if they would, how they would cabin its scope.

"Neuroprediction: New Technology, Old Problems"

Recently published on SSRN (and Bioethica Forum, Vol. 8 (2015) and University of Pennsylvania Law School Public Law Research Paper 16-1):

 

"Neuroprediction: New Technology, Old Problems"

 

STEPHEN MORSE, University of Pennsylvania Law School

Neuroprediction is the use of structural or functional brain or nervous system variables to make any type of prediction, including medical prognoses and behavioral forecasts, such as an indicator of future dangerous behavior. This commentary will focus on behavioral predictions, but the analysis applies to any context. The general thesis is that using neurovariables for prediction is a new technology, but that it raises no new ethical issues, at least for now. Only if neuroscience achieves the ability to “read” mental content will genuinely new ethical issues be raised, but that is not possible at present.

Neurointerventions for Criminal Rehabilitation – Do They Differ From Existing Penal Methods in a Morally Significant Manner? (Guest Post: Jonathan Pugh)

There has been increasing interest in the criminal justice applications of interventions that exert a direct biological effect on the brain. In some cases in the US, offenders have been made to take anti-psychotic drugs in order to restore competence to stand trial, or even to receive punishment (Sell v United States 2003; Singleton vs Norris 2003; See Vincent 2014 for discussion). Elsewhere, I have considered whether other neuro-interventions might plausibly be used to facilitate an experience of remorse that would provide grounds for mitigation (Pugh and Maslen 2015) . In this post, I shall consider the use of neurointerventions as aids to the rehabilitation of criminal offenders within criminal justice systems; I shall refer to such interventions as ‘neurocorrectives’.