News and Commentary Archive

Explore recent scientific discoveries and news as well as CLBB events, commentary, and press.

Mission

The Center for Law, Brain & Behavior puts the most accurate and actionable neuroscience in the hands of judges, lawyers, policymakers and journalists—people who shape the standards and practices of our legal system and affect its impact on people’s lives. We work to make the legal system more effective and more just for all those affected by the law.

Evaluating the Impact of Cannabis Use on Thalamic Connectivity in Youth at Clinical High Risk of Psychosis

By Lisa Buchy, Tyrone D. Cannon, Alan Anticevic, Kristina Lyngberg, Kristin S. CadenheadBarbara A. Cornblatt, Thomas H. McGlashan, Diana O. Perkins, Larry J. Seidman, Ming T. TsuangElaine F. Walker, Scott W. Woods, Carrie E. Bearden, Daniel H. Mathalon, and Jean Addington | BMC Psychiatry | December 2015

Abstract:

Background

Disruptions in thalamic functional connectivity have been observed in people with schizophrenia and in youth at clinical high risk (CHR) of psychosis. However, the impact of environmental risk factors for psychosis on thalamic dysconnectivity is poorly understood. We tested whether thalamic dysconnectivity is related to patterns of cannabis use in a CHR sample.

Methods

162 CHR and 105 control participants were assessed on cannabis use severity, frequency, and age at onset of first use as part of the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study and completed resting-state fMRI scans. Whole-brain thalamic functional connectivity maps were generated using individual subjects’ anatomically defined thalamic seeds.

Results

Thalamic connectivity did not significantly correlate with current cannabis use severity or frequency in either CHR or controls. In CHR cannabis users, a significant correlation emerged between attenuated thalamic connectivity with left sensory/motor cortex and a younger age at onset of cannabis use. CHR who used cannabis before age 15 did not differ on thalamic connectivity as compared to CHR who used after age 15 or CHR who were cannabis naïve. No group differences in thalamic connectivity emerged when comparing CHR separated by moderate/high use frequency, low-frequency or cannabis naïve.

Conclusions

Although a younger age at onset of cannabis use may be associated with disrupted thalamo-cortical coupling, cannabis use does not appear to be an identifying characteristic for thalamic connectivity in CHR with moderate/high use frequency compared to low-frequency users or CHR who are cannabis naïve.

Read the full article here.

Imaging Brains, Changing Minds: How Pain Neuroimaging Can Inform the Law

By Amanda Pustilnik | Alabama Law Review | 2015

Abstract:

What would the law do differently if it could see into the black box of the mind? One of the most valuable things it might do is reform the ways it deals with pain. Pain is ubiquitous in law, from tort to torture, from ERISA to expert evidence. Yet legal doctrines grapple with pain poorly, embodying concepts that are generations out of date and that cast suspicion on pain sufferers as having a problem that is “all in their heads.”

Now, brain-imaging technologies are allowing scientists to see the brain in pain—and to reconceive of many types of pain as neurodegenerative diseases. Brain imaging proves that the problem is in sufferers’ heads: Long-term pain shrinks the brain and changes the way it functions.

This new science has immediate practical and theoretical applications for the law. This Article first proposes reforms to disability law doctrines and their judicial interpretation. It then proposes ways in which pain neuroimaging ought to be handled as a matter of expert evidence in state, federal, and administrative proceedings. Drawing on work in evidence theory, it considers black letter evidence law as well as normative practices that shape how decision makers weigh evidence and credibility. It also offers limits on the use of brain images.

In opening a window into how the brain generates subjective experiences, neuroimaging should lead to doctrinal and practice-based revisions that increase law’s accuracy and fairness. So doing, brain imaging should change the law’s mind about the nature of pain and may require the law to rethink its dualism between body and mind.

Continue reading the paper here.

 

Developmental Dissociation Between the Maturation of Procedural Memory and Declarative Memory

By Amy S. Finn, Priya B. Kalra, Calvin Goetz, Julia A. Leonard, Margaret A. Sheridan, and John D.E. Gabrieli | Journal of Experimental Child Psychology | November 7, 2015

Abstract:

Declarative memory and procedural memory are known to be two fundamentally different kinds of memory that are dissociable in their psychological characteristics and measurement (explicit vs. implicit) and in the neural systems that subserve each kind of memory. Declarative memory abilities are known to improve from childhood through young adulthood, but the developmental maturation of procedural memory is largely unknown. We compared 10-year-old children and young adults on measures of declarative memory and working memory capacity and on four measures of procedural memory that have been strongly dissociated from declarative memory (mirror tracing, rotary pursuit, probabilistic classification, and artificial grammar). Children had lesser declarative memory ability and lesser working memory capacity than adults, but children exhibited learning equivalent to adults on all four measures of procedural memory. Therefore, declarative memory and procedural memory are developmentally dissociable, with procedural memory being adult-like by age 10 years and declarative memory continuing to mature into young adulthood.

Read the full article here.

Early Auditory Processing Evoked Potentials (N100) Show a Continuum of Blunting from Clinical High Risk to Psychosis in a Pediatric Sample

By Joseph Gonzalez-Heydrich, Michelle Bosquet Enlow, Eugene D’Angelo, Larry J. Seidman, Sarah Gumlak, April Kim, Kristen A. Woodberry, Ashley Rober, Sahil Tembulkar, Kelsey Graber, Kyle O’Donnell, Hesham M. Hamoda, Kara Kimball, Alexander Rotenberg, Lindsay M. Oberman, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Matcheri S. Keshavan, and Frank H. Duffy | Schizophrenia Research | November 6, 2015

Abstract:

Background

The N100 is a negative deflection in the surface EEG approximately 100 ms after an auditory signal. It has been shown to be reduced in individuals with schizophrenia and those at clinical high risk (CHR). N100 blunting may index neural network dysfunction underlying psychotic symptoms. This phenomenon has received little attention in pediatric populations.

Method

This cross-sectional study compared the N100 response measured via the average EEG response at the left medial frontal position FC1 to 150 sinusoidal tones in participants ages 5 to 17 years with a CHR syndrome (n = 29), a psychotic disorder (n = 22), or healthy controls (n = 17).

Results

Linear regression analyses that considered potential covariates (age, gender, handedness, family mental health history, medication usage) revealed decreasing N100 amplitude with increasing severity of psychotic symptomatology from healthy to CHR to psychotic level.

Conclusions

Longitudinal assessment of the N100 in CHR children who do and do not develop psychosis will inform whether it predicts transition to psychosis and if its response to treatment predicts symptom change.

Read the entire study here.

Creative Cognition and Brain Network Dynamics

By Roger E. Beaty, Mathias Benedek, Paul J. Silvia, and Daniel L. Schacter | Trends in Cognitive Science | November 6, 2015

Abstract:

Creative thinking is central to the arts, sciences, and everyday life. How does the brain produce creative thought? A series of recently published papers has begun to provide insight into this question, reporting a strikingly similar pattern of brain activity and connectivity across a range of creative tasks and domains, from divergent thinking to poetry composition to musical improvisation. This research suggests that creative thought involves dynamic interactions of large-scale brain systems, with the most compelling finding being that the default and executive control networks, which can show an antagonistic relation, tend to cooperate during creative cognition and artistic performance. These findings have implications for understanding how brain networks interact to support complex cognitive processes, particularly those involving goal-directed, self-generated thought.

Read the full paper here.