By Francis X. Shen and Dena M. Gromet | The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science | March 2015

Abstract:

Advances in neuroscience are beginning to shape law and public policy, giving rise to the field of “neurolaw.” The impact of neuroscientific evidence on how laws are written and interpreted in practice will depend in part on how neurolaw is understood by the public. Drawing on a nationally representative telephone survey experiment, this article presents the first evidence on public approval of neurolaw. We find that the public is generally neutral in its support for neuroscience-based legal reforms. However, how neurolaw is framed affects support based on partisanship: Republicans’ approval of neurolaw decreases when neuroscience is seen as primarily serving to reduce offender culpability, whereas Democrats’ approval is unaffected by how neurolaw is framed. These results suggest that both framing and partisanship may shape the future of neuroscience-based reforms in law and policy.

Read the full paper here.

Natalie Salmanowicz | The Journal of Law and the Biosciences | 9 January 2015

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.

Read the full paper here.

In “The selective allure of neuroscience and its implications for the courtroom,” a recent feature on The Jury Expert, Adam Shniderman wrote about two recent studies done to examine the reasoning, discrediting tendencies, and preexisting beliefs that inform in lay evaluations of neuroscience. These studies, done by Shniderman and Nicholas Schurich (2014) were conducted on two highly politically and emotionally charged issues – the death penalty and abortion. They concluded that “the biggest determinant of the impact of neuroscientific information on an individual appears to be the individual’s prior attitude about the topic. Thus, neuroscience appears to have a selective, rather than a universally seductive, allure.”

CLBB Forensic Psychiatry Research Fellow Ekaterina Pivovarova submitted an invited response to the piece. Read her response here, or on the site. Continue reading »

By Virginia Hughes | The Atlantic | October 2, 2014

One night in 1984, a man broke into 22-year-old Jennifer Thompson’s apartment, threatened her at knifepoint, and raped her. While it was happening she tried to memorize everything about him—his  face, hair, clothes, body type. Later that day, she recounted those details to a police sketch artist.

Two days later, a detective showed Thompson a photo lineup of six men. She ruled out four of them right away, and stared at the other two pictures for four or five minutes. Finally she chose one. “Yeah. This is the one,” she said, as recounted in the book Picking Cotton. “I think this is the guy.”

“You ‘think’ that’s the guy?” one of the detectives asked her.

“It’s him,” she said.

“You’re sure?” asked another detective.

“Positive.”

She wrote her initials and date on the back of the photo, then asked them, “Did I do OK?”

“You did great, Ms. Thompson.”

The man she identified, Ronald Cotton, was convicted and sentenced to a life in prison. More than 10 years later, a DNA test revealed that Thompson had pointed to the wrong guy. Cotton was innocent.

Eyewitness testimony is hugely influential in criminal cases. And yet, brain research has shown again and again that human memory is unreliable: Every time a memory is recalled it becomes vulnerable to change. Confirming feedback—such as a detective telling a witness she “did great”—seems to distort memories, making them feel more accurate with each recollection. Since the start of the Innocence Project 318 cases have been overturned thanks to DNA testing. Eyewitness mistakes played a part in nearly three-quarters of them.

Continue reading »

By Christian Jarrett | British Psychological Society Research blog | September 29, 2014

A key finding from neuroscience research over the last few decades is that non-conscious preparatory brain activity appears to precede the subjective feeling of making a decision. Some neuroscientists, like Sam Harris, have argued that this shows our sense of free will is an illusion, and that lay people would realize this too if they were given a vivid demonstration of the implications of the science (see below). Books have even started to appear with titles like My Brain Made Me Do It: The Rise of Neuroscience and the Threat to Moral Responsibility by Eliezer J. Sternberg.

However, in a new paper, Eddy Nahmias, Jason Shepard and Shane Reuter counter such claims. They believe that Harris and others (who they dub “willusionists”) make several unfounded assumptions about the foundations of most people’s sense of free will. Using a series of vivid hypothetical scenarios based on Harris’ own writings, Nahmias and his colleagues tested whether people’s belief in free will really is challenged by “neuroprediction” – the idea of neuroscientists using brain activity to predict a person’s choices, and by the related notion that mental activity is no more than brain activity. Continue reading »