CLBB Faculty Members Robert Kinscherff and Gina Vincent contributed to the new American Psychological Association Handbook of Psychology and Juvenile Justice. The handbook “consolidates and advances the knowledge about the legal, scientific, and applied foundations of the juvenile justice system”, and includes sections on relevant law, human development, risk factors for and patterns of offending, forensic assessment, interventions, training, and ethics. Dr. Kinscherff wrote a chapter entitled, “Distinguishing and Assessing Treatment Needs and Amenability to Rehabilitation”, and co-authored a chapter around ethical issues in psychology and juvenile justice with Gerald P. Koocher. Dr. Vincent co-authored the chapter entitled, “Juvenile Psychopathy: Appropriate and Inappropriate Uses in Legal Proceedings”.

Order the APA Handbook of Psychology and Juvenile Justice today!

Steven Hyman is a co-editor of the new book, Translational Neuroscience: Toward New Therapies, published by the MIT Press. This volume, composed of insights from expert contributors, takes a look at the current state of translational neuroscience, challenges it faces, and effective ways forward. In overview:

Today, translational neuroscience faces significant challenges. Available therapies to treat brain and nervous system disorders are extremely limited and dated, and further development has effectively ceased. Disinvestment by the private sector occurred just as promising new technologies in genomics, stem cell biology, and neuroscience emerged to offer new possibilities. In this volume, experts from both academia and industry discuss how novel technologies and reworked translation concepts can create a more effective translational neuroscience.

The contributors consider such topics as using genomics and neuroscience for better diagnostics and biomarker identification; new approaches to disease based on stem cell technology and more careful use of animal models; and greater attention to human biology and what it will take to make new therapies available for clinical use. They conclude with a conceptual roadmap for an effective and credible translational neuroscience—one informed by a disease-focused knowledge base and clinical experience.

Dr. Hyman is also a featured contributor to the new book, Free Will and the Brain: Neuroscientific, Philosophical, and Legal Perspectives, edited by Walter Glannon and published by Cambridge University Press. His chapter, “Neurobiology Collides with Moral and Criminal Responsibility: The Result is Double Vision”, falls under Part V of the book, dealing with the legal implications of neuroscience, and including a chapter from Dr. Stephen Morse.

Order Translational Neuroscience: Toward New Therapies and Free Will and the Brain today!

CLBB’s Judith Edersheim, Robert Kinscherff, and Gene Beresin were featured in a podcast by the MGH Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds to discuss the treatment of adolescents in the juvenile justice system, and the brain and behavioral characteristics that distinguish them from adults. They also wrote an accompanying blog post to complement the podcast, which can be found here.

Listen to the entire podcast below:

CLBB Co-Director Dr. Judith Edersheim shared her expert knowledge with Dylan Goldstein of Brain Decoder on the role of neuroscience in the courtroom. She notes:

There is an indisputable core of cases in which neuroscience by all accounts should be in the courtroom. Cases where you have a lesion or defect and you can make a very certain causal link to the behavior at issue.

At the same time, she highlights the limitations of relying solely on neuroscience in legal cases:

Scholars have been trying to crack this issue for a long time, and the problem is taking group data and applying it to an individual. If you have a range of behaviors and a range of deficits in a group, we still can’t reliably place one individual along the continuum.

Our links between brain and behavior are not always solid enough to prove causation…. If you’re going to assert causation with a lesion, you have to say that this lesion is responsible for the behavior in a fairly clear way, and that no other brain regions are helping or compensating. In an organism with tremendous variation, it’s not always easy to say.

Read the rest of the piece from Brain Decoder, “Can Neuroscience Ever Have a Place in the Courtroom?”, by Dylan Goldstein, published August 12, 2015.

CLBB Faculty and Senior Fellow in Law & Applied Neuroscience Amanda Pustilnik was sought out for her expert opinion on whether corrective brain implants could make the death penalty obsolete, in response to a recent article. In her words, “The story is speculative and interesting, but it gets a bunch of things wrong.”

Criminals are not neurologically different than the rest of us—they are a product of environment and opportunity…. the average criminal smoked a little weed, or stole a car, or shoplifted, or never had good behavioral modeling at home so they punched someone in the face. Most people don’t need brain implants. They are not them—they are us.

There’s such a sexiness around neuroscience, and I love it, but that sometimes deflects us from easier, cheaper, more effective things we could do more efficiently, both now or in the future.

Read the rest of piece from Popular Science, “Could we give Criminals Corrective Brain Implants?“, by Alexandra Ossola, published July 24, 2015.