As jury selection for the long-anticipated trial of the Boston Marathon bomber is underway, there is much speculation about how brain science will be used by the defense team of Dzokhar Tsarnaev, who was 19 years old when he committed the alleged bombing. CLBB Co-Director Judith Edersheim, a forensic psychiatrist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, discussed the use of brain science in the Tsarnaev trial with WBUR’s Lisa Mullins and adolescence expert and Professor of Psychology at Temple University Laurence Steinberg on Radio Boston on Monday, January 12.

Listen to the discussion below, or on Radio Boston.

Also, read Dr. Edersheim’s commentary on the Tsarnaev trial on WBUR’s CommonHealth.

By Carey Goldberg | WBUR CommonHealth | August 7, 2014
(part of the Brain Matters series)

The final installment of WBUR’s Brain Matters series featured work from two CLBB faculty, Joshua Buckholtz and Joshua Greene. The tDCS research by Buckholtz discussed below was made possible through a grant from CLBB’s Law and Neuroscience Pilot Fund program, which supports scientists to engage in innovative research at the interface of neuroscience and the law.

Harvard brain scientist Joshua Buckholtz has never forgotten a convict he met back when he was an undergrad conducting psychological tests in prisons. The man had beaten another man nearly to death for stepping on his foot in a dance club.

“I wanted to ask him,” he recalls, “‘In what world was the reward of beating this person so severely, for this — to me — minor infraction, worth having terrible food and barbed wire around you?’ ”

But over the years, Buckholtz became convinced that this bad deed was a result of faulty brain processing, perhaps in a circuit called the frontostriatal dopamine system. In an impulsive person’s brain, he says, attention just gets so narrowly focused on an immediate reward that, in effect, the future disappears. Continue reading »

In a recent WBUR interview, Dr. Lance Dodes discussed his new book, which attempts to “debunk” the science related to the effectiveness of 12-step mutual-help programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as 12-step professional treatment. He claims that these approaches are almost completely ineffective and even harmful in treating substance use disorders.

What he claims has very serious implications because hundreds of Americans are dying every day as a result of addiction. If the science really does demonstrate that the millions of people who attend AA and similar 12-step organizations each week are really deluding themselves as to any benefit they may be getting, then this surely should be stated loud and clear.

Continue reading »