The American Psychology-Law Society (APLS; Division 41 of the American PsychologicalAssociation) met for its annual conference from March 6-8, 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The conference unites North American forensic psychologists, graduate students, legal scholars, and academics in celebrating empirical advances in the field of psychology and law over the last year. This year was no different, especially in city ablaze in joyous celebration of Mardi Gras two days prior. Of particular interest this year were a number of presentations exploring neuroscientific research and implications for psychology and law, including a plenary session, CLBB-led panel, and paper presentation on juror decision-making.

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CLBB Faculty Member Joshua Buckholtz is one of 126 scholars awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship this year, and one of five from Harvard. Established “to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise,” the award provides $50,000 to be applied however the recipients like: “Sloan Research Fellows,” according to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, “are free to pursue whatever lines of inquiry are of the most compelling interest to them.”

Fellowships are awarded in eight scientific fields—chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, evolutionary and computational molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences, and physics. Applicants are nominated by fellow scientists and chosen through close cooperation with the scientific community.

According to the Harvard Gazette, Buckholtz will use the fellowship “to exploit new tools to discover brain circuit-level mechanisms governing impulsive decision-making, and to develop novel circuit-based treatments for impulsive symptoms in psychiatric and neurological disorders.”

“I’m honored and thrilled to be selected, and excited about the work that this award will allow me to pursue,” he told the Gazette. “The pathological inability to delay gratification — what we call impulsive decision-making — contributes to distress and impairment across a range of disorders, especially drug addiction and ADHD, but also schizophrenia and Parkinson’s.”

When he announced the award in 1941, Alfred P. Sloan Jr. said, “Too often we fail to recognize and pay tribute to the creative spirit. It is the spirit that creates our jobs… There has to be this pioneer. The individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile, especially when it is new and different.”

As the American public struggles to make sense of the December’s mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the scientific community has been called upon to discuss what we know about the neuroscience of violence and its relationship to such disturbing acts.

Harvard Psychologists Steve Pinker and Joshua Buckholtz, a CLBB faculty member, appear on the PBS special “After Newtown” to talk about the neuroscience of violence and its relationship to mass killings.

Watch NOVA: Neuroscience of Violence on PBS. See more from After Newtown.

Sixty minutes goes by in the blink of an eye. It’s barely enough time to accomplish much of anything, really. But by the next tick of the long hand, two Americans will have lost their lives to acts of violence. In that same hour, 250 more will need medical treatment for a violence-related injury. As the hours pass, so mount the costs: on average $1.3 Million for each violent fatality and $80,000 for each non-fatal assault. Each year, nearly 3% of our country’s gross domestic product is lost due to violence.

As these staggering numbers make clear, violent crime is one of the most pressing public health problems of our age. Scientists have a duty to address large-scale social problems like violent crime, and scientific research aimed at preventing antisocial behavior would seem likely to provide a particularly good return on taxpayer investment. But to what extent can science actually help? I believe there is a considerable disconnect between the aims of science and the goals of criminal law, and that should lead us to be cautious. Continue reading »

In this segment from the October 18th episode of the new PBS series NOVA ScienceNOW, CLBB faculty member Joshua Buckholtz discusses the so-called “warrior gene” with host David Pogue.

The Criminal Mind: Born or Made– – How might genes, brain structure, and environment conspire to make one person a criminal and another a rule-abiding citizen? We meet scientists working to uncover the biology of aggression–and explore the brain circuitry that could play a key role in the creation of a violent mind.

Watch Can Science Stop Crime? on PBS. See more from NOVA scienceNOW.