Ashley Bridwell, MacDonald Ross
# Trauma Brain Injury in the Criminal Justice Population
Council of State Governments Justice Center, New York, NY, February 11, 2014

A traumatic brain injury (TBI) is caused by a blow or jolt to the head or a penetrating head injury that disrupts the normal function of the brain. Not all blows or jolts to the head result in a TBI. The severity of a TBI may range from “mild,” i.e., a brief change in mental status or consciousness to “severe,” i.e., an extended period of unconsciousness or amnesia after the injury, Among male prisoners, history of TBI is strongly associated with perpetration of violence and other kinds of violence. Women inmates who are convicted of a violent crime are more likely to have sustained a pre crime TBI and/or some other form of physical abuse.

McLellan AT, Starrels JL, Tai B, Gordon AJ, Brown R, Ghitza U, Gourevitch M, Stein J, Oros M, Horton T, Lindblad R, Jennifer McNeely J.
# Can substance use disorders be managed using the chronic care model? Review and recommendations from a NIDA consensus group.
Public Health Reviews, January 2014
The chronic illness management approach is still new in the field of addiction and research is limited. However comparative findings suggest that most proactive, team treatment-oriented clinical management practices now used in diabetes management are applicable to the substance use disorders; capable of being implemented by primary care teams; and should offer comparable potential benefits in the treatment of substance use disorders. Such care should also improve the quality of care for many illnesses now negatively affected by unaddressed substance abuse.

John Rumbold
# Neurolaw and the Future
Kaleidoscope. The interdisciplinary postgraduate journal of the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, November 2013
The difficulties with neurolaw illustrate two main points: the benefits of genuine interdisciplinary research, and the pitfalls of simply applying research from one discipline to another. Simply discovering and describing the activity of the brain does not and probably will never provide a definitive answer to whether or not someone should be held criminally responsible. For this reason alone, neuroscience must be used with caution in the courts.

Stefano Fuselli
# Oltre i dualismi: un itinerario tra diritto, neuroscienze e filosofia
D&Q, n. 13/2013

1. Una base di partenza: descrivere e valutare nella prospettiva di Vittorio Villa – 1.1. Interpretazione giuridica e giudizi di valore – 1.2. L’approccio costruttivista – 1.3. I vincoli della schematizzazione – 2. Questioni di confine – 2.1. Trascendere gli schemi – 2.2. Una connes-sione necessaria – 2.3. Dai vincoli pragmatici ai vincoli biologici – 3. Oltre i dualismi: uno sguardo alle neuroscienze –3.1. La visione pragmatista della mente – 3.2. Le dinamiche dell’intenzionalità secondo Freeman – 3.2.1. La preafferenza – 3.2.2. Le popolazioni neurali – 3.2.3. Caos e percezione – 4. Un diverso ordine di questioni– 4.1. Una ritrovata unitarietà – 4.2. Intenzionalità e solipsismo epistemologico – 4.3. L’ombra di Cartesio – 4.4. Il ruolo delle emozioni – 5. Cercando una alternativa: l’intenzionalità nella prospettiva di Searle – 5.1. Realismo ingenuo e solipsismo – 5.2. Solipsismo e intenzionalità collettiva – 5.3. Dietro allo Sfondo – 6. Oltre i dualismi: la struttura dell’intenzionalità in Heidegger – 6.1. Ripensare l’intenzionalità – 6.2. Dall’intenzionalità all’emotività – 6.3. Emotività, totalità e metafisica – 6.4. Valutare senza giudicare – 7. Dal bilancio alla prospettiva.

Lorenzo Simonetti, Marco Mendola, Francesco Salamone
# Prova scientifica, vulnerabilità genetica e processo penale. La prospettiva offerta dalle Neuroscienze forensi
Psicologia e Giustizia, Anno 14, numero 2, Luglio-Dicembre 2013

Tramite l’espressione “prova scientifica”, tradizionalmente, si fa riferimento o alla cd. “prova esperta” (su tutte, la perizia) ovvero al cd. “metodo scientifico”, inteso quest’ultimo come un modus procedendi sulla cui base è possibile pervenire ad un giudizio non solo giuridicamente plausibile ma anche fattualmente accettabile...

Giovanni Barroccu
# La prova scientifica nel processo penale
Diritto@Storia, n. 11, 2013
Nell’analizzare gli strumenti per mezzo dei quali la prova scientifica penetra all’interno del tessuto processuale, pur riconoscendone i meriti e l’indubbia portata innovatrice, occorre adottare le dovute cautele: vale a dire seguire un approccio di “critica consapevolezza” nei confronti di qualsiasi mezzo di prova e, a fortiori, nei confronti di quegli strumenti che possono creare certezze illusorie in merito all’accertamento.

Daniel J. Smith, Barbara I. Nicholl, Breda Cullen, Daniel Martin, Zia Ul-Haq, Jonathan Evans, Jason M. R. Gill, Beverly Roberts, John Gallacher, Daniel Mackay, Matthew Hotopf, Ian Deary, Nick Craddock, Jill P. Pell
# Prevalence and Characteristics of Probable Major Depression and Bipolar Disorder within UK Biobank: Cross-Sectional Study of 172,751 Participants
www.plosone.org/ November 2013

UK Biobank is a landmark cohort of over 500,000 participants which will be used to investigate genetic and nongenetic risk factors for a wide range of adverse health outcomes. This is the first study to systematically assess the prevalence and validity of proposed criteria for probable mood disorders within the cohort (major depression and bipolar disorder). Methods: This was a descriptive epidemiological study of 172,751 individuals assessed for a lifetime history of mood disorder in relation to a range of demographic, social, lifestyle, personality and health-related factors...

Phoebe Beth Harrop
# Minority Report or Majority Safety? fMRI, Predictinf Dangerousness and a Pre-Crime Future
University of Otago, 11th October 2013
I argue that in New Zealand, existing rights protection will prove ineffective in the face of legislation that is driven by public risk aversion, a particular fear of child sex offenders, and overarching precautionary policy. New Zealand’s weak separation of powers and lack of entrenched constitution means that there is a risk of (perceived) majority safety being protected at the expense of individual civil liberties. A Minority Report future may not be just science fiction.

Owen D. Jones, Anthony D. Wagner, David L. Faigman, Marcus E. Raichle
# Neuroscientists in court
www.nature.com/reviews/neuro | October 2013
Neuroscientific evidence is increasingly being offered in court cases. Consequently, the legal system needs neuroscientists to act as expert witnesses who can explain the limitations and interpretations of neuroscientific findings so that judges and jurors can make informed and appropriate inferences. The growing role of neuroscientists in court means that neuroscientists should be aware of important differences between the scientific and legal fields, and, especially, how scientific facts can be easily misunderstood by non-scientists, including judges and jurors.

Eric Kandel
# The New Science of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
Neuron 80, October 30, 2013
Aggression, like social behavior and fear, has been with us since the dawn of time. It is highly conserved in evolution—nearly every animal is capable of violence—yet we understand much less about the anatomy of aggression than the anatomy of fear. Darwin believed it was possible to study aggression in animals, and in 1928 Walter Hess proved him right. Hess found that by electrically stimulating certain areas in the hypothalamus of cats, he could elicit attack behavior.

Robert P. Granacher, Jr
# Forensic Issues in the Structural or Functional Neuroimaging of Traumatic Brain Injury
www.intechopen.com/ 2013
As a general rule, a physician examining a TBI patient where it is known that the patient is in a legal context, should avoid issues of malingering, ratable disability impairment, whether or not the patient is telling the truth, and other factors that will have special importance in a legal forum. If the treating physician ventures into these areas, it puts at risk the doctor-patient relationship, and this should never be allowed to happen.

Bernice B. Donald
# Probing the Mind: Neuroscience, the Rules of Evidence, and the Constitution
57th UIA (Union Internationale des Avocats) Congress, 2013
It is still too early to determine whether the law-and-neuroscience trend will fall flat, or conversely, inspire the next great legal debate. But as neuroscience technology becomes more widely available and reliable, it becomes increasingly likely that evidence derived from such technology will raise the questions introduced in this report. As a legal community, we must take proactive steps to confront such challenges and develop well-prepared and well-reasoned responses to address them.

Jean Decety, Chenyi Chen, Carla Harenski, Kent A. Kiehl
# An fMRI study of affective perspective taking in individuals with psychopathy: imagining another in pain does not evoke empathy
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, September 2013
There is general consensus among theorists that the ability to adopt and entertain the psychological perspective of others has a number of important consequences, including empathic concern. Adopting the perspective of another is a powerful way to place one self in the situation or emotional state of that person. Our results demonstrate that while individuals with psychopathy exhibited a strong response in pain-affective brain regions when taking an imagine-self perspective, they failed to recruit the neural circuits that are were activated in controls during an imagine-other perspective, and that may contribute to lack of empathic concern.

Robert B. Michael, Eryn J. Newman, Matti Vuorre, Geoff Cumming, Maryanne Garry
# On the (non)persuasive power of a brain image
Psychon Bull Rev. 2013 Aug
The persuasive power of brain images has captivated scholars in many disciplines. Like others, we too were intrigued by the finding that a brain image makes accompanying information more credible. But when our attempts to build on this effect failed, we instead ran a series of systematic replications of the original study-comprising 10 experiments and nearly 2,000 subjects. When we combined the original data with ours in a meta-analysis, we arrived at a more precise estimate of the effect, determining that a brain image exerted little to no influence. The persistent meme of the influential brain image should be viewed with a critical eye.

Jaak Panksepp, Jules B. Panksepp
# Toward a cross-species understanding of empathy
Trends Neurosci. 2013 August ; 36(8)
Although signs of empathy have now been well documented in non-human primates, only during the past few years have systematic observations suggested that a primal form of empathy exists in rodents. Thus, the study of empathy in animals has started in earnest. Here we review recent studies indicating that rodents are able to share states of fear, and highlight how affective neuroscience approaches to the study of primary-process emotional systems can help to delineate how primal empathy is constituted in mammalian brains. Cross-species evolutionary approaches to understanding the neural circuitry of emotional ‘contagion’ or ‘resonance’ between nearby animals, together with the underlying neurochemistries, may help to clarify the origins of human empathy.

Alessia Farano
# Percorsi della responsabilità: le neuroscienze cambiano tutto o niente?
www.i-lex.it/ Giugno 2013, numero 18

Il discorso delle neuroscienze, cioè, afferisce all'uomo inteso come idem, dunque a ciò che nell'uomo non muta, il suo corpo, ma anche la sua indole, le predisposizioni genetiche, laddove la responsabililtà rileva dell'identità intesa come ipseità, cioè quella permanenza di sé che tiene insieme in una cornice narrativa coerente le azione passate, di cui ci riconosciamo autori, e le azioni future verso le quali ci impegniamo. La neuroscienza allora cambia tutto e niente, a patto di restituirla alla sua funzione descrittiva, preservando così una nozione di responsabilità radicata nell'ipseità.

Mertins, Vanessa; Schote, Andrea B.; Meyer, Jobst
# Variants of the Monoamine Oxidase A Gene (MAOA) predict free-riding behavior in women in a strategic public goods experiment 
www.econstor.eu/ IAAEU Discussion Paper Series in Economics, No. 02/2013
The aim of this study is to uncover genetic variations that influence differences in cooperative behavior. For this reason, we identify types of players within  a strategic public goods experiment. We explicitly test for an association between individual  variance in strategy choice and the functional promoter-region repeat of the monoamine oxidase A  gene (MAOA). Our experimental findings suggest a link between MAOA and the occurrence of  free-riding in females. Females with MAOA-L are less likely to behave like weak free-riders than  MAOA-H carriers, whereas among males, our results did not support a significant relation between  genotype and player type. Furthermore, MAOA-L female carriers contribute more than MAOA-   subjects to the public good if they know that others contribute nothing, and they showed slightly  lower scores on the Machiavellianism scale. This is the first piece of evidence that genotype might predict player type within a public goods setting.

Bruce N Cuthbert, Thomas R Insel
# Toward the future of psychiatric diagnosis: the seven pillars of RDoC
www.biomedcentral.com/ BMC Medicine 2013
The National Institute of Mental Health began the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project in 2009 to develop a research classification system for mental disorders based upon dimensions of neurobiology and observable behavior. RDoC supports research to explicate fundamental biobehavioral dimensions that cut across current heterogeneous disorder categories. We summarize the rationale, status and long-term goals of RDoC, outline challenges in developing a research classification system (such as construct validity and a suitable process for updating the framework) and discuss seven distinct differences in conception and emphasis from current psychiatric nosologies

# Thomas Insel, Transforming Diagnosis, www.nimh.nih.gov/ on April 29, 2013

Eyal Aharoni, Gina M. Vincent, Carla L. Harenski, Vince D. Calhoun, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Kent A. Kiehl
# Neuroprediction of future rearrest
PNAS | April 9, 2013 | vol. 110 | no. 15
Identification of factors that predict recurrent antisocial behavior is integral to the social sciences, criminal justice procedures, and the effective treatment of high-risk individuals. Here we show that error-related brain activity elicited during performance of an inhibitory task prospectively predicted subsequent rearrest among adult offenders within 4 y of release (N = 96). The odds that an offender with relatively low anterior cingulate activity would be rearrested were approximately double that of an offender with high activity in this region, holding constant other observed risk factors. These results suggest a potential neurocognitive biomarker for persistent antisocial behavior.

Jan-Christoph Bublitz
# My Mind is Mine!? Cognitive Liberty as a Legal Concept
http://neuroethik.org/ Draft version - Original in Elisabeth Hildt & Andreas Francke (eds.), Cognitive Enhancement. Springer 2013, Chapter 19)
This chapter explores some of the legal issues raised by mind-interventions outside of therapeutic contexts. It is argued that the law will have to recognize a basic human right: cognitive liberty or mental self-determination which guarantees  an individual’s sovereignty over her mind and entails the permission to both use and refuse neuroenhancements. Not only proponents but also critics of enhancements should embrace this right as they often ground their cases against enhancement on precisely the interests it protects, even though critics do not always seem to be aware of this. The contours and limits of cognitive liberty are sketched, indicating which reasons are good (or bad) grounds for political regulations of neurotechnologies.

Justin M. Carré, Luke W. Hyde, Craig S. Neumann, Essi Viding, Ahmad R. Hariri
# The neural signatures of distinct psychopathic traits
Social Neuroscience, 2013, 8:2
Recent studies suggest that psychopathy may be associated with dysfunction in the neural circuitry supporting both threat- and reward-related processes. However, these studies have involved small samples and often focused on extreme groups. Thus, it is unclear to what extent current findings may generalize to psychopathic traits in the general population. Furthermore, no studies have systematically and simultaneously assessed associations between distinct psychopathy facets and both threat- and reward-related brain function in the same sample of participants. Here, we examined the relationship between threat-related amygdala reactivity and reward-related ventral striatum (VS) reactivity and variation in four facets of self-reported psychopathy in a sample of 200 young adults.

Isabella Merzagora
# Colpevoli si nasce? Criminologia, determinismo, neuroscienze. Autorelazione sul volume
www.penalecontemporaneo.it/ 19 Giugno 2013

Il modello offerto dalle neuroscienze ha natura "descrittiva" non esplicativa[11], e trovare un'anomalia nel cervello di una persona non basta a spiegare il delitto. Questo lo si ricava anche dalla fondamentale sentenza delle Sezioni Unite della Corte di Cassazione 9163/2005. Afferma infatti la Corte: "è inoltre necessario che tra il disturbo mentale e il fatto reato sussista un nesso eziologico, che consenta di ritenere il secondo casualmente determinato dal primo". L'affermazione non è inedita per la prassi e la dottrina psichiatrico forensi che sono sempre state univoche nel rapportare l'esistenza dell'incapacità di intendere e di volere non solo ad un criterio cronologico, ma anche ad un criterio di relazione col fatto specifico, di criminogenesi e criminodinamica...

Elisa Marcheselli
# Case Study: Dalla menzogna alla verità che svela gli errori delle perizie
Fondazione Guglielmo Gulotta di Psicologia forense e della Comunicazione, Gennaio - Giugno 2013

L’influenza che le credenze dei vari professionisti, possono avere sull’oggetto osservato è un argomento noto alla psicologia sociale (effetto Hawthorne). È stato ampiamente dimostrando come le convinzioni degli sperimentatori e dei soggetti sperimentali possano influenzare la realtà e dare origine ad una “profezia che si autodetermina” (effetto Rosenthal). Che dire: l’uomo è limitato dalle sue stesse caratteristiche mentali ovvero è abituato ad attribuire significati sulla realtà che lo circonda, ma può ovviare a questo eccesso di ricerca di significati trasformando il limite nella risorsa: conoscendo la possibilità di incorrere in errore per la natura intrinseca della mente umana e contemplare la possibilità di non poter oggettivare in assoluto i dati della realtà.

Jean Decety, Laurie R. Skelly, Kent A. Kiehl
# Brain Response to Empathy-Eliciting Scenarios Involving Pain in Incarcerated Individuals With Psychopathy
JAMA Psychiatry, April 24, 2013
Participants in the psychopathy group exhibited significantly less activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and periaqueductal gray relative to controls but showed greater activation in the insula, which was positively correlated with scores on both PCL-R factors 1 and 2. Conclusions and Relevance: In response to pain and distress cues expressed by others, individuals with psychopathy exhibit deficits in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex regardless of stimulus type and display selective impairment in processing facial cues of distress in regions associated with cognitive mentalizing.  A better understanding of the neural responses to empathy-eliciting stimuli in psychopathy is necessary to inform intervention programs.

Kent A. Kiehl
# Can Neuroscience Help Understand Risk For Homicide?
http://conferences.asucollegeoflaw.com/ 2013

Comitato Nazionale per la Bioetica
# Neuroscienze e potenziamento cognitivo farmacologico: profili bioetici
www.governo.it/ 13 marzo 2013
Negli ultimi vent’anni il tema dell’‘enhancement’ è stato al centro di un intenso dibattito che è stato stimolato inizialmente dall’incontro fra ingegneria genetica e medicina riproduttiva e, successivamente, dall’imporsi all’attenzione delle c.d. tecnologie convergenti (Converging Technologies: Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno), intrecciandosi con i temi dell’uomo bionico, del postumano e del transumano, si è sviluppato soprattutto in vista di possibili scenari futuri prefiguranti una ‘rivoluzione’ antropologica di portata tale da ridisegnare l’identità umana e gli stessi meccanismi di evoluzione della specie.

Robert M. Sapolsky, John A. Gunn, Cynthia Fry Gunn, Allan Siegel, lordan Grafman, Pamela Blake, Peter K. Hatemi, Rose McDermott, Anthony C. Lopez, Paul J. Zak, James Giordano, Roland Benedikter, Robert E. Schmidle |  Diane DiEuliis, Hriar Cabayan (eds)
# Topics in the Neurobiology of Aggression: Implications to Deterrence
www.nsiteam.com/ February 2013
Neuroscientific studies of human behavior suggest aggression is a useful but costly strategy and people have a tendency to cooperate in many situations. This has been shown to be chemically regulated, and cooperative behaviors are just as "natural" as aggressive ones. The “Golden Rule” exists in every culture and reveals our essential social nature; this is naturally threatened in situations of threat or high stress.

Bob Roozenbeek, Andrew I. R. Maas, David K. Menon
# Changing patterns in the epidemiology of traumatic brain injury
Nat. Rev. Neurol. 9, 231–236 (2013)
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a critical public health and socio-economic  problem throughout the world. Reliable quantification of the burden caused by TBI is difficult owing to inadequate standardization and incomplete capture of data on the  incidence and outcome of brain injury, with variability in the definition of TBI being partly to blame. Reports show changes in epidemiological patterns of TBI: the median age of individuals who experience TBI is increasing, and falls have now surpassed road traffic incidents as the leading cause of this injury.

Kevin M. Beaver, John Paul Wright, Brian B. Boutwell, J.C. Barnes, Matt DeLisi, Michael G. Vaughn
# Exploring the association between the 2-repeat allele of the MAOA gene promoter polymorphism and psychopathic personality traits, arrests, incarceration, and lifetime antisocial behavior
Personality and Individual Differences 54 (2013) 164–168
A line of research has revealed that a polymorphism in the promoter region of the MAOA gene is related to antisocial phenotypes. Most of these studies examine the effects of low MAOA activity alleles against the effects of high MAOA activity alleles, with research indicating that the low MAOA activity alleles confer an increased risk to antisocial phenotypes. Analyses revealed that African-American males who carried the 2-repeat allele were, in comparison with other African-American male genotypes, significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated.

Adrian Raine
# The Criminal Mind. Advances in genetics and neuroscience are revolutionizing our understanding of violent behavior—as well as ideas about how to prevent and punish crime
The Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2013
The field of neurocriminology—using neuroscience to understand and prevent crime—is revolutionizing our understanding of what drives "bad" behavior. More than 100 studies of twins and adopted children have confirmed that about half of the variance in aggressive and antisocial behavior can be attributed to genetics. Other research has begun to pinpoint which specific genes promote such behavior. Brain-imaging techniques are identifying physical deformations and functional abnormalities that predispose some individuals to violence. In one recent study, brain scans correctly predicted which inmates in a New Mexico prison were most likely to commit another crime after release. Nor is the story exclusively genetic: A poor environment can change the early brain and make for antisocial behavior later in life.

Amedeo Santosuosso, Barbara Bottalico
# Neuroscienze e genetica comportamentale nel processo penale italiano. Casi e prospettive
Rassegna Italiana di Criminologia, n. 1, 2013
a) Da un punto di vista procedurale, quale può essere la via d’ingresso nel processo penale per la prova neuroscientifica e di genetica comportamentale? b) Una volta presentate a un giudice o a una giuria, cosa possono aggiungere  la neuroscienza e la genetica comportamentale alla spiegazione del comportamento umano rispetto a quanto offerto fino a oggi dalla psichiatria e dalle altre scienze forensi? c) Possono le neuro-tecniche essere di aiuto nella fase di esecuzione della pena, e come mai fino a ora non si ha notizia di casi in cui ciò sia avvenuto? Il presente contributo si propone, attraverso l’analisi della casistica italiana e alcuni cenni comparatistici con il sistema e la casistica statunitense, di approfondire le questioni alla base di queste domande e di porre le basi per alcune prime risposte.

Marco Mendola
# Aspetti informatici delle prove biometriche. Il problema dei “Falsi positivi”
Psicologia e Giustizia, Anno 14, numero 1, Gennaio - Giugno 2013

Adina L. Roskies, N.J. Schweitzer, Michael J. Saks
# Neuroimages in court: less biasing than feared
Trends in Cognitive Sciences March 2013, Vol. 17, No. 3
Neuroscience is increasingly poised to play a role in legal proceedings. One persistent concern, however, is the intuition that brain images may bias, mislead, or confuse jurors. Initially, empirical research seemed to support this intuition. New findings contradict those expectations, prompting a rethinking of the ‘threat’ of neuroscience in the courtroom.

Marta Bertolino

# Prove neuro-psicologiche di verità penale

www.penalecontemporaneo.it/ 8 Gennaio 2013
1. Ragionamento giudiziario e sapere neuroscientifico: questioni di evidences e di proofs. 2. Errori cognitivi del ragionamento probatorio: pensiero formale versus pensiero spontaneo. 3. Prove di verità tra massime d'esperienza e dimostrazioni neuroscientifiche. 4. Prove di verità neuroscientifiche di imputabilità e di pericolosità. 5. (segue) Prove di verità neuroscientifiche di falsità. 5.1. Questioni di dolo eventuale. 6. Il giudice tra diritto penale e processo

Ilina Singh
# Brain talk: power and negotiation in children’s discourse about self, brain and behaviour
Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 35 No. 6 2013
Despite their contact with psychiatric explanations and psychotropic drugs for their behaviour, children's discursive engagements with the brain show significant evidence of agency and negotiated responsibility. These engagements suggest the limitations of current concepts that describe a collapse of the self into the brain in an age of neurocentrism.

Peggy L. St. Jacques, Daniel L. Schacter
# Modifying Memory: Selectively Enhancing and Updating Personal Memories for a Museum Tour by Reactivating Them
Psychological Science 24(4) 537–543, 2013
Memory can be modified when reactivated, but little is known about how the properties and extent of reactivation can selectively affect subsequent memory. We developed a novel museum paradigm to directly investigate reactivation-induced plasticity for personal memories. Participants reactivated memories triggered by photos taken from a camera they wore during a museum tour and made relatedness judgments on novel photos taken from a different tour of the same museum....

Daniel L Schacter, Elizabeth F Loftus
# Memory and law: what can cognitive neuroscience contribute?
Nature Neuroscience, v. 16 | number 2 | February 2013
A recent decision in the United States by the New Jersey Supreme Court has led to improved jury instructions that incorporate psychological research showing that memory does not operate like a video recording. Here we consider how cognitive neuroscience could contribute to addressing memory in the courtroom. We discuss conditions in which neuroimaging can distinguish true and false memories in the laboratory and note reasons to be skeptical about its use in courtroom cases. We also discuss neuroscience research concerning false and imagined memories, misinformation effects and reconsolidation phenomena that may enhance understanding of why memory does not operate like a video recording...

Nikolas Rose
# European Neuroscience and Society Network (ENSN)
www.kcl.ac.uk/ Final Report January 2013
Recent discoveries about the human brain are beginning to influence our legal system, increasing our understanding of actions that our laws regulate and of attitudes that our laws reflect. The way that we apply neuroscientific discoveries will have a major impact on the future of our legal system. With informed and cautious reform, our legal system could have more accurate predictions, more effective interventions, and less bias. Society could have less crime and fewer people in prisons. This colloquium explored developments in the field of Law and Neuroscience.

Ivannia Delgado Calderón
# “El dilema del derecho penal y las neurociencias: ¿libre albedrío o determinismo?
http://new.pensamientopenal.com.ar/ 2012
La responsabilidad penal y la imposición de penas se fundamentan en el principio de culpabilidad, y este, en el libre arbitrio de la persona. Las neurociencias, por su parte, refutan la tesis de que el ser humano actúa libremente y afirman que su actuación se encuentra determinada. El ensayo versa sobre esta polémica, en cuanto a las repercusiones que las investigaciones realizadas en el ámbito de las neurociencias podrían tener en la definición de responsabilidad penal.

Paolo Marchetti
# Il cervello a giudizio. Le lontane origini di due recenti sentenze italiane
Psicologia e Giustizia, Anno 13, numero 2, Giugno-Dicembre 2012
Gli interrogativi suscitati dall’uso delle neuroscienze nell’ambito del processo penale hanno un contenuto di assoluta novità? Prendendo spunto da due recenti sentenze italiane e da una cause célèbre di inizio Novecento (il processo al brigante Musolino), in questo articolo si cercherà di mettere in evidenza come, nel complesso rapporto che ha da sempre legato il diritto alla psichiatria, alcuni punti di frizione tra i due saperi sembrano ripresentarsi con assoluta costanza. Dall’“antropologia criminale”, fondata da Cesare Lombroso, alle attuali neuroscienze, i nodi problematici attorno a cui si addensano dubbi, perplessità e critiche non appaiono essere poi cambiati di molto. Mettere a confronto le due epoche, da questo punto di vista, può rappresentare un prezioso contributo all’analisi di questioni che solo un deficit di memoria storica può considerare come assolutamente originali.

Cliodhna O’Connor, Geraint Rees, Helene Joffe
# Neuroscience in the Public Sphere
Neuron 74, April 26, 2012
Neuroscience does not take place in a vacuum, and it is important to maintain sensitivity to the social implications, whether positive or negative, it may have as it manifests in real-world social contexts. It appears that the brain has been instantiated as a benchmark in public dialogue, and reference to brain research is now a powerful rhetorical tool. The key questions to be addressed in the coming years revolve around how this tool is employed and the effects this may have on society’s conceptual, behavioral, and institutional repertoires.

Alissa Quart
# Neuroscience: Under Attack
The New York Times : November 23, 2012
A number of the neuro doubters are also humanities scholars who question the way that neuroscience has seeped into their disciplines, creating phenomena like neuro law, which, in part, uses the evidence of damaged brains as the basis for legal defense of people accused of heinous crimes, or neuroaesthetics, a trendy blend of art history and neuroscience.

Jane Kaye, Liam Curren, Nick Anderson, Kelly Edwards, Stephanie M. Fullerton, Nadja Kanellopoulou, David Lund, Daniel G. MacArthur, Deborah Mascalzoni, James Shepherd, Patrick Taylor, Sharon F. Terry, Stefan F. Winter

# From patients to partners: participant-centric initiatives in biomedical research
Nat Rev Genet 2012; 13:371–376
Advances in computing technology and bioinformatics mean that medical research is increasingly characterized by large international consortia of researchers that are reliant on large data sets and biobanks. These trends raise a number of challenges for obtaining consent, protecting participant privacy concerns and maintaining public trust. Participant-centred initiatives (PCIs) use social media technologies to address these immediate concerns, but they also provide the basis for longterm interactive partnerships. Here, we give an overview of this rapidly moving field by providing an analysis of the different PCI approaches, as well as the benefits and challenges of implementing PCIs.

Daniel L. Schacter
# Adaptive Constructive Processes and the Future of Memory
American Psychologist, November 2012
Memory serves critical functions in everyday life but is also prone to error. This article examines adaptive constructive processes, which play a functional role in memory and cognition but can also produce distortions, errors, and illusions. The article describes several types of memory errors that are produced by adaptive constructive processes and focuses in particular on the process of imagining or simulating events that might occur in one’s personal future. Simulating future events relies on many of the same cognitive and neural processes as remembering past events, which may help to explain why imagination and memory can be easily confused.

Daniel L. Schacter, Donna Rose Addis, Demis Hassabis, Victoria C. Martin, R. Nathan Spreng, Karl K. Szpunar
# The Future of Memory: Remembering, Imagining, and the Brain
Neuron 76, November 21, 2012
During the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase in research examining the role of memory in imagination and future thinking. This work has revealed striking similarities between remembering the past and imagining or simulating the future, including the finding that a common brain network underlies both memory and imagination.

Martina Ly, B.S., Julian C. Motzkin, Carissa L. Philippi, Gregory R. Kirk, Joseph P. Newman, Kent A. Kiehl, Michael Koenigs
# Cortical Thinningin Psychopathy
Am J Psychiatry 2012
Psychopathy, characterized by callous and impulsive antisocial behavior, is present in roughly a quarter of adult prison inmates and is associated with a disproportionately high incidence of violent crime and recidivism. The identification of neural correlates of the disorder could thus have profound implications for the clinical and legal management of psychopathic criminals as well as for our basic understanding of the biological  substrates underlying human social behavior.

Robert Kumsta, Markus Heinrichs
# Oxytocin, stress and social behavior: neurogenetics of the human oxytocin system
Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 2012, 23:1–6
Research in the social neurosciences has made considerable progress in identifying the neurobiological underpinnings of complex social behavior. Investigations across species have shown that the neuropeptide oxytocin, together with arginine vasopressin, plays a key role in encoding information relevant to social interactions and is critically involved in the regulation of complex social cognition and behavior, including attachment, social recognition, social exploration, as well as anxiety and fear-related behaviors.

Michael Koenigs
# The role of prefrontal cortex in psychopathy
http://koenigslab.psychiatry.wisc.edu/ Rev. Neurosci., Vol. 23(3): 253–262, 2012
A growing body of evidence associates psychopathy with structural and functional abnormalities in ventromedial PFC and anterior cingulate cortex. Although this burgeoning field still faces a number of methodological challenges and outstanding questions that will need to be resolved by future studies, the research to date has established a link between psychopathy and PFC (prefrontal cortex).

S Kapur, AG Phillips, TR Insel
# Why has it taken so long for biological psychiatry to develop clinical tests and what to do about it?
Molecular Psychiatry (2012)
Biological psychiatry and the related neurosciences have changed mankind’s view of itself and of mental illness, but have yet to provide biomedical tests for routine clinical practice. The delay is understandable given the later start than the rest of medicine, the complexity of the brain, the nascence of neuroscientific techniques and the evolving nature of psychiatric nosology. On the other hand, the opportunity afforded by the progress in genomics and imaging combined with the computational abilities is unprecedented and could deliver useful clinical tests. These tests will identify homogenous populations for whom one could develop targeted new therapeutics thus realising a vision of a new stratified psychiatry that cuts across the traditional diagnostic boundaries while simultaneously transforming them.

Elsa Ermer, Lora M. Cope, Prashanth K. Nyalakanti, Vince D. Calhoun, Kent A. Kiehl
# Aberrant Paralimbic Gray Matter in Criminal Psychopathy
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2012, Vol. 121, No. 3, 649 – 658
The societal cost of psychopathy, including fiscal and emotional components, rivals those of other major mental illnesses of similar prevalence (1% general population).  Psychopaths are known to commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, and they constitute upward of 25% of prison populations. Psychopathy is an important predictor of recidivism, especially violent recidivism, and its assessment is crucial for predicting treatment progress and outcome. Thus, psychopathy is a critical factor in the effective management of the incarcerated populations.

David M. Eagleman, Sarah Isgur Flores
# Defining A Neurocompatibility Index for Criminal Justice Systems: A Framework to Align Social Policy with Modern Brain Science
Law of the Future Series No. 1 (2012)
We here define a neurocompatibility index: seven criteria to measure the degree to which a system of criminal justice is compatible with the lessons of modern science. These include: (1) understanding of mental illness, (2) methods of rehabilitation, (3) individualised sentencing based on risk assessment, (4) eyewitness identification standards, (5) specialised court systems, (6) incentive structuring based on psychology, and (7) a minimum standard of science education for policy-makers.

Thomas Nadelhoffer, Stephanos Bibas, Scott Grafton, Kent A. Kiehl, Andrew Mansfield, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Michael Gazzaniga
# Neuroprediction, Violence, and the Law: Setting the Stage
Neuroethics, 2012 April 1; 5(1): 67–99
Neuroprediction of violence is controversial and potentially problematic but still promising. Opponents raise various objections, but none seems conclusive. Neuroprediction of violence does not conflict with current practices, since other forms of violence prediction are already used in other legal arenas, including capital sentencing, civil commitment, and post-punishment detention of some sexually violent predators. Violence predictions can do tremendous harm when mistaken, but all that shows is that the legal system should use the best possible methods when it relies on these predictions. As we saw, clinical predictions are usually less reliable than actuarial predictions, and there is some reason to hope that neuroscience might improve the accuracy of actuarial predictions.

Jean Macchiaroli Eggen, Eric J. Laury
# Toward a neuroscience model of tort law_how functional neuroimaging will transform tort doctrine
Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, vol. XIII, Spring 2012
Developments in neuroscience through the use of functional neuroimaging and other recent technologies have set the stage for a new era in tort law, one in which evidence of brain activity may eventually transform our comprehension of the underlying doctrinal rules. Neuroscience studies that explain many mental processes may soon deepen our understanding of such frequently used tort-doctrine terms as “reasonable person,” “intent,” and “mental disability.” Although the neuroscience developments are fascinating, they face cautious interest in the courtroom and frequent exclusion.

Ciro Santoriello
# Modesti prolegomeni per buon e prudente utilizzo della conoscenza scientifica nel processo penale
Archivio Penale Fascicolo n. 3, Settembre-Dicembre 2011

Barbara Bottalico

# La libertà personale e le neuroscienze cognitive
Università degli Studi di Trento, 2011-2012
Nella casistica statunitense vi sono già stati svariati tentativi di ammettere la prova neuroscientifica nel procedimento penale e i giudici hanno fronteggiato la questione con un approccio – finora – di sospetto e di chiusura,  soprattutto con riferimento alla lie detection da effettuarsi attraverso l’uso di fMRI.  Il timore che vengano violati i diritti dell’imputato, tra cui in primis quelli protetti dal  Quarto e dal Quinto Emendamento, ha un ruolo importante...

George Symington
# Neurolaw: de la defensa judicial hacia un derecho penal del enemigo
Univ. Estud. Bogotá (Colombia) N° 9: 67-99, enero-diciembre 2012
El Derecho Penal vigente se basa en teorías libertarias de la libertad humana, lo cual implica que las evidencias neurocientíficas actualmente sean un medio de defensa para el implicado. Se pregunta: ¿Qué pasaría si se cambia a un paradigma penal que no tiene como eje el libre albedrío? La respuesta plantea que seguramente se pasaría a un modelo punitivo diferente, al igual que se advierte sobre la amenaza de la creación de un nuevo modelo de Derecho Penal del Enemigo.

Yarimar Ruiz Orozco
# FDP: “Forensic DNA Phenotyping”. Aplicaciones de marcadores genéticos en la inferencia de características visibles externas y origen ancestral con fines forenses
Universidad Santiago de Compostela, Junio 2012

Laura Capraro
# Primi casi “clinici” in tema di prova neuroscientifica
Processo Penale e Giustizia, N° 3 (2012)
Il ricorso alle neuroscienze per valutare l’imputabilità, cui inora il contributo di tale sapere si è limitato, è ritenuto sostanzialmente legittimo, pur persistendo il dubbio sulle modalità più opportune da seguire per immettere il mezzo istruttorio nel circuito processuale. Invece, le diverse finalità che si intendano affidare alla prova neuroscientifica - come, ad esempio, l’indagine sull’attendibilità del dichiarante - sollevano maggiori riserve, a causa del possibile ridimensionamento
del contraddittorio per la prova e delle ricadute sulla libertà morale della persona.

Adam Lamparello

# Neuroscience, Brain Damage, and the Criminal Defendant: Who Does It Help and Where in the Criminal Proceeding Is It Most Relevant?
Rutgers Law Record, Vol. 39, 2012

Violent offenders with frontal lobe disorder, namely those with damage to the prefrontal cortex which consists of the lateral and medial areas along with the orbitofrontal cortex, are less blameworthy than other offenders and warrant different treatment in our criminal justice system. The critical question facing criminal law jurisprudence is no longer whether we should treat these offenders differently, but how, and at what stages, such differential treatment should be applied.

Giulia Volpatti
# Imputabilità e neuroscienze: problematiche e prospettive
Università degli studi di Trieste (tesi dott.), Anno Accademico 2011-2012
Nuove metodologie hanno permesso ai neurologi di giungere ascoperte che, da alcuni punti di vista non possono non dirsi davvero interessanti (e per certi versi anche sensazionali): si pensi alla correlazione tra comportamento aggressivo e geni o alla possibilità di prevedere le scelte che il paziente farà grazie all’osservazione del funzionamento dei suoi neuroni. Non con altrettanto entusiasmo, però, i giuristi hanno accolto le neuroscienze come nuove alleate nella risoluzione delle difficoltà interpretative legate al concetto di vizio di mente e, quindi, di imputabilità. Tutt’altro...

James M. Bjork, Gang Chen, and Daniel W. Hommer
# Psychopathic tendencies and mesolimbic recruitment by cues for instrumental and passively-obtained rewards
Biol Psychol. 2012 February ; 89(2): 408–415
Psychopathy is a constellation of self-serving attitudes and antisocial behaviors with little regard to cost to self and others. Might this symptomatology arise in part from an exaggerated response of brain motivational circuitry to prospective rewards? We examined whether psychopathic tendencies are associated with increased recruitment of incentive neurocircuitry during anticipation of instrumental and conditioned rewards. 

Maribel Narváez Mora
# El impacto de la nurociencia sobre el derecho: el caso de la responsabilidad subjetiva
Revista Telemática de Filosofía del Derecho, nº 15, 2012, pp. 195-230
Analizando el supuesto de la responsabilidad subjetiva, y la relación entre ciencia y filosofía, el texto propone que el impacto de la Neurociencia tendrá el alcance que le confiramos, ya sea consciente o inconscientemente, a resultas de acciones deliberadas o como consecuencia no prevista de un agregado de acciones individuales. Los conceptos científicos disponibles nos pueden ayudar si son verdaderos los juicios que con ellos formamos; los conceptos normativos, que rigen el trato que nos dispensamos unos a otros, tienen otro funcionamiento.

Rose McDermott, Chris Dawes, Elizabeth Prom-Wormley, Lindon Eaves, Peter K. Hatemi
# MAOA and Aggression: A Gene–Environment Interaction in Two Populations 
Journal of Conflict Resolution- 25 November 2012

Manuela Fumagalli, Alberto Priori
# Functional and clinical neuroanatomy of morality
Brain. A Journal of Neurology, 2012
Understanding the dysfunctional brain structures underlying abnormal moral behaviour can lead to specific treatments nowadays using deep brain stimulation or other new non-invasive neuromodulation techniques. For instance, apart from treating aggression, deep brain stimulation might be used in other forms of pathological antisocial behaviour or violence (including sexual assaulters and paedophiles) when education and rehabilitation programmes or other treatments fail.

Gianluca Carta

# Le droghe, la mente e il cervello. La comunicazione delle tossicodipendenze fra linguaggi scientifici e psicosociali

Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, 2010-2012

Le tecniche di neuroimaging (FRMI, MRI, PET, SPECT, ecc.) che permettono di evidenziare e rappresentare non solo le strutture ma anche il funzionamento e le attività delle aree e delle connessioni cerebrali variamente coinvolte nei processi disfunzionali che portano alla dipendenza... Il cambio di paradigma nel concetto di tossicodipendenza – da meccanismo di inclusione/esclusione sociale a malattia misurabile con gli strumenti della neuroscienza – si riflette in maniera profonda nel mutamento del processo comunicativo attorno al tema in questione

Leanne Houston, Amy Vierboom
# Neuroscience and Law: Australia
www.springer.com/ 2012
The Australian legal system has not been receptive to new neuroscientific technology. Current case law and legislative provisions demonstrate the hurdles imposed by the rigorous admissibility standards

Dominique J. Church
# Neuroscience in the Courtroom: An International Concern
William and Mary Law Review, v. 53, 2012
This Note, therefore, suggests that although the legality of neuroscientific evidence should be viewed with an eye toward a country’s specific laws, such an analysis does not, nor should it, preclude a more all-inclusive analysis from a human rights perspective. Assuming that proponents of this technology are correct in believing that it has the ability to revolutionize the legal field, a limited analysis commits a disservice to the rights at stake. Ultimately, although intriguing and possibly even beneficial to improving the ways in which individuals understand the human mind, neuroscience should be viewed as just that—science, not magic.

Marta Bertolino
# L'imputabilità penale fra cervello e mente
Rivista Italiana di Medicina Legale, n. 3, 922-939, 2012
E' sempre più indispensabile «formare magistrati capaci di collegare differenti competenze, anche di professionalità diverse». In altre parole, è necessario l’affermarsi, così è stato definito, di «un nuovo paradigma pedagogico» per affinare la sensibilità del magistrato e prepararlo ai nuovi e diversi saperi che contribuiscono  all’accertamento della verità nel processo. Una sensibilità oggi più che mai indispensabile, affinché il giudice possa esercitare il suo potere discrezionale in modo tale da «accostare la norma alla vita» e non debba sperimentare una solitudine decisionale che è la peggior nemica della discrezionalità giudiziale.

Paul J. Frick
# Developmental Pathways to Conduct Disorder: Implications for Future Directions in Research, Assessment, and Treatment
Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 41:3, 2012

Conduct disorder (CD) is defined as a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior that violates the rights of others or in which major age-appropriate societal norms or rules are violated. The symptoms of the disorder fall into four main categories: (a) aggression to people and animals, (b) destruction of property, (c) deceitfulness or theft, and (d) serious violations of rules (e.g., truancy, running away from home). CD is an important psychiatric disorder for a number a reasons. Specifically, it often involves aggression; it is highly related to criminal behavior.

Catherine Tuvblada, Yu Gao, Pan Wanga, Adrian Rainec, Theodore Botwick, Laura A. Baker
# The genetic and environmental etiology of decision-making: A longitudinal twin study
Journal of Adolescence (2012)

The present study examined the genetic and environmental etiology of decision-making, in a sample of twins at ages 11–13, 14–15, and 16–18 years. The variance across five 20-trial blocks could be explained by a latent “decision- aking’’ factor within each of the three times of IGT administration. This latent factor was modestly influenced by genetic factors, explaining 35%, 20% and 46% of the variance within each of the three times of IGT administration. The remaining variance was explained by the non-shared environment (65%, 80% and 54%, respectively).

Nikolaos Koutsouleris, Stefan Borgwardt, Eva M. Meisenzahl, Ronald Bottlender, Hans-Jürgen Möller, Anita Riecher-Rössler
# Disease Prediction in the At-Risk Mental State for Psychosis Using Neuroanatomical Biomarkers: Results From the FePsy Study
Schizophrenia Bulletin vol. 38 no. 6 pp. 1234–1246, 2012

Our findings suggest that the early prediction of psychosis may be reliably enhanced using neuroanatomical pattern recognition operating at the single-subject level. These MRI-based biomarkers may have the potential to identify individuals at the highest risk of developing psychosis, and thus may promote informed clinical strategies aiming at preventing the full manifestation of the disease.

Olivier Oullier.
# Clear up this fuzzy thinking on brain scans
www.nature.com/ Nature, vol 483, 7, 1 March 2012
Neuroimaging has been confined mostly to a supporting role in court: in sentence mitigation, for instance. But there have been misguided and dangerous attempts in India, Italy and the United States to use brain scans as key and decisive evidence of guilt or innocence..

Baer Arts, Claudia J.P. Simons, Jim van Os
# Evidence for the impact of the CACNA1C risk allele rs1006737 on 2-year cognitive functioning in bipolar disorder
Psychiatric Genetics 2013, 23:41–42
Patients with bipolar disorder showed a negative effect of the CACNA1C risk allele rs1006737 on a composite cognitive measure, only apparent in the group homozygous for this allele, fitting a recessive model. This finding could not be replicated in a group of first-degree relatives or in healthy controls, indicating interactions with background genetic factors associated with bipolar disorder.

Steve Sussman (Ed.)
# Substance and Behavioral Addictions: Co-Occurrence and Specificity
www.jsums.edu/ 2012
There may be a common neurocircuitry and neurobiology for multiple addictions and for a number of psychiatric disorders. Due to specific genetic antecedents and environmental influences, a deficiency of the D2 receptors may predispose individuals to a high risk for multiple addictive, impulsive, and compulsive behaviors. It is well known that alcohol and other drugs of abuse, as well as most positive reinforce rs (e.g., sex, food, gambling, aggressive thrills) cause activation and  neuronal release ofbrain DA, which in turn can decrease negative feelings and satisfy abnormal cravings for  alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and nicotine, and which are linked to low DA function 

Maria Teresa Collica
# Il riconoscimento del ruolo delle neuroscienze nel giudizio di imputabilità. Nota a G.i.p. Como, 20.5.2011, Est. Lo Gatto (primo riconoscimento della validità delle neuroscienze per l'accertamento dell'imputabilità)
www.penalecontemporaneo.it/ 15 Febbraio 2012
1. La vicenda giudiziaria. – 2. I punti controversi della questione giuridica. – 3. La diagnosi dell’infermità mentale. – 4. Le possibili ricadute delle neuroscienze sull’ordinamento giuridico. – 5. La portata delle acquisizioni delle neuroscienze nel giudizio di imputabilità. – 6. Il ruolo dell’esperto e quello del giudice nel giudizio di imputabilità – 7. I criteri di decisione adottati nella sentenza Albertani. – 8. Osservazioni conclusive

Alessandro Corda
# Riflessioni sul rapporto tra neuroscienze e imputabilità nel prisma della dimensione processuale
Criminalia 2012

0. Ambientamento. Visioni futuribili e contaminazioni. – 1. L’intuizione ‘antica’ delle neuroscienze. – 2. Neuroscienze e diritto penale: contesto, limiti e potenzialità. – 3. L’apporto delle neuroscienze cognitive e della genetica comportamentale al giudizio di imputabilità. - 3.1 La sentenza di Trieste. - 3.2. La sentenza di Como. - 3.3. Uno sguardo d’insieme. – 4. L’ingresso della prova scientiica nel processo penale. Alla ricerca di criteri-guida nella Post-Daubert Era. - 4.1. Prova scientiica “nuova” e regime di ammissibilità. - 4.2. Quali criteri per l’ammissione della prova neuroscientiica? – 5. L’utilizzo ‘di parte’ del sapere neuroscientiico. Il problema della responsabilità penale del consulente tecnico. – 6. Un caveat conclusivo.

The Royal Society
# Brain Waves Module 4: Neurosciences and the Law
http://royalsociety.org/ December 2011
Recommendation 1: An international meeting should take place every three years to bring together those working across the legal system with experts in neuroscience and related disciplines. The aim of this meeting should be to discuss the latest advances in areas at the intersection of neuroscience and the law to identify practical applications that need to be addressed...

Oliver R. Goodenough, Micaela Tucker
# Neuroscience Basics for Lawyers
Mercer Law Review, vol. 62, 2011
The new models of thought arising out of cognitive neuroscience can help us to resolve questions in law that have proved hard for traditional psychology and the other social sciences to resolve. The enriched psychology that cognitive approaches make possible is a particularly useful tool in seeking to understand topics when current approaches of law, folk psychology, and traditional academic psychology are not delivering satisfactory results for society. This summary can only begin the process of introducing practitioners and legal scholars to the richness of the knowledge emerging from neuroscience, but even an entry-level understanding can provide intellectual access to the advances–and perhaps steps sideways and even backwards–provided by neurolaw.

Owen D. Jones, Francis X. Shen
# Law and Neuroscience in the United States
http://papers.ssrn.com/ International Neurolaw 2011

Neuroscientific evidence is increasingly reaching United States courtrooms in a number of legal contexts. And the emerging field of Law and Neuroscience is being built on a foundation that joins: a) rapidly developing technologies and techniques of neuroscience; b) quickly expanding legal scholarship on the implications of neuroscience; and c) neuroscientific research designed specifically to explore legally relevant topics. Despite the sharply increasing interest in neuroscientific evidence, it remains unclear how the legal system – at the courtroom, regulatory, and policy levels – will resolve the many challenges that new neuroscience applications raise.

Rolando Rengifo
# The Cognitive Neuroscience of Deception: Advances in Neuroscience, Criminal Law Applications and Ethics
neurogenesisjournal.com | Fall 2011 | Vol 1 Issue 1
Neuroscientific advances promise to change the way the law and the legal system are viewed. In this paper, neuroimaging technology is discussed in terms of its development and how it has improved understanding of deception pathways. As knowledge builds, mistaken convictions that lead to wrongful punishment of innocent parties could be avoided. Likewise, the release of dangerous criminals back into society could also be prevented. In addition, ethical issues (i.e. premature adoption, misapplication through misunderstanding of technology and privacy concerns) that currently prevent the implementation of mind reading or deception detection technology in the courtroom are discussed. Limitations of such technology are also discussed along with advances and future directions in research. Finally, a pathway is proposed that could explain the origins of the mechanism of deception and how it could be tested.

David P. McCabe, Alan D. Castel, Matthew G. Rhodes
# The Influence of fMRI Lie Detection Evidence on Juror Decision-Making
Behav. Sci. Law 29: 566–577 (2011)
In the current study, we report on an experiment examining whether functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) lie detection evidence would influence potential jurors’ assessment of guilt in a criminal trial. Potential jurors (N= 330) read a vignette summarizing a trial, with some versions of the vignette including lie detection evidence indicating that the defendant was lying about having committed the crime. Lie detector evidence was based on evidence from the polygraph, fMRI (functional brain imaging), or thermal facial imaging. Results showed that fMRI lie detection evidence led to more guilty verdicts than lie detection evidence based on polygraph evidence, thermal facial imaging, or a control condition that did not include lie detection evidence.

Eyal Aharoni, Olga Antonenko, Kent A. Kiehl
# Disparities in the moral intuitions of criminal offenders: The role of psychopathy
J Res Pers. 2011 June 1; 45(3): 322–327
The present study examined whether and in what ways psychopathy is associated with abnormal
moral intuitions among criminal offenders. Using Haidt et al.’s Moral Foundations Questionnaire, 222 adult male offenders assessed for clinical psychopathy reported their degree of support for five moral domains: Harm Prevention, Fairness, Respect for Authority, Ingroup Loyalty, and Purity/Sanctity. As predicted, psychopathy total score explained a substantial proportion of the variance in reduced support for Harm Prevention and Fairness, but not the other domains. These results confirm that psychopathy entails a discrete set of moral abnormalities and suggest that these abnormalities could potentially help to explain the characteristic antisocial behavior of individuals with psychopathy.

J.R.H. Law
# Cherry-Picking Memories: Why Neuroimaging-Based Lie Detection Requires a New Framework for the Admissibility of Scientific Evidence under FRE 702 and Daubert
14 YALE J.L. & TECH. 1 (2011)
Neuroimaging techniques have been in heavy rotation in the news lately. Increasingly, companies have used neuroimaging techniques—specifically, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)—in an attempt to determine whether an individual is telling a falsehood. More troublingly, these companies have proffered factual conclusions for use in jury trials. This Article discusses the capabilities and limitations of the technique. In doing so, the Article also discusses why the technology will require the federal judiciary to reevaluate its current interpretation of Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and the Daubert doctrine for admitting novel sources of scientific evidence.

Adam Teitcher
# Weaving Functional Brain Imaging Into the Tapestry of Evidence: A Case for Functional Neuroimaging in Federal Criminal Courts
Fordham L. Rev. 355 (2011)
Recent advances in brain imaging technologies allow researchers to “peer inside” a defendant’s brain. Although functional neuroimaging evidence is frequently used in civil litigation, federal courts have been hesitant to admit it into evidence in criminal trials. Scholars and  commentators alike continue to debate the merits, detriments, and general admissibility of functional neuroimaging evidence in the criminal context. Meanwhile, federal judges repeatedly admit various forms of forensic science into evidence without evaluating them under the appropriate admissibility standards. This Note argues that this has created a double  standard for evidence admissibility. Functional neuroimaging evidence  may, in fact, be more scientifically reliable than some of the forensic  science evidence currently admitted at trial. Accordingly, this Note  proposes that judges should consider the disparity in evidentiary standards  when considering the admissibility of functional neuroimaging evidence,  and should carefully and fairly examine such evidence when proffered in  federal criminal trials.

Kent A. Kiehl, Morris B. Hoffman
# The Criminal Psychopath: History, Neuroscience, Treatment, and Economics
www.usdistrictcourtconferencenv.com/ Jurimetrics, Summer 2011
Individuals with psychopathic personality, or psychopaths, have a disproportionate impact on the criminal justice system. Psychopaths are twenty to twenty-five times more likely than non-psychopaths to be in prison, four to eight times more likely to violently recidivate compared to non- sychopaths, and are resistant to most forms of treatment. This article presents the most current clinical efforts and neuroscience research in the field of psychopathy. Given psychopathy’s enormous impact on society in general and on the criminal justice system in particular, there are significant benefits to increasing awareness of the condition. This review also highlights a recent, compelling and costeffective treatment program that has shown a significant reduction in violent recidivism in youth on a putative trajectory to psychopathic personality.

Jean Decety, Kalina J. Michalska, Katherine D. Kinzler
# The Contribution of Emotion and Cognition to Moral Sensitivity: A Neurodevelopmental Study

Cerebral Cortex may 2011
While neuroimaging studies alone are insufficient to determine what computations are involved in moral reasoning, combining fMRI data, physiological recordings of the autonomic nervous system with explicit evaluations of mental states, moral sensitivity, and empathy in a developmental perspective provides a more complete account of the component processes that mediate moral reasoning, from which we hope that future research will build. Finally, our study indicates that neurodevelopmental approaches provide added value to developmental psychology, even in places in which behavioral responses are remarkably similar across age.

Morse, S. J.
# Avoiding Irrational NeuroLaw Exuberance: A Plea for Neuromodesty
Mercer L. Rev. 837 (Spring, 2011)
At present, neuroscience has little to contribute to more just and accurate criminal law decision-making concerning policy, doctrine, and individual case adjudication. This was the conclusion reached when I tentatively identified "brain overclaim syndrome" five years ago, and it remains true today. In the future, however, as the philosophies of mind and action and neuroscience mutually mature and inform each other, neuroscience will help us understand criminal behavior.

# Stephen J. Morse, The Status of NeuroLaw: A Plea for Current Modesty and Future Cautious Optimism, J. Psychiatry & L. 595 (2011)

Ombretta Di Giovine
# Chi ha paura delle neuroscienze?
Archivio Penale, n. 3, 2011
Ovviamente una conoscenza complessa esige anche una epistemologia complessa, che esamini «non soltanto gli strumenti di conoscenza in se stessi ma anche le condizioni di produzione (neuro-cerebrali, socio-culturali) degli strumenti di conoscenza. In questo senso, la conoscenza della conoscenza non potrà fare a meno dei problemi e delle acquisizioni delle conoscenze scientifiche che riguardano il cervello, la psicologia cognitiva, l’intelligenza artificiale, la sociologia della conoscenza ecc., ma perché tutto ciò assuma un senso, non dovrà essere trascurata la dimensione epistemologica...

Enrica Nordio
# Could an antisocial behaviour be influenced by our genes?
Roskilde University International Basic Studies in Natural Sciences - December, 20^th 2011

Matthew L. Baum
# The Monoamine Oxidase A (MAOA) Genetic Predisposition to Impulsive Violence: Is It Relevant to Criminal Trials?
www.pc.rhul.ac.uk/ Neuroethics 2011

Charlotte Walsh
# Youth Justice. A Dual-Use Dilemma
Brit. J. Criminol. (2011)51
Neuroscientists posit a direct correlation between brain structure, brain activity and behaviour; thus, it is apparent why their findings are of interest to the legal system and to criminal justice policy makers. This paper considers the prospective relevance of the new brain sciences to youth justice policy. Drawing upon comparative research from the United States, it illustrates how neuroscientific findings have there been co-opted as a liberalizing tool, used to help soften a system that had become increasingly adult-erated. The lure of a parallel reliance on these studies in England and Wales is foreseeable, given how neatly these discoveries can be made to mesh with arguments in support of raising the age of criminal responsibility, reinstating the principle of doli incapax (or something akin to it) and the advocation of de-carceration, alongside seemingly vindicating the philosophy of diversion.

Andrea L. Glenn
# The other allele: Exploring the long allele of the serotonin transporter gene as a potential risk factor for psychopathy: A review of the parallels in findings
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011 January ; 35(3): 612–620
Converging evidence suggests that the short allele of the serotonin transporter gene polymorphism increases risk for a variety of psychological disorders, including depression, anxiety, and alcoholism. Thus, the short allele is typically considered the “risk” allele, and findings related to the long allele are rarely discussed. However, upon closer examination, findings associated with the long allele of the serotonin transporter gene share striking similarities with findings from studies of psychopathy. Here, the parallels between findings associated with the long/long genotype and findings associated with psychopathic traits in the areas of neuropsychology, psychophysiology, hormones, and brain imaging are reviewed. It is suggested that the long/long genotype may be a potential risk factor for the development of psychopathic traits. 

Ugo Fornari, Ambrogio Pennati
# Gli indicatori genetici nella valutazione della pericolosità sociale psichiatrica
http://brainfactor.it Martedì 22 Marzo 2011

L'utilizzo dell'analisi genetica sul piano clinico non fornisce, allo stato attuale, informazioni rilevanti. In particolare, la valutazione della pericolosità sociale psichiatrica è una valutazione clinica con indubbie conseguenze sul piano prognostico. L'analisi genetica, per le sue attuali caratteristiche strutturali e per le informazioni che oggi può fornire, non è in grado di prendere nella necessaria considerazione gli aspetti dinamico-evolutivi e trasformativi insiti nella nozione stessa di pericolosità sociale psichiatrica.

Abigail A. Marsh, Elizabeth C. Finger, Katherine A. Fowler, Ilana T.N. Jurkowitz, Julia C. Schechter, Henry H. Yu, Daniel S. Pine, R.J.R. Blair
# Reduced amygdala–orbitofrontal connectivity during moral judgments in youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits
Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 194 (2011) 279–286
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate dysfunction in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex in adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits during a moral judgment task. Fourteen adolescents with psychopathic traits and 14 healthy controls were assessed using fMRI while they categorized illegal and legal behaviors in a moral judgment implicit association task. fMRI data were then analyzed using random-effects analysis of variance and functional connectivity. Youths with psychopathic traits showed reduced amygdala activity when making judgments about legal actions and reduced functional connectivity between the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex during task performance. These results suggest that psychopathic traits are associated with amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex dysfunction. This dysfunction may relate to previous findings of disrupted moral judgment in this population.

Charles F. Manski
# Genes, Eyeglasses, and Social Policy
Journal of Economic Perspectives — Volume 25, Number 4 — Fall 2011
Ethical issues sometimes arise when conditioning treatment on covariates. thical issues sometimes arise when conditioning treatment on covariates. Writers have called attention to potential ethical issues associated with riters have called attention to potential ethical issues associated with genetic profi ling (for example, Almond, 2006). These issues require attention, and may limit. These issues require attention, and may limit aapplications. However, society already faces ethical issues when contemplating use pplications. However, society already faces ethical issues when contemplating use oof gender, race, and other personal attributes to choose treatments. It seems to me f gender, race, and other personal attributes to choose treatments. It seems to me that using genes as covariates does not raise unique ethical concerns. hat using genes as covariates does not raise unique ethical concerns.

Jason Roach, Ken Pease
# Evolution and the Prevention of Violent Crime
Psychology 2011, Vol.2, No.4, 393-404

Mercer Law
# The Brain Sciences in the Courtroom. A Symposium of the Mercer Law Review, October 22, 2010
Mercer Law Review, Vol. 62, 2011
So, a decade of neurolaw. Where has it brought us? My talk will follow this simple outline: first, where did neurolaw come from; second, some history; third, substantive topics and cautions... So, where did neurolaw come from, and what is its history?... Are there neuroscience discoveries that will help me as a lawyer?... Can we use scientific techniques to get behind the opacity of the skull and start to say what is going on in our subjective thinking?

Giorgio Ganis, J. Peter Rosenfeld, John Meixner, Rogier A. Kievit, Haline E. Schendan
# Lying in the scanner: Covert countermeasures disrupt deception detection by functional magnetic resonance imaging
NeuroImage 55 (2011) 312–319
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have documented differences between deceptive and honest responses. Capitalizing on this research, companies marketing fMRI-based lie detection services have been founded, generating methodological and ethical concerns in scientific and legal communities. Critically, no fMRI study has examined directly the effect of countermeasures, methods used by prevaricators to defeat deception detection procedures.

Charlotte Walsh
# Youth Justice and Neuroscience. A Dual-Use Dilemma
Brit. J. Criminol. (2011) 51, 21–39
Neuroscience is rapidly increasing comprehension of the human brain. This paper considers its prospective relevance to youth justice policy. In the United States, neuroscientific findings have been co-opted as a liberalizing tool. The parallel lure of these studies in the United Kingdom is foreseeable, given how they plausibly mesh with arguments in support of raising the age of criminal responsibility, along with bolstering policies of de-carceration and diversion. However, caution should be exercised: neuroscience can be used in ways that both contribute to human flourishing, along with potentially diminishing it. In science, this is a well recognized quandary, referred to as the dual-use dilemma. More problematically, neuroscience could be utilized to ‘prove’ poor parenting, to ‘predict’ future criminality.

Steven K. Erickson
# Blaming the Brain
Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology, Vol. 11, 2010
Criminal law scholarship has recently become absorbed with the ideas of neuroscience in the emerging field of neurolaw. This mixture of cognitive neuroscience and law suggests that long established conceptions of human agency and responsibility are fundamentally at odds with the findings of science. Using sophisticated technology, cognitive neuroscience claims to be upon the threshold of unraveling the mysteries of the mind by elucidating the mechanical nature of the brain. Despite the limitations of that technology, neurolaw supporters eagerly suggest that those revelations entail that an inevitable and radical overhaul of our criminal justice system is soon at hand.

Kent A. Kiehl, Joshua W. Buckholtz
# Inside the Mind of a Psychopath
Scientific American, September/October 2010
Neuroscientists are discovering that some of the most cold-blooded killers aren’t bad. They suffer from a brain abnormality that sets them adrift in an emotionless world. Psychopaths are not merely selfish. Their brains process information differently from those of other people. It’s as if they have a learning disability that impairs emotional development...

John Matthew Fabian
# Neuropsychological and neurological correlates in violent and homicidal offenders: A legal and neuroscience perspective
Aggression and Violent Behavior, Volume 15, Issue 3, May–June 2010, Pages 209–223

Violence and murder have their roots in biological, psychological, and sociological factors. This article will focus on one specific element of the biological aspects of violence and murder; specifically; neurological and neuropsychological aspects. The author will provide a literature review contrasting structural brain abnormalities and dysfunction (neuropathology) and brain–behavior (neuropsychological) relational attributes to violence, aggression, and homicidal behavior in particular.

Thomas Nadelhoffer, Stephanos Bibas, Scott Grafton, Kent A. Kiehl,  Andrew Mansfield, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Michael Gazzaniga
# Neuroprediction, Violence, and the Law: Setting the Stage
Neuroethics, 2010
We have seen that neuroprediction of violence is controversial and potentially problematic but still promising. Opponents raise various objections, but none seems conclusive. Neuroprediction of violence does not conflict with current practices, since other forms of violence prediction are already used in other legal arenas, including capital sentencing, civil commitment, and post-punishment detention of some sexually violent predators. Violence predictions can do tremendous harm when mistaken, but all that shows is that the legal system should use the best possible methods when it relies on these predictions. As we saw, clinical predictions are usually less reliable than actuarial predictions, and there is some reason to hope that neuroscience might improve the accuracy of actuarial predictions.

Laura Baker, Catherine Tuvblad, Adrian Raine
# Genetics and crime | In E. McLaughlin, & T. Newburn (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of criminological theory (pp. 21-40)
www.sagepub.com/ London 2010
Molecular genetic studies have the potential to identify specific gene variants that increase risk for criminal offending, aggressive behavior, and externalizing behavior disorders. Some polymorphisms, such as mutations in the MAO-A gene, have already shown relationships to antisocial behavior, including violence, across several studies...

Martin A. Kohli, Daria Salyakina, Andrea Pfennig, Susanne Lucae, Sonja Horstmann, Andreas Menke, Stefan Kloiber, MD, Johannes Hennings, Bekh B. Bradley, Kerry J. Ressler, Manfred Uhr, Bertram Müller-Myhsok, Florian Holsboer, Elisabeth B. Binder
# Association of Genetic Variants in the Neurotrophic Receptor– Encoding Gene NTRK2 and a Lifetime History of Suicide Attempts in Depressed Patients
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2010 April
This study shows association of several independent common variants of NTRK2 with SA among depressed patients in independent samples. This supports the large body of evidence that dysfunctional neurotrophic signaling might be involved in the pathophysiology of suicidal behavior. 

Thomas R. Insel
# Faulty Circuits. Neuroscience is revealing the malfunctioning connections underlying psychological disorders and forcing psychiatrists to rethink the causes of mental illness

www.psychiatry.unimelb.edu.au/ Scientific American, April 2010
From the scientific standpoint, it is difficult to find a precedent in medicine for what is beginning to happen in psychiatry. The intellectual basis of this field is shifting from one discipline, based on subjective “mental” phenomena, to another, neuroscience. Indeed, today’s developing science-based understanding of mental illness very likely will revolutionize prevention and treatment and bring real and lasting relief to millions of people worldwide.

Virginia Hughes
# Head Case. Last year, functional magnetic resonance imaging made its debut in court
www.nature.com/ Nature, Vol 464, 18 March 2010
Brain imaging has a long history in legal cases. Lawyers have often used scans as a way to tip the scale in the perpetual battle between opposing expert psychiatric witnesses. You can’t control your brain waves, the theory goes, and scans are an objective measure of mental state. “The psychiatric diagnosis is still soft data — it’s behaviour,” notes Ruben Gur, director of the Brain Behavior Center at the University  of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “The brain scan doesn’t lie. If there is tissue missing from your brain, there is no way you could have manufactured it for the purpose of the trial.”

The Law and Neuroscience Project | Floyd E. Bloom, Howard L. Fields, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Scott T. Grafton, Kent Kiehl, Helen Mayberg, Read Montague, Louis J. Ptáček, Marcus Raichle, Adina Roskies, Anthony Wagner
# A Judge's Guide to Neuroscience: A Concise Introduction
University of California, Santa Barbara 2010
The Law and Neuroscience Project is developing more extensive materials for judges that are intended to be of service as neuroscience enters the  courtroom. This pamphlet is more in the nature of an introduction. However, the very breadth of the questions it undertakes to address reflects the growing perception among judges that neuroscience has the potential to be of great use, and a challenge, to many aspects of the law. If this little pamphlet can serve to clarify that perception and help meet that challenge, it will have served its purpose.

Kate Bloch
# Changing the Topography of Sentencing
Hastings Race & Poverty Law Journal, vol. 7, Winter 2010
Advances in neuroscience offer the possibility of understanding and modifying human behavior in remarkable ways. A new scholarly discipline sometimes labeled "neurolaw" has evolved to investigate the relationship between these advances in neuroscience and the law.

Adina L. Roskies
# How Does Neuroscience Affect Our Conception of Volition?
Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 2010. 33:109–30
Although there is no clear concept of volition or the will, we do have intuitive ideas that characterize the will, agency, and voluntary behavior. Here I review results from a number of strands of neuroscientific research that bear upon our intuitive notions of the will. These neuroscientific results provide some insight into the neural circuitsmediating behaviors that we identify as related to will and volition. Although some researchers contend that neuroscience will undermine our views about free will, to date no results have succeeded in fundamentally disrupting our commonsensical beliefs. Still, the picture emerging from neuroscience does raise new questions, and ultimately may put pressure on some intuitive notions about what is necessary for free will.

Martin Gottschalk, Lee Ellis
# Evolutionary and Genetic Explanations of Violent Crime
in Violent Crime. Clinical and Social Implications, Christopher J. Ferguson, Texas A&M International University 2010

Sofia Moratti, Raffaella Ida Rumiati
# Neuroetica: sì, no, forse
Giornale Italiano di Psicologia, n. 4, dicembre 2010

Gabriella Marando
# L'acquisizione della prova scientifica nel processo penale
Università degli studi di Trieste Dottorato di ricerca 2009-2010

Oliver R. Goodenough, Micaela Tucker
# Law and Cognitive Neuroscience
Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2010. 6:61–92
Law and neuroscience (sometimes neurolaw) has become a recognized field of study. The advances of neuroscience are proving useful in solving some perennial challenges of legal scholarship and are leading to applications in law and policy. While caution is appropriate in considering neurolaw approaches, the new knowledge should—and will— be put to use. Areas of special attention in current neurolaw scholarship include (a) techniques for the objective investigation of subjective states such as pain, memory, and truth-telling; (b) evidentiary issues for admitting neuroscience facts and approaches into a court proceeding; (c) free will, responsibility, moral judgment, and punishment; (d ) juvenile offenders; (e) addiction; ( f )mental health; ( g) bias; (h) emotion; and (i ) the neuroeconomics of decision making and cooperation. The future of neurolaw will be more productive if challenges to collaboration between lawyers and scientists can be resolved.

Philip Hunter
# The psycho gene
European Molecular Biology Organization reports VOL 11 | NO 9 | 2010

While the idea of a ‘criminal gene’ is nonsense, there is growing evidence that some psychopathic behaviour might indeed be grounded in genes. “…it is useful to think of psychopathy as mainly the product of genes and sociopathy as more subject to environmental influences”

Sarina M. Rodrigues, Laura R. Saslow, Natalia Garcia, Oliver P. John, and Dacher Keltner
# Oxytocin receptor genetic variation relates to empathy and stress reactivity in humans
www.pnas.org/ PNAS December 15, 2009
Oxytocin, a peptide that functions as both a hormone and neurotransmitter, has broad influences on social and emotional processing throughout the body and the brain. In this study, we tested how a polymorphism (rs53576) of the oxytocin receptor relates to two key social processes related to oxytocin: empathy and stress reactivity.

Odette Eronia
# Enhancement Technologies e diritto penale
Università degli Studi di Palermo, 2009

Joshua D. Greene
# The Cognitive Neuroscience of Moral Judgment
http://scholar.harvard.edu/ 2009
Individuals with high psychopathy scores exhibited decreased amygdala activity during the contemplation of moral dilemmas involving “personal” harm. Thus, the evidence from functional imaging suggests that the amygdala plays an important role in triggering emotional responses to physically harmful actions... The physical basis of moral judgment is no longer a complete mystery. We’ve not only identified brain regions that are “involved” in moral judgment, but have begun to carve the moral brain at its functional joints

A.L Glenn, Adrian Raine, R.A. Schug,

# The Neural Correlates of Moral Decision-Making in Psychopathy

http://repository.upenn.edu/ " Molecular Psychiatry, (2009) Vol. 14, 5-6

Findings demonstrate that amygdala functioning is disrupted during moral decision-making in psychopathy, and is evident in all features of psychopathy, suggesting that amygdala dysfunction may be a core deficit in psychopathy. The amygdala is thought to respond to cues indicating distress in others, thus guiding individuals away from antisocial behavior. Reduced amygdala functioning in more psychopathic individuals suggests reduced responsivity to the thought of causing harm to others when contemplating personal moral dilemmas.

Rose McDermott, Dustin Tingley, Jonathan Cowden, Giovanni Frazzetto, Dominic D. P. Johnsone
# Monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA) predicts behavioral aggression following provocation
PNAS, February 17, 2009 (vol. 106 no. 7)
Monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA) has earned the nickname ‘‘warrior gene’’ because it has been linked to aggression in observational and survey-based studies. However, no controlled experimental studies have tested whether the warrior gene actually drives behavioral manifestations of these tendencies.Wereport an experiment, synthesizing work in psychology and behavioral economics, which demonstrates that aggression occurs with greater intensity and frequency as provocation is experimentally manipulated upwards, especially among low activity MAOA (MAOA-L) subjects.

Owen D. Jones, Joshua W. Buckholtz, Jeffrey D. Schall, Rene Marois
# Brain Imaging for Legal Thinkers: A Guide for the Perplexed
Stanford Technology Law Review, 2009
Legal decision-making in criminal contexts includes two essential functions performed by “third parties” unaffected by the crime: assessing responsibility and determining an appropriate punishment. To explore the neural underpinnings of these processes, we scanned subjects with fMRI while they determined the appropriate punishment for crimes that varied in both perpetrator responsibility and crime severity. Activity within regions linked to social and affective processing (amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex) predicted punishment magnitude for a range of  criminal scenarios. By contrast, activity in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex strongly distinguished between scenarios on  the basis of criminal responsibility alone, suggesting that it plays a key role in third-party punishment...

Yadin Dudai
# Predicting not to predict too much: how the cellular machinery of memory anticipates the uncertain future
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2009) 364
Although the faculty of memory holds information about the past, it is mostly about the present and the future, because it permits adaptive responses to ongoing events as well as to events yet to come. Since many elements in the future are uncertain, the plasticity machinery that encodes memories in the brain has to operate under the assumption that stored information is likely to require fast and recurrent updating. This assumption is reflected at multiple levels of the brain, including the synaptic and the cellular level. Recent findings cast new light on how combinations of plasticity and metaplasticity mechanisms could permit the brain to balance over time between stability and plasticity of the information stored.

Amanda Pustilnik
# Violence on the Brain: A Critique of Neuroscience in Criminal Law
Wake Forrest Law Review, vol. 44 2009
This Article first demonstrates parallels between certain current claims about the neurobiology of criminal violence and past movements that were concerned with the law and neuroscience of violence: phrenology, Lombrosian biological criminology, and lobotomy. It then engages in a substantive review and critique of several current claims about the neurological bases of criminal violence. Drawing on research and interviews with neuroscientists, this Article shows that causally localizing what we call “criminal violence” to bits of the brain is scientifically contestable and epistemologically untenable. In viewing the criminal law-neuroscience relationship through the lens of history of science, this Article hopes to offer a constructive portrait of how current neuroscience might inform criminal law discourse about regulating violence

Amedeo Santosuosso
# Il dilemma del diritto di fronte alle neuroscienze
in Santosuosso A., Le neuroscienze e il diritto, Ibis, Como-Pavia 2009
La risposta alla domanda se bisogna creare oggi un neurodiritto (neurolaw), sul modello (diciamo così) del biodiritto, è la seguente: il problema non sono le etichette, ma quello che sotto le etichette accade. Se la neuroetica è il modo di uscire dalle secche in cui si è cacciata la bioetica, ben venga anche la neuroetica e il corrispondente neurodiritto.sente

Yves Hémery
# Irresponsabilité pénale, évolutions du concept
L’Information psychiatrique 2009 ; 85 : 727-33
L’échec des politiques pénales de réinsertion, la surpopulation carcérale, la disparition de trop nombreux lits de psychiatrie, l’avènement de préoccupations sécuritaires et utilitaristes conduisent à une interrogation difficile : il n’y a jamais eu autant de malades mentaux en prison, pourtant l’incidence des pratiques expertales sur cet état de fait semble réduite... Aujourd’hui, il devient indifférent que l’auteur d’un crime soit malade mental ou non, puisque le critère déterminant devient celui la protection de la société, par la réduction du risque de récidive, par l’enfermement ou le contrôle indéfini des mesures de sûreté. Peu importe que le lieu de l’application de telles précautions soit hospitalier, carcéral, ou « entre les deux », peu importe la personnalité du mis en cause, quand les soins sont imposés comme élément du contrôle social !

Pietro Pietrini

# Intervista su sentenza di Trieste

Effettuata da Marco Mozzoni il 16/11/2009 per BRAINFACTOR Cervello e Neuroscienze http://brainfactor.it

Per la perizia abbiamo utilizzato una serie di strumenti, a partire dalla raccolta dei dati anamnestici e l’esame clinico, il colloquio psichiatrico, la somministrazione di test cognitivi e di personalità, l’esame di risonanza magnetica strutturale e funzionale del cervello e, infine, gli esami genetici per verificare la presenza di varianti polimorfiche che in letteratura sono state riscontrate essere significativamente associate con un aumentato rischio di comportamento impulsivo, aggressivo e antisociale. Le conclusioni alle quali il Prof. Sartori ed io siamo giunti nella nostra relazione peritale sono basate sull’insieme dei risultati ottenuti nei vari esami sopradescritti, compresi in primo luogo le valutazioni “classiche” e certamente non solo nè principalmente sui dati dello studio genetico.

Sabrina Peron
# Neuroetica e diritto: commento alla sentenza di Trieste
Mercoledì 04 Novembre 2009
... L’essere potatore dell’allele a bassa attività per il gene MAOA (MAOA-L) potrebbe rendere il soggetto maggiormente incline a manifestare aggressività se provocato o escluso socialmente”. Ad avviso della Corte, dunque, tale “vulnerabilità genetica”, renderebbe l’imputato “particolarmente reattivo in termini di aggressività – e, conseguentemente, vulnerabile – in presenza di situazioni di stress”; conseguentemente la Corte ha ritenuto di poter applicare per la parziale incapacità di intendere e di volere la riduzione della pena nella misura massima di un terzo.

William P. Banks and Eve A. Isham
# We Infer Rather Than Perceivethe Moment We Decided to Act
Psychol. Sci. 2009
The question of free will has been debated since antiquity. The debate has traditionally been conducted only in theoretical or logical terms, but has recently been given empirical content by the research of Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl (1983). They made the question of volition a neurophysiological one, and thus opened it to scientific investigation.

Oliver R. Goodenough
# Strategic Mechanisms, Functional Modeling and Experimental Design in Neurolaw
http://www.chapman.edu/ 2009
The investigations of Neurolaw have a number of different targets, ranging from courtroom applications to policy considerations. One of these targets is the neural processes involved in normative judgments, both about our own actions and about the  actions of others. Game theory, illuminated by the insights of mechanism design,  provides a set of expectations about the shape of solutions to strategic problems. These  expectations can be a source for modeling the structures that we can look for in the  functionality of the brain as it addresses these problems. Taking these structures into account can provide a roadmap for empirical studies about normative thinking, and the empirical studies, in turn, will provide a test for the roadmap and for the underlying method

Emiliano Feresin
# Lighter sentence for murderer with 'bad genes'. Italian court reduces jail term after tests identify genes linked to violent behaviour
Nature 30 October 2009

An Italian court has cut the sentence given to a convicted murderer by a year because he has genes linked to violent behaviour. Some fear that such cases could lead to the acceptance of genetic determinism — the idea that genes determine the behaviour of an organism — in criminal cases. "90% of all murders are committed by people with a Y chromosome — males. Should we always give males a shorter sentence?" says Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London. "I have low MAOA activity but I don't go around attacking people."

Noel Shafi
# Neuroscience and Law: The Evidentiary Value of Brain Imaging
Graduate Student Journal of Psychology - 2009, Vol. 11
Neuroimaging evidence should be restricted in terms of admissibility in the courts, and should only be considered reliable under scientifically valid clinical methods. This topic will be approached in four stages: (1) a brief introduction to neuroscience and law, (2) a discussion of evidentiary laws in the American legal system, (3) a review of modern neuroimaging and the admissibility and applicability of neuroimaging evidence in the courtroom using actual cases, and 4) a closing argument, including  interdisciplinary perspectives on neuroscience and law.

Natalie Weder, Bao Zhu Yang, Heather Douglas-Palumberi, Johari Massey, John H. Krystal, Joel Gelernter, Joan Kaufman
# MAOAGenotype, Maltreatment, and Aggressive Behavior: The Changing Impact of Genotype at Varying Levels of Trauma
Biol Psychiatry 2009;65:417– 424

Björn Hofvander, Daniel Ossowski, Sebastian Lundström, Henrik Anckarsäter
# Continuity of aggressive antisocial behavior from  childhood to adulthood: The question of phenotype definition

International journal of law and psychiatry, 2009 May 8

During recent years, intense interest has been focused on interactions between specific genotypes and environmental factors as a possible key to disentangle the inconsistent findings from univariate association studies. The first paper to identify such effects was  published in 2002 by Caspi and co-workers, who could show that maltreated boys with the high-activity polymorphism in the MAO-A gene were less likely to develop antisocial behaviours than maltreated boys with the low-activity polymorphism, while the polymorphism did not have any effect on the variation of antisocial behaviours in the population at large

Stephen W. Porges
# The polyvagal theory: New insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system
Cleve Clin J Med. 2009 April ; 76(Suppl 2)
The polyvagal theory describes an autonomic nervous system that is influenced by the central nervous system, sensitive to afferent influences, characterized by an adaptive reactivity dependent on the phylogeny of the neural circuits, and interactive with source nuclei in the brainstem regulating the striated muscles of the face and head. The theory is dependent on accumulated knowledge describing the phylogenetic transitions in the vertebrate autonomic nervous system. 

S. W. Porges
# Stress and Parasympathetic Control
http://www.psicoterapiabilbao.es/ 2009
Historically, arousal theories provided scientists who studied brain–behavior relations with a model that assumed that activation of peripheral physiological measures regulated by the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system provided ‘sensitive’ indicators of brain ‘arousal’ or ‘activation.’  This view was based on a rudimentary understanding of the autonomic nervous system in which changes in easily measured peripheral organs (e.g., sweat glands and heart) were assumed to be accurate indicators  of how the brain was processing emotional stimuli...

Jay D. Aronson
# Neuroscience and Juvenile Justice
Akron Law Review, 42, 2009
Recent advances in the field of neuroscience, especially improved magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, are providing scientists and decision-makers with an increasingly complex understanding of how our brains develop from birth to adulthood. While these studies are still in their infancy, they have already made it clear that the brain typically continues to develop long after the point at which an individual becomes a legal adult (i.e., at age 18), and that the slow maturation process that plays out in the social context is mirrored by a slow maturation process at the neural level...

Peter Cohen
# The Naked Empress. Modern neuro-science and the concept of addiction
Presentation at the 12th Plaform for Drug Treatment, Mondsee Austria, 21-22 March 2009
Medical practice in the field of addiction mirrors cultural notions about addiction and empowers an oppressive regulatory kind of involvement. Modern neurological theories about addiction tend to maintain or strengthen this oppression by transforming addiction into a ‘brain disease’ and therefore a serious mental disorder. This essay will probe into the underlying material for the claim that addiction is a ‘brain disease’ and suggest a different theoretical approach to ‘addiction’.

Kevin M. Beaver, Matt DeLisi, Michael G. Vaughn, J.C. Barnes
# Monoamine oxidase A genotype is associated with gang membership and weapon use
Comprehensive Psychiatry 2009

Christopher J. Ferguson, Kevin M. Beaver
# Natural born killers: The genetic origins of extreme violence
Aggression and Violent Behavior 14 (2009)

Michael S. Gazzaniga
# The Law and Neuroscience
Neuron 60, November 6, 2008
Some of the implications for law of recent discoveries in neuroscience are considered in a new program established by the MacArthur Foundation. A group of neuroscientists, lawyers, philosophers, and jurists are examining issues in criminal law and, in particular, problems in responsibility and prediction and problems in legal decision making.

Adrian Raine
# From Genes to Brain to Antisocial Behavior
Current Directions in Psychological Science 17(5) · October 2008
Here I highlight key brain regions implicated in antisocial behavior, with an emphasis on the prefrontal cortex, along with ways these areas give expression to risk factors for antisocial behavior. Environmental influences may alter gene expression to trigger the cascade of events that translate genes into antisocial behavior.

Larry J. Siever
# Neurobiology of Aggression and Violence
Am J Psychiatry 165:4, April 2008
Aggressive behavior has often been associated with poor executive function and verbal processing in adolescents and adults. Cognitive performance is particularly impaired in neuropsychological tests that are sensitive to frontal and temporal dysfunction. Tasks that rely on behavioral inhibition were most likely to show deficits in individuals with aggressive behavior and violence, and reduced responses in evoked potential tasks have predicted impulsiveness in aggressive prison populations.

David P. McCabe, Alan D. Castel
# Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning
Cognition 107 (2008) 343–352
Brain images are believed to have a particularly persuasive influence on the public perception of research on cognition. Three experiments are reported showing that presenting brain images with articles summarizing cognitive neuroscience research resulted in higher ratings of scientific reasoning for arguments made in those articles, as compared to articles accompanied by bar graphs, a topographical map of brain activation, or no image. These data lend support to the notion that part of the fascination, and the credibility, of brain imaging research lies in the persuasive power of the actual brain images themselves. We argue that brain images are influential because they provide a physical basis for abstract cognitive processes, appealing to people’s affinity for reductionistic explanations of cognitive phenomena.

Carlo Brusco
# La valutazione della prova scientifica
Dir. pen. proc., 2008

Nikos K. Logothetis
# What we can do and what we cannot do with fMRI
Nature, Vol 453, 12 June 2008
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is currently the mainstay of neuroimaging in cognitive neuroscience. Advances in scanner technology, image acquisition protocols, experimental design, and analysis methods promise to push forward fMRI from mere cartography to the true study of brain organization. However, fundamental questions concerning the interpretation of fMRI data abound, as the conclusions drawn often ignore the actual limitations of the methodology. Here I give an overview of the current state of fMRI, and draw on neuroimaging and physiological data to present the current understanding of the haemodynamic signals and the constraints they impose on neuroimaging data  interpretation.

Francis X. Shen
# Neuroscience, Mental Privacy, and the Law
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy vol. 36 2008

This Article has argued that the legal system is readily equipped to provide citizens with adequate protection against government‐compelled or coerced mind reading with neuroimaging. The law has seen, and protected citizens from, previous analogs, and the technology itself is unlikely to be as dangerous as some prognosticators believe. We should certainly be concerned about the government tracking our minds, but we should be most concerned about government carrying out that tracking by observing and inferring mental states from our behavior, not our brains.

J. Arturo Silva
# The Relevance of Neuroscience to Forensic Psychiatry
J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 35:6 –9, 2007
Significant progress in forensic neuropsychiatry also has affected the practice of law, in which an understanding of the complex interplay among mind, brain, and behavior is becoming increasingly desirable and even necessary. Practitioners and scholars of criminal law in particular have taken an interest in neuroscientific developments within psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and other behavioral sciences.

Kolja Schiltz, Joachim Witzel, Georg Northoff, Kathrin Zierhut, Udo Gubka, Hermann Fellmann, Jörn Kaufmann, Claus Tempelmann, Christine Wiebking, Bernhard Bogerts
# Brain Pathology in Pedophilic Offenders. Evidence of Volume Reduction in the Right Amygdala and Related Diencephalic Structures
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2007;64:737-746
Pedophilic perpetrators show structural impairments of brain regions critical for sexual development. These impairments are not related to age, and their extent predicts how focused the scope of sexual offenses is on uniform pedophilic activity. Subtle defects of the right amygdala and closely related structures might be implicated in the pathogenesis of pedophilia and might possibly reflect developmental disturbances or environmental insults at critical periods.

Giuseppe Di Chiara
# Il canto delle sirene. Processo penale e modernità scientifico-tecnologica: prova dichiarativa e diagnostica della verità
Criminalia 2007
1. Scienza e modernità: spunti su scientismo, antiscientismo e intolleranza. – 2. Nuove tecnologie e processo penale: qualche sguardo esemplificativo. – 3. La parabola dei dispositivi tecnologici di governo e controllo dell’attendibilità dei contributi dichiarativi: primi appunti. – 4. Libertà morale della persona e divieto di «metodi o tecniche» perturbanti: tra norma e prassi. – 5. «Mezzi coercitivi della volontà» e «spie sull’interno organico»: quale discrimen? – 6. Tecniche diagnostiche di deception processing e truth telling processing: la risonanza magnetica funzionale per immagini. – 7. Risonanza magnetica e nuove frontiere tra modernismo efficientista e valori dell’accertamento giudiziario: gli scenari.

William Bernet, Cindy L. Vnencak-Jones,Nita Farahany, Stephen A. Montgomery 
# Bad Nature, Bad Nurture, and Testimony regarding MAOA and SLC6A4 Genotyping at Murder Trials
J Forensic Sci, November 2007, Vol. 52, No. 6

Melissa S. Caulum
# Postadolescente Brain Development: A Disconnect Between Neuroscience, Emerging Adults, and the Corrections System
http://hosted.law.wisc.edu/ Wisconsin Law Review, 2007

There is very little empirical research regarding first- time emergingadult offenders. Regardless, states should consider their behavioral and brain development when determining policy and sentencing. The brain is more malleable than scientists once believed: Research confirms growth well beyond the age of eighteen, and has allowed for a deeper understanding of the end of adolescence and the transition to adulthood. Studies have shown that, during this developmental stage, the brain responds to learning- and training- nduced and environmentally stimulated structural changes.

J. Arturo Silva
# The Relevance of Neuroscience to Forensic Psychiatry
J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 35:6 –9, 2007
Applied neuroscientific knowledge is finding widespread application in the medical diagnostic and treatment areas and continues to grow at an unprecedented pace. Furthermore, neuroscientific progress made during the past two decades is invigorating fields of practical endeavor, such as forensic neuropsychiatry, developmental psychiatry, and cultural psychiatry, and is paving the way to new areas of knowledge, such as neuroeconomics

Stephen J. Morse, Morris B. Hoffman
# The Uneasy Entente between Legal Insanity and Mens Rea: Beyond Clark v. Arizona
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Summer 2007
Can mens rea alone be a sufficient basis for a sensible theory of criminal responsibility? Are there constitutional limits to a state's power to eliminate or restrict the insanity defense or the mens rea requirement? May states constitutionally preclude defense evidence directly relevant to insanity or lack of mens rea? More generally, what impact should recognized mental disorders have on criminal responsibility? Should evolving ideas about the nature and causes of mental disorders and of human behavior in general require changes in our settled views of blameworthiness? 

Stacey A. Tovino
# Functional Neuroimaging and the Law: Trends and Directions for Future Scholarship
The American Journal of Bioethics, 7(9): 44-56, 2007
In determining the constitutionality of a brain scan under the Fourth Amendment, would the courts consider how the relevant government actor conducted the fMRI test? what type of personnel would be permitted to conduct a government-ordered brain scan? Radiology technicians? Ivy Leaguemneuroscientists? In what type of facility may the testing occur? A police station? A cognitive neuroscience laboratory? What precautions and protocols must be followed?

Quirino Cordeiro, Jacqueline Siqueira-Roberto, Homero Vallada
# Gene-environment interaction and violence manifestation
Rev Bras Psiquiatr. 2007;29(3):291-7

Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Joshua W. Buckholtz, Bhaskar Kolachana, Ahmad R. Hariri, Lukas Pezawas, Giuseppe Blasi, Ashley Wabnitz, Robyn Honea, Beth Verchinski, Joseph H. Callicott, Michael Egan, Venkata Mattay, Daniel R. Weinberger
# Neural Mechanisms of Genetic Risk for Impulsivity and Violence in Humans
PNAS April 18, 2006

J Kim-Cohen, A Caspi, A Taylor, B Williams, R Newcombe, IW Craig, TE Moffitt
# MAOA, maltreatment, and gene–environment interaction predicting child
Molecular Psychiatry (2006) 11, 903–913

Adam J. Kolber
# Therapeutic Forgetting: The Legal and Ethical Implications of Memory Dampening
Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 59, p. 1561, 2006
The mere possibility of memory dampening raises fundamental questions about who owns our memories and how we should balance the rights of memory-holders against society as a whole. Answers to such questions will ultimately shape the contours of our freedom of memory, a bundle of rights that will take on greater importance and develop greater coherence as we confront new neuroscience technologies that improve our ability to manipulate memory.

Marta Bertolino
# Le incertezze della scienza e le certezze del diritto a confronto sul tema della infermità mentale
Riv. it. dir. e proc. pen., fasc.2, 2006
Agli psichiatri e in particolare a quelli forensi si chiede di ridurre i rischi creati dai loro pazienti, nonostante la psichiatria non sembri in grado di indicare quale sia il livello del rischio accettabile e quale sia il disastro, contro il quale lo psichiatra dovrebbe garantire. Questo perché in realtà non si tratta qui di operare in condizioni di rischio, in cui cioè "le variabili caratterizzanti un problema sono conosciute e la probabilità rispettiva di esiti differenti, positivi e negativi, è quantificata", quanto piuttosto di assumere decisioni in condizioni di incertezza...

Michael Rutter
# Implications of Resilience Concepts for Scientific Understanding
Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1094: 1–12 (2006)
Five main implications stem from the research to date: (1) resistance to hazardsmay derive fromcontrolled exposure to risk (rather than its avoidance); (2) resistancemay derive fromtraits or circumstances that are without major effects in the absence of the relevant environmental hazards; (3) resistance may derive from physiological or psychological coping processes rather than external risk or protective factors; (4) delayed recovery may derive from “turning point” experiences in adult life; and (5) resilience may be constrained by biological programming or damaging effects of stress/adversity on neural structures.

Kenneth S. Kendler, Ralph J. Greenspan
# The Nature of Genetic Influences on Behavior: Lessons From “Simpler” Organisms
Am J Psychiatry 2006
The authors examine the degree of similarity between the genetic underpinnings of psychiatric illness and genetic influences on behavior in such simpler organisms. Six topics are reviewed: 1) the extent of natural genetic variation, 2) the multigenic nature of natural variation, 3) the impact of individual genes on multiple traits, 4) gene-environment interactions, 5) genetic effects on the environment, and 6) gene-by-sex interactions. The results suggest that the pattern of results emerging in psychiatric genetics is generally consistent with the findings of behavioral genetics in simpler  organisms.

Brent Garland, Paul W Glimcher
# Cognitive neuroscience and the law
Current Opinion in Neurobiology 2006, 16:130–134
Advances in cognitive neuroscience now allow us to use physiological techniques to measure and assess mental states under a growing set of circumstances. The implication of this growing ability has not been lost on the western legal community. If biologists can accurately measure mental state, then legal conflicts that turn on the true mental states of individuals might well be resolvable with techniques ranging from electroencephalography to functional magnetic resonance imaging. Therefore, legal practitioners have increasingly sought to employ cognitive neuroscientific methods and data as evidence to influence legal proceedings. This poses a risk, because these scientific methodologies have largely been designed and validated for experimental use only.

Yadin Dudai
# The Neurobiology of Consolidations, Or, How Stable Is the Engram?
Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2004
In the domain of memory research and theory, consolidation (Latin for “to make firm”), or memory consolidation, refers to the progressive postacquisition stabilization of long-term memory, as well as to the memory phase(s) during which such presumed stabilization takes place (Dudai 2002a). It has long been suggested that fresh memories need time to stabilize, and that often, such traces are prone to interference by distracting stimuli, injuries, or toxins, which, however, lose their effectiveness with the passage of time.

Deborah W. Denno
# Revisiting the Legal Link Between Genetics and Crime
Law and Contemporary Problems [Vol. 69:209 Winter/Spring 2006]

Kent A. Kiehl
# A cognitive neuroscience perspective on psychopathy: Evidence for paralimbic system dysfunction
Psychiatry Res. 2006 June 15; 142(2-3): 107–128
Psychopathy is a complex personality disorder that includes interpersonal and affective traits such as glibness, lack of empathy, guilt or remorse, shallow affect, and irresponsibility, and behavioral characteristics such as impulsivity, poor behavioral control, and promiscuity. Much is known about the assessment of psychopathy; however, relatively little is understood about the relevant brain disturbances. The present review integrates data from studies of behavioral and cognitive changes associated with focal brain lesions or insults and results from psychophysiology, cognitive psychology and cognitive and affective neuroscience in health and psychopathy.

Bärbel Hüsing, Lutz Jäncke, Brigitte Tag
# Impact Assessment of Neuroimaging
vdf Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH Zürich 2006
This is shown exemplarily in the field of criminal law: whether performing neuroimaging constitutes an offence of bodily harm caused wilfully or negligently, whether the accused committed a crime while capable of acting and sane, what effects emotions may have had on the crime committed, whether the prisoner or the detainee should be freed at all, all of these cases require a solid knowledge of neuroimaging and its  significance.

Brent Garland, Mark S. Frankel
# Considering convergence: a policy dialogue about behavioral genetics, neurosciences, and law
Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 69, Winter/Spring 2006
The impact of neuroscience and behavioral genetics on the criminal law offers an opportunity to start such an effort on a small scale, by building on the types of discussions that are included in this volume and in other relevant proceedings. Without such an effort in place, the public policy dialogue will go along in fits and starts—and our policies will be constantly playing “catch up” as the science surges forward.

Nigel Eastman, Colin Campbell
# Neuroscience and legal determination of criminal responsibility

Neurosciences, April 2006
Neuroscience is increasingly identifying associations between biology and violence that appear to offer courts evidence relevant to criminal responsibility. In addition, in a policy era of ‘zero tolerance of risk’, evidence of biological abnormality in some of those who are violent, or biological markers of violence, may be seized on as a possible basis for preventive detention in the interest of public safety. However, there is a mismatch between questions that the courts and society wish answered and those that neuroscience is capable of answering. This poses a risk to the proper exercise of justice and to civil liberties.

Thomas Fuchs
# Ethical issues in neuroscience
Current Opinion in Psychiatry 2006, 19:600–607
Ethical problems resulting from brain research have induced the emergence of a new discipline termed neuroethics. Critical questions concern issues, such as prediction of disease, psychopharmacological enhancement of attention, memory or mood, and technologies such as psychosurgery, deep-brain stimulation or brain implants. Such techniques are capable of affecting the individual’s sense of privacy, autonomy and identity. Moreover, reductionist interpretations of neuroscientific results challenge notions of free will, responsibility, personhood and the self which are essential for western culture and society.

Sheila Jasanoff
# Law’s Knowledge: Science for Justice in Legal Settings
Am J Public Health 2005
Legal developments following Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc indicate a growing need to reevaluate the decision’s fundamental assumptions about law, science, and their interactions. I argue that in Daubert and two successor cases, the Supreme Court misconceived both the nature of scientific practice and its links to legal fact-finding. The decisions endorsed a separatist model of law and science, presupposing a sharper boundary between the institutions than exists or should exist. A better approach is to recognize that law and science are both knowledgegenerating institutions, but that fact-making serves different functions in these two settings. The important question for the law is not how judges can best do justice to science, but rather how courts can better render justice under conditions of uncertainty and ignorance.

Elizabeth F. Loftus
# Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory
Learning & Memory 2005
The misinformation effect refers to the impairment in memory for the past that arises after exposure to misleading information. The phenomenon has been investigated for at least 30 years, as investigators have addressed a number of issues. These include the conditions under which people are especially susceptible to the negative impact of misinformation, and conversely when are they resistant. Warnings about the potential for misinformation sometimes work to inhibit its damaging effects, but only under limited circumstances. The misinformation effect has been observed in a variety of human and nonhuman species...

Avshalom Caspi, Terrie E. Moffitt, Mary Cannon, Joseph McClay, Robin Murray, HonaLee Harrington, Alan Taylor, Louise Arseneault, Ben Williams, Antony Braithwaite, Richie Poulton, Ian W. Craig
# Moderation of the Effect of Adolescent-Onset Cannabis Use on Adult Psychosis by a Functional Polymorphism in the Catechol-O-Methyltransferase Gene: Longitudinal Evidence of a Gene X Environment Interaction
Biol Psychiatry, 57 : 2005

Lisa Schriner Lewis
# The Role Genetic Information Plays in the Criminal Justice System
Arizona Law Review Vol. 47:519 2005

Jean Decety, Philip L. Jackson, Jessica A. Sommerville, Thierry Chaminade, Andrew N. Meltzoff
# The neural bases of cooperation and competition: an fMRI investigation
Neuroimage 2004 October ; 23(2): 744–751
The available evidence indicates that social interactions involve a specific set of cortical regions, but further investigation is needed to elucidate the respective contribution of these neural structures in the different mind sets of the agent when they cooperate toward a common goal or when they compete for this goal. The aim of the present study was to investigate the neural basis of these two social cognitive processes in the same individuals while they engage in well-controlled social interactions. We designed a computer game to provide fMRI-compatible, controlled bouts of cooperation and competition...

Michael F. Lorber
# Psychophysiology of Aggression, Psychopathy, and Conduct Problems: A Meta-Analysis
Psychological Bulletin 2004, Vol. 130, No. 4, 531–552
A meta-analysis of 95 studies was conducted to investigate the relations of heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activity (EDA) with aggression, psychopathy, and conduct problems. Analyses revealed a complex constellation of interactive effects, with a failure in some cases of autonomic patterns to generalize across antisocial spectrum behavior constructs. Low resting EDA and low task EDA were associated with psychopathy/ sociopathy and conduct problems. However, EDA reactivity was positively associated with aggression and negatively associated with psychopathy/ sociopathy. Low resting HR andhigh HR reactivity were associated with aggression and conduct problems. Physiology– behavior relations varied with age and stimulus valence in several cases. Empirical and clinical implications are discussed.

Robert M. Sapolsky
# The frontal cortex and the criminal justice system
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B (2004) 359
In recent decades, the general trend in the criminal justice system in the USA has been to narrow the range of insanity defences available, with an increasing dependence solely on the M’Naghten rule. This states that innocence by reason of insanity requires that the perpetrator could not understand the nature of their criminal act, or did not know that the act was wrong, by reason of a mental illness. In this essay, I question the appropriateness of this, in light of contemporary neuroscience. Specifically, I focus on the role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in cognition, emotional regulation, control of impulsive behaviour and moral reasoning...

Dominique J.-F. de Quervain, Urs Fischbacher, Valerie Treyer, Melanie Schellhammer, Ulrich Schnyder, Alfred Buck, Ernst Fehr
# The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment
www.sciencemag.org/ 27 August 2004
Many people voluntarily incur costs to punish violations of social norms. Evolutionary models and empirical evidence indicate that such altruistic punishment has been a decisive force in the evolution of human cooperation. We used H2 15O positron emission tomography to examine the neural basis for altruistic punishment of defectors in an economic exchange.

Brent Garland
# Neuroscience and the Law. Brain, Mind and the Scales of Justice
Dana Press | The American Association for the Advancement of Science | 2004

James R. Blair
# Neurobiological basis of psychopathy
The British Journal of Psychiatry (2003) 182: 5-7
To understand a psychiatric disorder we need to know why the pathology causes the behavioural disturbance, the neural structures implicated in the pathology and the cause of the dysfunction in the neural structures. With regard to psychopathy, we have clear indications regarding why the pathology gives rise to the emotional and behavioural disturbance and important insights into the neural systems implicated in this pathology. What remains unclear is why these neural systems are dysfunctional.

Jim Hom
# Forensic Neuropsychology: are we there yet?
Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 18 (2003) 827–845
The primary responsibility of the forensic neuropsychologist is to provide information based on scientifically-validated neuropsychological principles and clinical methodology that is pertinent to the Forensic Question at hand—which is not just whether the patient has dysfunction, but whether the dysfunction results from the event under consideration. To best answer the Forensic Question, the neuropsychologist must use a methodology that has been scientifically-validated on brain-impaired individuals, and can distinguish various brain conditions from each other as well as from normal variation.

Alfred J. Lewy
# Clinical applications of melatonin in circadian disorders
Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience - Vol 5 . No. 4 . 2003

Chronobiological disorders and syndromes include seasonal affective disorder (SAD), total blindness, advanced and delayed sleep phase syndrome, jet lag, and shift work maladaptation. These disorders are treated by adjusting circadian phase, using appropriately timed bright light exposure and melatonin administration (at doses of 0.5 mg or less). In some cases, it may be necessary to measure internal circadían phase, using the time when endogenous melatonin levels rise.

Jonathan D. Moreno
# Neuroethics: an agenda for neuroscience and society
Neuroscience, vol. 4, February 2003
In the context of this new interest on neuroethics, there are long-standing issues on the control or alteration of mind and brain that are sure to surface again. There is no better example than free will and determinism, a potential philosophical quagmire that has, since the ancient Greeks, inspired some of the most imaginative intellectual footwork. Does our growing knowledge about the origins and physical basis of mental states, let alone the possibility of controlling them with some specificity, threaten the liberal ideals of freedom and personal responsibility? In short, is neuroscience on the road to showing, once and for all, that mental states reduce to brain states, and even to brain states that could be subject to direct manipulation?

Adrian Raine
# The Biological Basis of Crime 
Chapter in Crime: Public Policies for Crime Control,  J.Q- Wilson and J.Petersilia (Editors) 2002, ICS Press: Oakland, California (pp. 43- 74)

Martha J. Farah
# Emerging ethical issues in neuroscience
www.psych.upenn.edu/ nature neuroscience, november 2002
If drugs and other forms of central nervous system intervention can be used to improve the mood, cognition or behavior of people with problems in these areas, what might they do for normal individuals? Some treatments can be viewed as 'normalizers', which have little or no effect on systems that are already normal (for instance, the mood stablizer lithium) and will not therefore figure in debates over enhancement. Other treatments can indeed make normal people 'better than normal'. Pharmacological enhancement is arguably being practiced now in several psychological domains: enhancement of mood, cognition and vegetative functions, including sleep, appetite and sex.

The Economist
# The ethics of brain science. Open your mind
www.economist.com/ May 23rd 2002
Although often overlooked, advances in neurotechnology raise ethical and legal questions of the same nature and gravity as advances in genetics... Concerns about neurotechnology fall into the same three groups. Neuroscientists may soon be able to screen people's brains to assess their mental health; to distribute that information, possibly accidentally, to employers or insurers; and to “fix” faulty personality traits with drugs or implants on demand. They may also, according to some philosophers, expose fallacies in philosophical thinking that go to the heart of human nature by showing how the brain actually makes decisions

Jaak Panksepp, Brian Knutson, Jeff Burgdorf
# The role of brain emotional systems in addictions: a neuro-evolutionary perspective and new ‘self-report’ animal model
Addiction, 2002, 97

R J R Blair
# Neurocognitive models of aggression, the antisocial personality disorders, and psychopathy
J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2001;71:727–731
The goal of this paper is to consider neurocognitive models of aggression and relate these accounts to explanations of the antisocial personality disorders. However, firstly it is necessary to differentiate between the disorders conduct disorder (CD), antisocial personality disorder (APD), “acquired sociopathy” and psychopathy, and reactive and instrumental aggression.

Kent A. Kiehl, Andra M. Smith, Robert D. Hare, Adrianna Mendrek, Bruce B. Forster, Johann Brink, Peter F. Liddle
# Limbic Abnormalities in Affective Processing by Criminal Psychopaths as Revealed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Biol Psychiatry, 2001;50:677–684
Compared with criminal nonpsychopaths and noncriminal control participants, criminal psychopaths showed significantly less affect-related activity in the amygdala/hippocampal formation, parahippocampal gyrus, ventral striatum, and in the anterior and posterior cingulate gyri. Psychopathic criminals also showed evidence of overactivation in the bilateral fronto- emporal cortex for processing affective stimuli. Conclusions: These data suggest that the affective abnormalities so often observed in psychopathic offenders may be linked to deficient or weakened input from limbic structures.

M C Brower, B H Price
# Neuropsychiatry of frontal lobe dysfunction in violent and criminal behaviour: a critical review

J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2001;71:720–726
Clinically significant focal frontal lobe dysfunction is associated with aggressive dyscontrol, but the increased risk of violence seems less than is widely presumed. Evidence is strongest for an association between focal prefrontal damage and an impulsive subtype of aggressive behaviour.

Justine Kruger, David Dunning
# Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 77(6), Dec 1999, 1121-1134
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of the participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities

Jan Volavka
# The Neurobiology of Violence: An Update
J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci 11:3, Summer 1999
Clinical correlates of violent behavior are known, but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. This article reviews recent progress in the understanding of such mechanisms involving complex interactions between genes, prenatal and perinatal environmental factors, and rearing conditions. Violent behavior is heterogeneous; that is, impulsive and premeditated violent acts differ in their origins, mechanisms, and management. Recent molecular genetic studies of neurotransmitter regulation are providing new insights into pathophysiology of violent behavior...

Eric R. Kandel
# A New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry
Am J Psychiatry 155:4, April 1998
In an attempt to place psychiatric thinking and the training of future psychiatrists more centrally into the context of modern biology, the author outlines the beginnings of a new intellectual framework for psychiatry that derives from current biological thinking about the relationship of mind to brain. The purpose of this framework is twofold. First, it is designed to emphasize that the professional requirements for future psychiatrists will demand a greater knowledge of the structure and functioning of the brain than is currently available in most training programs. Second, it is designed to illustrate that the unique domain which psychiatry occupies within academic medicine, the analysis of the interaction between social and biological determinants of behavior, can best be studied by also having a full understanding of the biological components of behavior.

Antoine Bechara, Daniel Tranel, Hanna Damasio, Antonio R. Damasio
# Failure to Respond Autonomically to Anticipated Future Outcomes Following Damage to Prefrontal Cortex
Cerebral Cortex, Mar/Apr 1996
Ascribing a good or bad value to a given deck requires a mechanism for weighing the overall proportion of reward versus punishment within that deck, that is, an association between a stimulus (a given deck) and either its goodness (average reward value) and badness (average punishment value). We propose that in normal individuals, the ventromedial prefrontal cortices contain neural circuitry that links the stimulus configuration of a given deck (neutral stimulus), to the representations of both reward and punishment, of goodness and badness.

H Damasio, T Grabowski, R Frank, AM Galaburda, AR Damasio
# The return of Phineas Gage: clues about the brain from the skull of a famous patient
www.sciencemag.org/ Science 20 May 1994: Vol. 264 no. 5162 pp. 1102-1105
When the landmark patient Phineas Gage died in 1861, no autopsy was performed, but his skull was later recovered. The brain lesion that caused the profound personality changes for which his case became famous has been presumed to have involved the left frontal region, but questions have been raised about the involvement of other regions and about the exact placement of the lesion within the vast frontal territory. Measurements from Gage's skull and modern neuroimaging techniques were used to reconstitute the accident and determine the probable location of the lesion. The damage involved both left and right prefrontal cortices in a pattern that, as confirmed by Gage's modern counterparts, causes a defect in rational decision making and the processing of emotion.

Antoine Bechara, Antonio R. Damasio, Hanna Damasio, Steven W. Anderson
# Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex
Cognition, 50 (1994)
Following damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, humans develop a defect in real-life decision-making, which contrasts with otherwise normal intellectual functions. Currently, there is no neuropsychological probe to detect in the laboratory, and the cognitive and neural mechanisms responsible for this defect have resisted explanation. Here, using a novel task which simulates real-life decision-making in the way it factors uncertainty of premises and outcomes, as well as reward and punishment, we find that prefrontal patients, unlike controls, are oblivious to the future consequences of their actions, and seem to be guided by immediate prospects only. This finding offers, for the first time, the possibility of detecting these patients’ elusive impairment in the laboratory, measuring it, and investigating its possible causes.

US Supreme Court
# Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. - 509 U.S. 579 (1993)
http://supreme.justia.com/

1. La tecnica scientifica utilizzata è testabile ed è stata testata? 2. La tecnica è stata sottoposta a revisioni fatte da revisori specializzati nel campo ed è stata pubblicata? 3. Qual è il grado di errore? 4. Ci sono degli standard/limiti che ne regolano l’applicazione? 5. La comunità scientifica ha accettato la tecnica?

Suzanne Orofino
# Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: The Battle Over Admissibility Standards for Scientific Evidence in Court
J. Undergrad. Sci. 3: 109-111 (Summer 1996)

H. G. Brunner, M. R. Nelen, P. van Zandvoort, N. G. G. M. Abeling, A. H. van Gennip, E. C. Wolters, M. A. Kuiper, H. H. Ropers, B. A. van Oost
# X-Linked Borderline Mental Retardation with Prominent Behavioral Disturbance: Phenotype, Genetic Localization, and Evidence for Disturbed Monoamine Metabolism
Am.J. Hum. Genet. 52:1032-1039, 1993

We have identified a large Dutch kindred with a new form of X-linked nondysmorphic mild mental retardation. All affected males in this family show very characteristic abnormal behavior, in particular aggressive and sometimes violent behavior. Other types of impulsive behavior include arson, attempted rape, and exhibitionism... The results of genetic linkage analyses and of biochemical studies suggest that a mutation affecting the structural gene for monoamine oxidase type A (MAOA) may be responsible for this syndrome.

R. W. Sperry
# A Modified Concept of Consciousness
Psychological Review, vol 76, n. 6, nov 1969

Challenges the assumption that the subjective phenomena of conscious experiences do not exert any causal influence on the sequence of events in the physical brain process. A theory of mind is suggested in which consciousness, interpreted to be a direct emergent property of cerebral activity, is conceived to be an integral component of the brain process that functions as an essential constituent of the action and exerts a directive holistic form of control over the flow pattern of cerebral excitation.

dna... genomica

Marco Nigro
# Banca dati del dna: note a prima lettura all’indomani dell’entrata in vigore del DPR 7 Aprile 2016 n. 87
Giurisprudenza Penale Web, 2016, 9 – ISSN 2499-846X |Articolo scritto il 8 settembre 2016
Ad un’attenta analisi criminologica e considerato l’alto tasso di recidiva criminale, la Banca dati andrà infatti a raccogliere proprio i profili di quelle persone tendenzialmente più esposte ad essere coinvolte in futuri reati. Pertanto, vista sotto questa nuova ottica, la nuova Banca dati si presterà non solo a perseguire finalità investigative ma anche finalità di deterrenza; chi verrà sottoposto a misura privativa della libertà personale (sia in base a una sentenza definitiva sia semplicemente in applicazione di una misura cautelare ), subirà come conseguenza automatica anche il prelievo coattivo del DNA e, pertanto, sarà consapevole (o almeno si spera) che nell’ipotesi un cui dovesse commettere un altro reato nell’ambito del quale sarà possibile lasciare sulla scena del crimine tracce biologiche, sarà piuttosto facile accertarne la colpevolezza.

Ministero della Giustizia
# Banca dati e laboratorio Dna, Orlando: a magistrati e forze dell’ordine tecnologie all’avanguardia
www.giustizia.it/ sabato 4 luglio 2015

# Ministero della Giustizia, Schema di regolamento recante “Disposizioni di attuazione della legge 30 giugno 2009, n. 85, concernente l’istituzione della banca datti nazionale del DNA e del laboratorio centrale per la banca dati nazionale del DNA, ai sensi dell’articolo 16 della legge n. 85 del 2009”.

Spencer S. Hsu
# FBI discloses errors in DNA analysis
The Washington Post, May 30, 2015

The FBI has notified crime labs across the country that it has discovered errors in data used by forensic scientists in thousands of cases to calculate the chances that DNA found at a crime scene matches a particular person, several people familiar with the issue said... The disclosure comes as some private researchers and lawyers in recent years questioned whether errors in the FBI’s national database of 13 million DNA profiles may have led judges and juries to give undue weight to DNA matches, long considered the “gold standard” in forensic science.