Posts tagged SCIENCE

Adrian Raine on Neurocriminology for the WSJ

The field of neurocriminology—using neuroscience to understand and prevent crime—is revolutionizing our understanding of what drives “bad” behavior.

If early biological and genetic factors beyond the individual’s control make some people more likely to become violent offenders than others, are these individuals fully blameworthy? And if they are not, how should they be punished?

A more profound understanding of the early biological causes of violence can help us take a more empathetic, understanding and merciful approach toward both the victims of violence and the prisoners themselves. It would be a step forward in a process that should express the highest values of our civilization.

Bonus video of Dr. Raine explaining the fMRI images above. Really glad to see his work out there. 

“The narcissistic self and its psychological and neural correlates: an exploratory fMRI study”

The concept of narcissism has been much researched in psychoanalysis and especially in self psychology. One of the hallmarks of narcissism is altered emotion, including decreased affective resonance (e.g. empathy) with others, the neural underpinnings of which remain unclear. (…) 

Psychological and neuroimaging data indicate respectively higher degrees of alexithymia and lower deactivation during empathy in the insula in high narcissistic subjects. Taken together, our preliminary findings demonstrate, for the first time, psychological and neuronal correlates of narcissism in non-clinical subjects. This might stipulate both novel psychodynamic conceptualization and future psychological-neuronal investigation of narcissism.

Obvious next round, unhealthy subjects then ID 2 types of empathy circuits in both. boom. Also? When is the insula and ACC not involved? mmmm mm.

Neuroimages in court: not as bad as we thought

So what I usually get from the lawyers I corner speak with about using brain scans as evidence, it’s mostly hell to the no, because A) we’d need an expert B) experts are expensive C) client is broke. Another response is jurors won’t get it and it will just complicate things. The consensus is jurors can’t handle a brief fMRI lecture to understand it’s meaning and limitations so they’ll just figure it’s all hard science, self evident to the argument being made and treat it like photographic proof.  dun dun.

Until recently, a couple of really big studies supported this notion and everyone at the cool table got on board. Brain porn in the court became a thing and whispering sexy hard-sciencey neurobabble in your ear is what it did seducing you with its pretty colored blobs. Then it kinda fell into a place like tween technology can, where we can’t trust it running the streets alone without a decent explanation, some background and a curfew. But new research contradicts this concept “prompting a rethinking of the ‘threat’ of neuroscience in the courtroom”. dun dun. (ok I’ll stop.)

The deal is the initial studies didn’t look at the effect of using the images with mock jurors in. a. full. mock. trial. Srsly, methodologies? Anyway, this article (+1 for the multidisciplinary collabo) gives a detailed overview of 3 new studies that are show findings contradictory to the neurolaw safety dance that’s so trendy. No reason for that link except, it’s the only chance it will ever have. …k, moving on.

I’m all for being cautious, but we are tip toeing, slow poking and dumbing down when what we need is just a little explanation, insight and mostly more experiments designed to replicate a real world trial experience. Showing images and peppering it with a scientific summary is like convicting by confession alone without seeing the interrogation. It turns out:

…in experiments with crimes ranging from homicide to unintentional assault, the authors found no evidence that neuroimages influenced jurors’ decisions about criminal liability or sentences. Convictions and punishments were, however, related to the level of perceived control by the defendant, and this was affected by the presence and kind of expert testimony – but not by neuroimages. -Gurley and Marcus

The next study danced a similar jig when looking at the use of neuroimages in an insanity defense, “Gurley and Marcus did not dissociate the effects of the neuroimage from those of the neurological expert testimony. Schweitzer and Saks did, and found no impact of neuroimages over and above the effects of verbal neuroscience testimony.” Further work can go beyond culpability and look at sentencing as well.  

Three recent studies (the 3rd unpublished) have all suggested testimony weighed heavier in juror decision making (exculpatory fashions) than brain scans … and may have me thinking I’ll reopen my expert witness biz. Giddyup.

wnyc:

Is There A Place For The Mind In Physics?

So I want you to do something for me. I want you to think of a blue monkey. Are you ready? OK, go! Visualize it in your head. Any kind of monkey will do (as long as it’s blue). Take a moment. Really, see the little blue dude! Got it? Great. Now, here is the question: Where did that thought fit into reality? How was it real? Where was it real?

Another way to ask this question is: Was the “blue monkey thought” just the electrical activity of your neurons? Was that all there was to it? If not, might your private internal screening of the blue monkey be something altogether different? Was it, perhaps, part of something just as fundamental as quarks and Higgs bosons?

This is the fundamental question behind philosopher Thomas Nagel’s controversial book: ”Mind & Cosmos: Why The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False”. I’ve been slowly making my way through Nagel’s short (though, at points, dense) volume for a few months now. Back in October our own most excellent philosopher of Mind, Alva Noe, presented his own take on Nagel’s work. Yesterday, Tania Lombrozo extracted some real-world questions out of Nagel’s philosophy. Today I want to begin thinking a bit about what and where the Mind might be in relation to my own science of physics. CONTINUED. 

UmYuss. But not really. 

A Flip Flop Amygdala Activation Model in Psychopathy

A new paper looks at evidence (data from both human and animal studies) for amygdala dysfunction in psychopathy with regards to “deficit in fear-recognition, lower conditioned fear responses and poor performance in passive avoidance, and response-reversal learning tasks…in order to provide:

 A model of differential amygdala activation in which the basolateral amygdala (BLA) is underactive while the activity of the central amygdala (CeA) is of average to above average levels is proposed to provide a more accurate and up-to-date account for the specific cognitive and emotional deficits found in psychopathy. In addition, the model provides a mechanism by which attentional-based models and emotion-based models of psychopathy can coexist.  [via, img]

Important because a unified amygdala function has been indefensible given the complex array of subserving nuclei -the basolateral nucleus being the primary source of cortical sensory input and the central nucleus being the main source of output/control centers. 

In his controversial 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist, argued that the brain activity of ancient people - those living roughly 3,500 years ago, prior to early evidence of consciousness such as logic, reason, and ethics - would have resembled that of modern schizophrenics.

Jaynes maintained that, like schizophrenics, the ancients heard voices, summoned up visions, and lacked the sense of metaphor and individual identity that characterizes a more advanced mind. He said that some of these ancestral synaptic leftovers are buried deep in the modern brain, which would explain many of our present-day sensations of God or spirituality. [via, img]

What is all this? Rows I, III, and V show coronal slices of a healthy comparison brain and II, IV, and VI those of Patient B.

Pretty much every study relevant to me mentions the insula, as it’s well accepted that it’s involved in the processing of feelings like pain/pleasure and feelings of emotions. So I see activation in the insula and go yeahyeah, of course. 

But here’s a case study of a Patient B who presented with Herpes Simplex Type 1 encephalitis, that lead to complete bilateral insula damage. However, the rub is B was still able to express emotions and remain self aware/introspective. 

One of my favorite answers in the self awareness battery was when the researcher asks, “Am I aware of myself?” and B says, “You look very handsome. I think you know what to do here.”

Nice one.

Anyway, the deal is this case study lends strong evidence to support the suggestion that the neural substrate of feeling states starts at a subcortical level then goes up to the cortical level. Layers people. Layers.  

Damasio A, Damasio H, & Tranel D (2012). Persistence of Feelings and Sentience after Bilateral Damage of the Insula. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) PMID: 22473895

“The Sexual Responses of Sexual Sadists”

Often, new questions and gaps in the research are a reflection of the way in which we define behavior, definitions which may change over time. From a recent Canadian study:

Part of the controversy and disagreement about the essential features of sexual sadism may arise from the contexts in which sadism is studied. Forensic studies will mostly comprise sadists who have committed sexual assaults or homicides or who have experienced serious difficulties resulting in clinical attention, whereas nonclinical studies of community sadists might include individuals who have committed sexual assaults but would also include a majority of individuals without any such history. The types of sadistic activities observed may differ by context, with more antisocial sadists seen in a forensic setting being more likely to engage in severe sadistic activities such as torture, cutting, or mutilation, whereas community sadists are more likely to engage in binding, spanking, and whipping. [via]

Clearly, there is now a crossover involving such activities within the community, which is one of the reasons why consent/non-consent and consenting-non-consent studies have become a study focus.

img: Clips from Lot in Sodom, 1933. 

H/T overmuziek:

from the video: Haleek Maul - Fraulein

I all too often suggest that the legal community ought to be aware of the limitations of neuroscience, but this doens’t imply it shouldn’t go the other way as well. Most of the expert witnesses I worked with were overly cautious since their opinion matters in not just the current case accepted, but possibly, in any case like it from that point forward. Opinions can be manipulated pretty easily, and the two evils you’re faced with is either a door too narrow or too wide. 

At the end of 2011 The Royal Society published a report stating that in the USA, neurological or behavioural genetics were used as evidence for 722 legal defences between 2005 and 2009. In Italy, a woman had her sentence for murdering her sister reduced after the defence lawyers presented genetic and imaging evidence that her brain’s anatomy was different to that of 10 normal women. On the other hand, in 2008 an Indian woman was convicted of poisoning her husband when a scan of brain activity allegedly revealed that she had knowledge of events surrounding her spouses death which could only have been gained through experience. Neuroscientists are now often called upon as expert witnesses and so should have a understanding of the legal and ethical implications of their testimonies. [-Natasha Bray, via]

The Economist on the ethical case for using robots urging us to develop ways to deal with the dilemmas associated with robotics, “As they become smarter and more widespread, autonomous machines are bound to end up making life-or-death decisions in unpredictable situations, thus assuming—or at least appearing to assume—moral agency. ”

This is especially relevant in military use.

Campaign groups such as the International Committee for Robot Arms Control have been formed in opposition to the growing use of drones. But autonomous robots could do much more good than harm. Robot soldiers would not commit rape, burn down a village in anger or become erratic decision-makers amid the stress of combat. [via] [img]

H/T themoralperspective