"Cross-Cultural Variation and fMRI Lie-Detection"
Welcome to a paper I’ll be referencing IRL. I was actually fighting with myself last night about populations to use for my fMRI study (I don’t want to use college students, since my study isn’t about college students), which Bruni brings up in the abstract:
On several basic features of perception and cognition, Western university students turn out to be outliers relative to the general human population, so that data based on them should be interpreted with caution.
So, I’m really glad I have this paper to base my request of special population off of now…since I’m not sure how easy it will be getting access to the population I need.
So big up to Tommaso Bruni, former ‘guest list neighbor’ at the Neuroethics and Law Blog! From Bruni’s conclusion:
The long and the short of this paper is that cross-cultural experiments on fMRI lie-detection should be performed before this technique enters courts, because the lab experiments with US citizens risk having an unacceptably low external validity. As a matter of fact, I suggest the technique cannot live up to the Daubert standards without such checks, because no error rate calculated in the lab can be projected onto real life without them. I do not take any position about the ethical acceptability of fMRI lie-detection, but argue that more neuroscientific research is needed (not only in the cross-cultural field) in order to assess its full potential both legally and morally. I therefore encourage and endorse more funding for fMRI lie-detection research. Only sound and carefully conducted empirical research can lead to new forensic technologies that can be useful to ascertain the truth and to justly determine legal proceedings. (via)
I ABSOLUTELY agree with him on why (technically) lie detection isn’t ready for courts.
Hey look internet, I agree with someone!
"How Blasts Injure the Brain"
Published today on PLoS, “A Possible Role for Integrin Signaling in Diffuse Axonal Injury” researchers shed light on understanding cellular injuries in the brain caused by explosion blasts. Unfortunately, the relevance of this expands further than the 300,000 soldiers that have experienced a traumatic brain injury. So how can a explosion of sound cause brain damage?
Through a microscope, the researchers saw that the “blast” caused swelling, breakage, and other signs of injuries to the neurons’ spindly axons and dendrites, which send and receive signals from other neurons. A series of biochemical experiments found that the mechanical force disrupted proteins called integrins that help anchor cells to the scaffold of protein that surrounds them. Integrins have roles in a wide range of biochemical signaling pathways, but Parker’s team identified one particular pathway that seems to play a role in injury to axons.
A previous, but related study found:
… recent findings of damage to the brain’s white matter, which is made up of axons, in Iraq war veterans injured in blasts, Parker says. All the same, he cautions that much more work will be needed to see whether these culture dish findings are relevant to what happens in the brain of a soldier exposed to a blast. “It would be inappropriate to extrapolate from a dish to some dude’s head,” Parker says. via
These results potentially can do two things: explain why Vasospasms can exist sans bleeding in the brain and of course lead toward treatments.
