Schedule
Oct 8: Introduction to main topics: Responsibility, competency, prediction of criminal behavior, and the neural basis of law and punishment
Reading
  1. •Neurolaw from New York Times Magazine
 
Oct 15: ‘My brain tumor made me do it’: The unconscious brain, frontal lobe, limbic system, and questions of criminal responsibility
Reading
  1. •From Neuroscience and the Law: chapter by Gazzaniga and Stevens, chapter by Morse
 
Oct 22: Genes, Environment and Behavior
Reading
  1. •Caspi and Moffitt (2006) Gene–environment interactions in psychiatry: joining forces with neuroscience. Nature Neuroscience
  2. •Scarpa and Raine (2003). The psychophysiology of antisocial behavior: Interactions with environmental experiences
 
Oct 29: The frontal cortex and limbic system: the neuroscience of morality, aggression and empathy
Reading
  1. •Greene J, Haidt J (2002). How (and where) does moral judgment work? Trends Cogn Sci. 2002 Dec 1;6(12):517-523
  2. •Sapolsky, R. The frontal cortex and the criminal justice system. Phil Trans Royal Soc B. 359(1451): 1787-1796
  3. •Caspi et al (2003). Influence of Life Stress on Depression: Moderation by a Polymorphism in the 5-HTT Gene. Science 301, 386
 
[No class on November 5th]
 
Nov 12: Competency and Capacity
Special guest lecture by Professor John Mixon, University of Houston Law Center
Reading
  1. •Neuroscience and the Law: L. Tancredi, Neuroscience Developments and the Law -- only read section "Cognition and Legal Competency" (pp. 80-94)
 
Nov 19: Neuroimaging, genetic technologies, and courts of law
Reading
  1. •From Neuroscience and the Law: chapter by Greely
  2. •"Duped" - New Yorker article on fMRI lie detection - Margaret Talbot
 
Nov 26: Predicting recidivism
Reading
  1. •Profiling extraordinary acts of crime: Secret Service report on School Shootings – can we predict who will become a killer?
  2. •Criminal profiling: Dangerous Minds -- New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell
 
Dec 3: Theories of punishment (what is the purpose of our criminal system?) and how juries make decisions (to what extent does it involve bloodlust?)
Reading
  1. •Death Penalty Deters Murders - News story
•  Levitt SD (2004) Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors That Explain the Decline and Six That Do Not. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(1): 163-190.
 
Dec 10: Rehabilitation, or, how to not punish the entire person: from lobotomies to chemical castration to new prospects
Reading
  1. •Spadling (1998). Florida's chemical castration law: a return to the Dark Ages
  2. •Weinberger et al (2005). Impact of surgical castration on sexual recidivism
 
Dec 12: Final projects due
Course Information
Neuroscience and Law seminar series
 
Time: Mondays 5 - 7 pm
October 8 - Dec 3, 2007
 
Location: Baylor College of Medicine, Room T-111
 
Instructor:
David Eagleman, PhD, Director, Initiative on Neuroscience and Law
Email: eagleman-AT-bcm.edu
Phone: 713-798-6699
 
Text: Neuroscience and the Law: Brain, Mind, and the Scales of Justice. Ed: Brent Garland
 
Who can take the course:
This course is offered to graduate and medical students from BCM and UTH, law students from University of Houston, undergraduates from Rice, and practicing physicians, scientists and lawyers.
 
Course Summary
This course addresses how new discoveries in neuroscience will intersect with the making of law, the punishment of criminals, and the development of new rehabilitation strategies. The readings will bring together a unique conjunction of neurobiology, legal scholarship, and policy making. The goals of the course will be to facilitate an understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of behaviors that are subject to legal consequences for individuals and groups, and using this emerging base of scientific information to design modern, evidence-based policy.
 
Emerging questions at the interface of law and neuroscience include: Is it a legitimate defense to claim that a tumor or a brain injury ‘made you do it’? In what ways are the brains of minors similar or different from adult brains in their capacity for decision-making and impulse control – and how do those similarities/differences help inform policy for punishment and rehabilitation? Can modern technologies such as structural and/or functional brain imaging be leveraged for rehabilitation? Who should have access to information about our brains? How should juries assess responsibility, given that most behaviors are driven by systems of the brain that we cannot control?
 
In conjunction with currently available literature on the topic, individual student projects will study and develop suggestions for new experiments and evidence-based policy. An example would be designing experiments that could identify neural signatures predictive of recidivism, and developing the policy structures in which these predictions should be used.