Schedule
Oct 5: Introduction to main topics: Responsibility, competency, prediction of criminal behavior, and the neural basis of law and punishment
Reading
  1. •Neuroscience and the Law, D.M. Eagleman, Houston Lawyer
  2. •Neurolaw New York Times Magazine
 
Oct 12: Background: Genetics, Behavior and Law
Reading
  1. •
    1. Behavioral Genetics and Crime by Owen Jones
    2. •Caspi and Moffitt (2006) Gene–environment interactions in psychiatry: joining forces with neuroscience. Nature Neuroscience
    3. •Optional reading: Caspi et al (2003). Influence of Life Stress on Depression: Moderation by a Polymorphism in the 5-HTT Gene. Science 301, 386
 
Oct 26: The frontal cortex and limbic system: the neuroscience of morality, aggression and empathy
Reading
  1. Sapolsky, R. The frontal cortex and the criminal justice system. Phil Trans Royal Soc B. 359(1451): 1787-1796
  2. Greene J, Haidt J (2002). How (and where) does moral judgment work? Trends Cogn Sci. 2002 Dec 1;6(12):517-523
 
Nov 2: Antisocial behavior and mental disorders
Reading
  1. •Scarpa and Raine (2003). The psychophysiology of antisocial behavior: Interactions with environmental experiences
 
[No class on November 17th]
 
Nov 9: New technologies and courts of law
Reading
  1. Bles and Haynes (2008). Detecting concealed information using brain-imaging technology. Neurocase,14:1,82-92.
  2. Nature Neuroscience Editorial: Deceiving the Law
  3. News story: Complex brain imaging is making waves in court
  4. "Duped" - New Yorker article on fMRI lie detection - Margaret Talbot
 
Nov 16: Predicting recidivism and how to have meaningful rehabilitation
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
  3. •Spadling (1998). Florida's chemical castration law: a return to the Dark Ages
  4. •Weinberger et al (2005). Impact of surgical castration on sexual recidivism
 
Nov 23: 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 7: Final projects due
Course Information
Neuroscience and Law seminar series
 
Time: Mondays 5 - 7 pm
October 20 - Dec 8, 2009
 
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 or 713-798-6224
 
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.