My Brain Made Me Do It

As a college student deep into my studies, I have developed a dependency on a warm, slightly sweetened morning cup of coffee. I begin each day (or sometimes each afternoon) with a mug full of the deep brown nectar, with its bold, slow roasted flavor. I suppose I could quit any time I want, right? You know, I could put the cup down and be the same. Maybe I would have a harder time getting started in the morning or be less productive at work. It might be a little more challenging to stay awake on my drive to campus. Maybe I’ll go to bed a little earlier and put off my assignments for another day. On second thought, maybe I’ll stick to my coffee. I don’t think I could do much without it.

Original Image from Americannonfiction.com

With the knowledge that I am far from being the only one
with this compulsion, I want to open the discussion on addiction and
responsibility. Getting started on ‘something,’ such as drugs, gambling--some
are now suggesting even the Internet--is generally considered voluntary. I
chose to start drinking coffee, knowing it would give me the extra boost to
push through another hour of studying during those late library nights. My body
liked the boost, my brain loved it and it has helped me get through school. Initially,
coffee turned me into Super Student, the boy who could perform astounding feats
of academic performance with the aid of two sugar packets and a shot of
hazelnut flavoring. Now, as I approach my senior year, things have changed. As
I mentioned before, I need, and I’ll use that term need carefully, a caffeine
boost to even reach my baseline.

I don’t think anyone would say I’m a bad person, or morally
weak for being hooked on caffeine, but it certainly is a dependency. People seemingly
can become addicted to anything, and they do. Common addictions are to alcohol,
gambling and illegal substances. Suddenly, when faced with these vices, the
situation takes a serious turn. Addicts will go to extensive measures to
achieve satisfaction. We have all heard stories of addicts stealing from
friends and family to pay for their next fix. There is no doubt that the
behavior of addicts can be destructive to themselves and those around them.
While we may be prone to feel anger and resentment towards addicts, it is also
important to understand the nature of addiction.

Original image from Thoughtbroadcast.com

Dr. Steven Hyman, current Director of the Broad Institute Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research (also the former provost of Harvard and former
director of the National Institutes of Mental Health), sat down with a few
members of the Neuroethics Program to talk about addiction. He gave a brief
explanation of the neuroscience behind compulsion and addiction. “We now
recognize the compulsion that is related to drug use involves brain reward
circuits, and the neurotransmitter dopamine,” said Dr. Hyman. He explained that
failures of the prefrontal cortex to exert top down negative control on these
behaviors make addicts susceptible to compulsive feelings.

To learn more about how this worked, I looked up what the
CDC had to say about addiction. In short, your brain is wired to respond to things
it believes will aid in survival e.g., food and sex. Pleasurable feelings
associated with an action make us more prone to repeat that action. That seems
intuitive, right? Drugs, as well as other addictive substances, make use of
this system. Dopamine, the main neurotransmitter for regulating pleasure, is
released at levels 2 to 10 times than normal during
drug use. This dopamine rush is responsible for the intense, euphoric ‘high’
experienced by drug users. Over time, the brain makes adjustments and produces
less dopamine than was produced when it was initially exposed to the drug. It
takes more of the drug to feel normal and that’s when it becomes dangerous. Addicts
fall into a downward spiral of trying to track down more and more of their
drug.

But does this make them bad people? Do we charge them with
being morally weak and feeble minded? A lot has changed with our understanding
of addiction in the last century.
Researchers have come to agree that addiction is a brain disease (or disorder).
This moves away from the view of addiction as a moral failure and supports the view
that addicts should be treated as any other ‘diseased’ individual. Our view of
addicts has changed, as control shifts from the addict’s ‘will’ to the addict’s
genes. The big question is who, or what, is responsible for an addict’s
behavior when their addiction pushes them to break the law? I want to know who
bears the responsibility when a drug addict’s behavior incurs a burden on
society. What should the court rule when the accused claims, “My brain made me
do it?”

Understanding Addicts

It is generally accepted that genetics play an influential role in addiction. Family history of
addiction as well as other genetic predispositions may determine an
individual’s vulnerability to addiction. Scientists have now come to understand
how these genes can affect a person’s reward system. Specifically, when an
addict comes into contact with his/her substance of abuse (or whatever it may
be) his/her reward system circuitry becomes over stimulated. Over time, there
is an actual change in the circuitry of the brain as a direct result of the addiction
process, says Dr. Hyman.

There is a need to adjust the law to acknowledge this
development in our understanding of addiction. Dr. Hyman asks, “So if addiction
is a disease, what’s the justification for punishment?” He continued to explain
that punishment has different goals. He first mentions deterrence, which serves
to set an example, such that others know not to do it. Next, Dr. Hyman
discussed incapacitation, which limits the individual’s ability to commit future
crimes and removing them from society. He mentions that modern society has over
used incarceration to the point where prisons are full of people that haven’t
committed violent crimes.

There are a lot of questions on how to treat addicts, as
each case is unique and presents unique challenges. Addicts have come to value drugs,
or whatever their vice is, over all other things. Government mandated punishment
might help some change their priorities, for others, punishment may be totally
ineffective. Additionally, shorter term or regular rehabilitative medical
treatment might be a better option than the alternative of lifelong punishment.
However, the threat of punishment holds some power; there is a societal
pressure to obey the law. Dr. Hyman says, “I’m not against all punishment,
because punishment or threat of punishment can be a tool.”

Addiction and the Effects on Society

The game gets more serious when you slide along the scale of
addiction, away from “wasting your time” to now becoming a threat to society. There
are cases of addiction where the addict has become dangerous.
Under such circumstances, punishment or incarceration may be the appropriate
course of action. It is easy to agree that individuals should not be allowed to
harm others. However, how should addicts (under the influence or experiencing
withdrawal) be punished or are addicts even responsible for their crimes? Should
dangerous addicts be lumped together with sociopaths and over dangerously
mentally disabled individuals? There is no clear easy answer to these
questions.

It is important to recognize that cases of addiction that do
not lead to crimes and physical violence still effect society. Consider the case
when a compulsive cigarette smoker develops lung cancer. Many would see that as
a self-afflicted condition, considering that the individual initially chose to
smoke. That individual in turn takes time, attention and medical resources that
may have been spent on someone else. They are using more healthcare resources
as they combat the effects of smoking.
While these addicts may not display physical violence, they absolutely have an
affect on those around them (not to mention the effects of second-

hand smoke). A similar argument could
be raised about the behavior of other substance abusers such
as alcoholics or marijuana smokers that may not directly affect others, but
lead to indirect costs.

My stance is that addicts are responsible for their crimes,
though they require special punishments. Solitary confinement may not do much
for a crack addict, but medication, therapy and consultation might. I will add
that a careful use of language is extremely important when discussing these
issues. It is not sufficient, or accurate at that, to say all addicts should be
punished for their behavior. The negative stigma surrounding addiction is the
result of branding all addicts as weak-willed or lawbreakers. Not all
addictions are created equal. While both groups of addicts, the ‘dangerous’
addict and the less extreme addict, both effect society, I believe it is
important to recognize that they exist in distinct groups.

The
distinguishing factor, I believe, is how they affect society. Those who are
seen as dangerous or breaking the law, such as physical violence or theft, must
be dealt with severely, such that their ailment may be remedied or at the very
least, they are no longer in a position where they could repeat the offense. These
individuals, whose loss of self-control makes them a danger to others, fall
into the same category as the severely mentally disabled. The more mild cases,
such as those with nicotine or alcohol dependence, are a little harder to pin
down. If they are not breaking a law, the healthcare system, or the judicial
system, are not in a position where they can force treatment upon them.

There is a difficult human rights issue that arises went
treating mental illnesses, including addiction. Court mandated treatment is
common, particularly for serious alcohol and substance abuse. However, it is
important to consider the rights, specifically the right to refuse treatment,
and the individual integrity of the addict. Dr. Janssens, chair of the Dutch
Association for Community Genetics and Public Health Genomics, discusses this
in her article, Pressure and coercion in the care for the addicted: ethical perspectives.
She brings up the importance of recognizing the competence and autonomy of the
addict. In countries such as the Netherlands, Germany and Austria, patients who
refuse or fail to give consent cannot be voluntarily admitted for treatment. ‘[They]
have to meet the dangerousness criteria of the laws,’ says Janssens and that
‘competent addicts who refuse care should be left alone, unless the threat they
pose to themselves or others is sufficiently grave.’ The article also addresses
the use of coercion in the treatment of addiction. In this context, coercion is
forcing someone to behave in an involuntary manner. Janssens argues that
coercion is unethical and that a person’s autonomy is violated as patients are
being driven by factors they do not want to be driven by.

Original Image from narconon.na/blog/

I am left with many questions about addiction, perhaps even
more than when I began writing this. Addiction, a disease that costs the United
States an estimated $600 billion annually, has a large impact on society. There is no
magic bullet to cure addiction (yet), which means that it is necessary for us
to decide the proper treatment and judiciary action for addicts. It is a
strange disease, one that strips patients of their control, without providing
protection from the repercussions of their actions. As we continue to study and
make decisions regarding addiction, it will be necessary to weigh the
importance of an individual’s rights versus the safety of those around them.

---

Want to cite this post?

Craig, E. (2012). My Brain Made Me Do It. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on

, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/07/my-brain-made-me-do-it.html

Let's talk about "Precrime"

Last month I blogged a
little bit about constitutional protection, lie detection technology, and
wildly speculative but totally valid concerns about what happens if someone
else could tell what I was thinking. As promised, this month I’m going to
follow up with some information about “precrime”: what it is, outside of a
science-fiction context, what it could become, and what
neuroscientific knowledge contributes to the area.

This is a wonderful book; everyone should go read it.

Pre-crime is exactly what it sounds like; it is the science
of predicting when crimes are likely to happen and trying to intervene and
prevent them. The idea that police officers could prevent crime by predicting
it captures the public imagination in a big way, leading to a lot of
sensationalism. There were a series of articles starting in 2004 about London’s
so-called “Homocide Prevention Unit,” which captured public imagination so much
it had a television show
based on it.[1]
According to more recent reports, the HPU identifies dangerous individuals
based on psychological
profile and reportedly maintains a list of the top 100 most dangerous
individuals in London.
In 2006, the First Judicial District of Philadelphia announced a partnership
with the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology which, among other things, created a
special unit in the Philly police department to “treat
and supervise convicted felons who have the greatest risk of being charged with
murder.”  In press releases, the organization was sometimes called the
Homicide
Prevention Unit and sometimes called the Strategic
Anti-Violence Unit (SAV-U).

CSI: TARDIS.
The Doctor always knows.

(It’s a post mentioning sci-fi, crime, tv shows, and London.
I had to.)

However, in these cases, what the media are calling
“precrime” are criminal justice units tasked with identifying specific people
who are either at-risk of victimization or likely to commit violent crimes. This is not exactly science fiction. Police departments, like the section of the Met that made headlines in 2004, use intelligence units to predict the likelihood of
certain types of violent crime. Some
courts employ working units that use sociological and psychological research methods to identify
and supervise parolees who pose the greatest risk of recidivism. The city of
Philadelphia has an Anti-Violence Supervision Program  designed to help paroled offenders
who they predict will commit “murder,
attempted murder, rape (or other sex offenses), robbery, or aggravated
assault.”[2] News media like to imagine these units are on
the forefront of precrime when in fact the tactics they employ are not all
that “futuristic.”

In fact, if we frame all crime prevention as precrime, then
it’s not hard to see how this is actually in effect all around us all the time. There are many general intervention strategies designed to lower crime rates or
educate vulnerable populations. Anyone of roughly my generation will remember
the D.A.R.E. program, which was both about preventing drug addiction and
lowering drug crime rates. (but by many accounts it failed spectacularly on both
fronts.) Programs like this could theoretically be seen as part of the
“precrime” umbrella, in that they are generally designed to target at-risk
populations (here, pre-teens) before they engage in criminal activity and try
to give them the education necessary to avoid that criminal behavior. Programs
like this also focus on prevention of victimization- and here you can imagine
the “Stranger Danger” programs of the same era (which also failed
spectacularly.)  There are much more effective modern versions
of these kinds of programs; CDC has an initiative specifically
aimed at violence prevention.

Media sensationalism and television dramas aside, these
programs are widespread, and their methods are not really that experimental.
Whether criminologists are employing sociological or psychological methods, one
of the major points of understanding crime has always been to reduce the amount
of it that is happening. And as controversial as things like the forensic
psychiatric prediction of future dangerous are (and have been),[3]
the fact is that the actual strategies employed by criminal justice units
attempting to reduce crime rates are not exactly the stuff of science fiction.
It also isn’t what intrigues us about precrime in a neurological age.

© Nevit Dilmen

To understand how precrime would work, neurologically, we
first have to understand the ways that neuroscience is already effecting
forensics.  As I mentioned previously, there is the idea that if fMRI brain scans
result in rudimentary “mind-reading,” then someone could be arrested if a brain
scan shows they are planning a crime. However, there is a giant difference between getting facts about
behavior and gleaning intent, and having this information via a brain scan does not mean we are actually "reading minds." Let me give an example: let’s say you have a
person who undergoes a brain scan, perhaps for medical reasons, or perhaps as
part of a futuristic lie detection test. The people reading the scan notice that this individual's brain shows evidence of prolonged and severe feelings of anger or depression, some preoccupation with death, and that they are telling the truth about a recent gun purchase. They alert the authorities because the pattern of facts
indicates this person may be a danger to themselves or to someone else.

Sound familiar?

This isn’t a new
procedure- this is, in fact, facts from a hypothetical brain scan being
interpreted in the same way facts from a verbal patient history or a psychological
evaluation would be interpreted. This individual might, based on this
information, be held on a psychiatric hold for a few hours or a few days, but
the intervention would be a medical one- not a criminal one. New technology does
not always result in total systemic change.

However, there is another area of neurology and precrime,
and this has to do with the idea that your brain contains your “fundamental
nature.” Neuroscience is imagined to uncover who you are in a way that prior
sociological or psychological methods alone could not.[4]
This includes being able to calculate things you are and are not likely to do, familiar territory for Neuroethics. Frequent readers of this blog have
seen discussions about free
will, autonomy,
criminal
responsibility, and the ethics
of prediction vs. intervention. When it comes to neuroscience and the
courtroom, a lot of discussion centers on the fear of criminal actors blaming
their brains for their decisions and shirking actual responsibility. As a result,
you have neuroscience enthusiasts and neuroethics scholars debating what will
happen if researchers are able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that every
action a person takes can be traced through a network of neurons firing. This,
as one set of scholars recently argued, “challenges
the very notion of conscious will on which the criminal system is based.” [5] 

Translation: it really, really messes with mens rea.

Now, consider what happens
when we reverse engineer “My Brain Made Me Do It.” Researchers figure out, a)
the specific characteristics of a “murderer’s brain” and b) the environmental
factors most likely to trip the “murderer’s brain” into committing murder.
Instead of using that information to retroactively explain a murder, “precrime”
technology would use it to contain people before
they commit murders. This is of great ethical concern, and rightfully so,
as it is generally considered a violation of the U.S. Constitution to hold
someone just because they might commit a crime in the future. [6] In order to accurately match brain scans to criminal histories and then spot
patterns, researchers would have to keep large databases of personal
information, and these databases would have to include people who had not yet
committed crimes.

Given that these
issues are highly controversial, it is not that there will be a giant prison
built just to hold all of the future “brain-criminals” anytime soon. However – this does not mean that police
units cannot use this sort of information to help focus surveillance. And if
this sounds more immediately frightening to you than the “brain-criminal” prison,
perhaps that is because we know police units already do this. We know they do
this because we all already do this. This
is the exact reasoning behind sex offender registries, community notification
laws, and publicly searchable police records, systems built on the
understanding that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior and
that knowledge is the best defense. What if patterns of past behavior were bolstered,
not only with a sense of “mental abnormality” as they are with sexual predators,
but with tags for “violence” alleles and “criminal impulsivity” brain
malformations? Is that a potentially problematic use of such information, or is
that just using science to design a more efficient criminal justice system? Let
me know what you think!

Want to cite this post?


Cipolla, C. (2012). Let's talk about "Precrime". The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/07/lets-talk-about-precrime.html

---

[1] I say
“so-called” because although it is identified as the HPU in a few press
releases, I cannot find any official documentation of this unit, although there is a Specialist Crime and Operations Bureau.

[2] It is
unclear whether the Anti-Violence supervision division mentioned later is a descendant of the prior relationship with UPenn.

[3] In the early 1990s, as laws targeting violent sex offenders were
weathering their first constitutional challenges, there were lawyers who
complained the study of predicting dangerousness was barely better then
phrenology. I also should add, at this point, if it hasn’t become
patently obvious to anyone who has read my blog posts previously or looked at
my website, I am a
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies scholar who studies sexuality and crime.
Sexually motivated crimes and the people who commit them are, by and large,
treated differently within the United States criminal justice system than
crimes (and criminals) that are not sexually-motivated. This is particularly
true when it comes to issues like harm reduction and recidivism, both of which
factor heavily in most discussions of “precrime.”

[4] There is
a simultaneous and related conversation going on regarding the use of genetics.
See: Michael T. Treadway and Joshua W. Buckholtz, "On the Use and Misuse
of Genomic and Neuroimaging Science in Forensic Psychiatry: Current Roles and
Future Directions," Child and
Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America 20, no. 3 (2011).

[5] Giuseppe Sartori, Silvia Pellegrini, and Andrea Mechelli, "Forensic
Neurosciences: From Basic Research to Applications and Pitfalls," Current Opinion in Neurology 24, no. 4
(2011).

For a classic argument, see: Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen, "For the Law, Neuroscience Changes
Nothing and Everything," Philosophical
Transactions: Biological Sciences 359, no. 1451 (2004). Adina Roskies, "Neuroscientific Challenges to Free Will and
Responsibility," Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 10, no. 9 (2006). and Adina L. Roskies, "How Does the Neuroscience of Decision Making Bear
on Our Understanding of Moral Responsibility and Free Will?," Current Opinion in Neurobiology, no. 0.

[6] This is called preventive detention,
although there are giant exceptions: holding an accused criminal between when
he is charged and when he is tried, civil commitment, certain portions of the
PATRIOT act, etc. Violent sexual
predators who are indefinitely committed have to have been convicted of at
least one violent sexual crime.

Who Owns My Thoughts?

I attended the excellent Neuroscience, Law, and Ethics of Lie Detection Technologies Symposium in May, and as a consequence, I have spent the last month trying to answer questions I hadn’t even thought to ask before: Who owns the thoughts in my head? Could I be compelled to submit them? Can someone else decide that keeping my ideas to myself is a violation of the law or a threat to my country? If they force me to surrender them, do I lose ownership? So this week, I thought I would share some of the things I learned as I tried to find out answers.

You can actually buy this online. I am considering getting it printed on a hat.

Two preliminary points: first, I want specify what I mean when I say “compelled” to undergo a brain scan. It seems, at least it seemed to me while sitting in the audience, that Americans are pretty afraid of having someone else read their minds without their permission, or, worse, being forced to have their minds read. This extends even to a simplistic form of mind reading such as rudimentary lie detection. I have to say, I understand this fear, and for me, it boils down to this – I would be afraid that the government could, by compelling me to undergo a brain scan, make me give up information that I didn't even know I was concealing. Lest I spin totally into conspiracy theory territory, I tried to approach the question more systematically by researching how brain scans fit into our current constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure.

Second, a note about how lie detection is currently used. Both during the lunch we had earlier in the afternoon and the symposium itself, all of the featured speakers pointed out that fMRI lie detection evidence isn’t admissible in court.[1] Laken himself has even been involved in several landmark cases. In actuality, the forensic application of lie detection technology goes far beyond courtrooms. Results from a lie detector, including those done via fMRI, can be used in a variety of situations, including, but not limited to: arbitration, civil commitment, and parole, sentencing or administrative hearings. They can also, in theory, be used by law enforcement officials in the course of an investigation as long as such procedures lead to evidence that can be used in court, and nothing is obtained illegally (more on what that means later).[2] So, fMRI technology can already be used for legal applications, both in the civil and the criminal areas (although I am leaving aside some of the more complex legal arenas, like military courts and investigations done under the PATRIOT act). 

So, let’s go back to my original question: who owns the thoughts in my head? Do I own them? What process must someone follow in order to seize them?

I started by thinking about thoughts as a product of my body. After all, don’t I own what is inside my body?  Well, it turns out, I only own it until someone takes it from me. This might happen as part of a routine medical examination, where a doctor takes a blood or urine sample for testing. I might even request that someone remove something from inside of me- a tumor, for instance. But once they have taken it, guess what? I don’t own it anymore.[3] And that is just for medical use. Legally, persons can be compelled to give up physical evidence, such as DNA, or succumb to measurements and recording, such as fingerprints. All of these fall under the Fourth Amendment, meaning as long as law enforcement attains the proper warrants, they can gather physical evidence- even if that evidence is part of your body.

But thoughts are different- or, at least, they probably are. As both Paul Wolpe and Hank Greely emphasized during the symposium, lie detection technology, even technology measured through fMRI, is likely going to be considered testimony and not physical evidence. That is, it would be subject to the rules of the Fifth Amendment and not the Fourth.[4] The Fifth Amendment, for anyone who hasn’t spent a ridiculous amount of his or her life watching Law & Order, is the rule that says you can refuse to testify if the testimony you give would incriminate you. Since about the mid 1960s, physical evidence has been exempt from the Fifth Amendment, meaning you can be forced to surrender physical evidence (or, for example, try on a glove or clothing in front of a jury) even if that evidence would incriminate you. 

To paraphrase Nita Farahany, the Fifth Amendment covers what comes out of your mouth,

as long as what comes out is words and not saliva.

Okay, that’s all well and good - there are people considering how and when someone can scan my brain in the event that I am charged with a crime. But what about accidental discovery? What if, while being scanned about whether or not I ran that stop sign over on Clairemont Avenue last week (for the record, I absolutely did not), I happen to let slip that I’ve discovered the secret to safe, efficient nuclear power? (I also haven’t done that, just to be clear.) Does the person questioning me now own that statement too? Could they compel me to release it to the government? Or, worse yet, could they claim it as their own?

There are already laws and procedures in place for what happens if, in the course of the investigation of one crime, law enforcement officers find information about other criminal activity (you can, for example, give a witness immunity in order to convince them to testify.) But my right to protect my knowledge about nuclear power is another matter entirely. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that questions about brain images and ideas that only exist in someone’s head (i.e., haven’t been written down yet) get into a fair amount of copyright, trademark and patent law… and my head already hurts.

I know those feels, man.

Luckily for me and my aching head, legal scholar Nita Farahany has already started investigating these questions. In “Incriminating Thoughts” she points out that emerging neurotechnology has so changed the way we  measure the mind, it justifies an entirely new system of cataloging evidence.[5] She argues for abandoning the older physical/testimony dichotomy (which I’ve starting thinking of as the Fourth/Fifth Amendment dichotomy) in favor of a spectrum of evidence which includes “identifying, automatic, memorialized, and uttered.” This would cover all the different ways a person’s thoughts could be measured or recorded during the investigation of a crime.



In a newer article titled “Searching Secrets,” set to be published sometime later this year, she applies this standard to a wider spectrum of information, including “tangible and intangible thoughts, ambitions, and expressions.”[6] In her system, investigators would be guided by the rules of intellectual property law rather than more traditional Fourth Amendment concepts of property (home, possessions, papers.) This system integrates copyright concerns into discussions of what secrets can be investigated and uncovered, by whom, and for what purpose, and would offer more protection. This is largely because it would have a wider concept of the “reasonable expectation of privacy,” the guiding principle when deciding what can and cannot be collected as evidence without a warrant.[7] This integration would also, as far as I understand, allow for a more thorough investigation into how copyright functions when it comes to un-uttered and un-written ideas.

Alright, so, that covers whether or not I can be forced to submit my mind to scrutiny, and what people can do with the thoughts they may find there. The answers are far from set in stone, but there are definitely debates going on, which puts my mind at ease (har har.)

Except...

What about the things I am thinking of doing? What if, in the course of an investigation of my thoughts (admittedly one using a much more advanced system than we have now) law enforcement agents find that I am planning to commit a pretty terrible crime?

Precrime. It Works.

This may seem like I have ventured into the realm of science fiction (when an audience member asked a similar question during the symposium, Paul Wolpe answered "What you are talking about is Minority Report.") In fact, future dangerousness has long been a concern of forensic psychiatry, and there are forms of prediction in forensic application now. Civil commitment hearings are designed to determine the likelihood that someone will cause harm in the future, that is, whether the person in question is a danger to self and others, and therefore should be locked up. But what about beyond that? What about systems designed not only to curtail the actions of dangerously ill persons, but systems which attempt to prevent crime by predicting it?



In terms of brain imaging, and certainly as far as the technology discussed at the symposium, this is a futuristic vision indeed. But that doesn't mean there aren't emerging crime prediction technologies. (Go ahead and Google "precrime" if you don't believe me.) Tune in next month, where I’ll be blogging about how, where, and why "precrime" technology is being developed.

Want to cite this post?


Cipolla, C. (2012). Who Owns My Thoughts?. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/06/who-owns-my-thoughts.html

So

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[1] For details about the use of Steven Laken’s technology in court, see David Nicholson’s blog post. For an overview of the standards for admitting scientific evidence, see Jamie Witter’s guest post.  

[2] For an overview of emerging uses for neuroimagining,  including fMRI, see Joseph R. Simpson, Neuroimaging in Forensic Psychiatry : From the Clinic to the Courtroom (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

[3] The rules of ownership governing medical tissue samples have been the subject of a lot of recent media attention, largely due to the publication of Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

[4] Sarah E. Stoller and Paul Root Wolpe, “Emerging Neurotechnologies for Lie Detection and the Fifth Amendment,” 33 Am. J.L. & Med. 359 (2007).

[5] Nita A. Farahany, “Incriminating Thoughts,” Stanford Law Review Vol. 64, 351 (2012); Available at SSRN.

[6] Nita A. Farahany, “Searching Secrets,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, (2012). Available via UChicago.edu.

[7] Basically, and I am really paraphrasing here, the key is that copyright also gives people the right not to publish something, that is, to keep it secret. Farahany uses the famous J.D. Salinger case as an example.