Behavioral & Neuroscience Law Committee (BNLC)

News and Research Blurb

Dear Readers,
Happy August! After two years as Editor, this is my final BNLC News and Research Blurb. I would
like to introduce James Andris, William & Mary Law School Class of 2015, as the new Editor. I am
confident that he will continue to keep the Committee and other readers updated on the newest
developments in the field.
As a reminder, you can view and comment on the BNLC Blurb on SciTechs Facebook and
LinkedIn pages. You may also wish to follow SciTech on Twitter @ABASciTech. In addition, please
invite your colleagues to join the BNLC links to join both the Section and the Committee are
available on the BNLC homepage.
Best,
Rachel Cannon
Eric Y. Drogin
BNLC Chair, Section of Science & Technology Law
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA
877.877.6692
eyd@drogin.net
edrogin@bidmc.harvard.edu

Linda Berberoglu
BNLC Vice Chair, Section of Science & Technology Law
Fourth Judicial District Court,
Psychological Services Division
Minneapolis, MN
612.348.7182
linda.berberoglu@courts.state.mn.us
linda.berberoglu@wmitchell.edu

Rachel Cannon
Editor, BNLC News and Research Blurb
William & Mary Law School, 2014
Williamsburg, VA
845.820.8829
rmcannon@email.wm.edu

BNLC BlurbAugust 2014

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DECISION-MAKING & RESPONSIBILITY

Dude, Wheres My Frontal Cortex? NAUTILUS. Some have argued adolescence is a cultural construct. In
traditional cultures, there is typically a single qualitative transition to puberty. After that, the
individual is a young adult. Yet the progression from birth to adulthood is not smoothly linear. The
teenage brain is unique. Its not merely an adult brain that is half-cooked or a childs brain left
unrefrigerated for too long. Its distinctiveness arises from a key region, the frontal cortex, not being
fully developed. This largely explains the turbulence of adolescence. During risky decision-making,
adolescents show less activation of some key sub-regions of the frontal cortex than do adults, and
among adolescents, the less activity in these regions, the poorer the risk assessment. (July 24, 2014)
http://nautil.us/issue/15/turbulence/dude-wheres-my-frontal-cortex
The Neurobiology of Rewards and Values in Social Decision Making. NATURE. How does our brain choose
the best course of action? Choices between material goods are thought to be steered by neural value
signals that encode the rewarding properties of the choice options. Social decisions, by contrast, are
traditionally thought to rely on neural representations of the self and others. However, recent studies
show that many types of social decisions may also involve neural value computations. This suggests
a unified mechanism for motivational control of behavior that may incorporate both social and nonsocial factors. In this Review, the authors outline a theoretical framework that may help to identify
possible overlaps and differences between the neural processes that guide social and non-social
decision making. (July 2, 2014)
http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v15/n8/full/nrn3776.html
MENTAL ILLNESS & BRAIN INJURY
A Better Understanding of Mental Illness Hasnt Reduced the Stigma Around It. WASH. POST. The tragic news
of Robin Williams's death by apparent suicide has again reignited a larger conversation about the
need to eliminate the social stigma still surrounding depression and mental illness. It's a conversation
that seems to keep resurfacing around tragic incidents over the past couple of years, so it's worth
asking whether the stigma is at all getting smaller. Unfortunately, there aren't very many rigorous
polls capturing American attitudes toward diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. There are some
signs of changing attitudes, though. Some improvements in understanding mental illness, however,
didn't help reduce the social stigma, researchers found. (Aug. 12, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/mtakzgn
Cause is Not Everything in Mental Illness. NATURE. Psychiatric researchers have uncovered a spread of
genetic clues to schizophrenia, potentially shedding some biochemical light on how this dreadful
disease develops. And more could yet follow: genetic understanding of psychiatric disorders,
together with more research on the unusual ebb and flow of circuits in the brain, promise a
revolution. People frequently ask about the cause of mental illnesses. The author, along with other
people he has met with OCD and other mental disorders, do not know and do not seem to care
about the who, the where, the why and the when of their illness. There is only how. (July 30, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/puyst3m
Pea-sized Brain Hub Could Shed Light on Depression. BBC. Scientists say a part of the brain, smaller than
a pea, triggers the instinctive feeling that something bad is about to happen. Writing in the journal
PNAS, they suggest the habenula plays a key role in how humans predict, learn from and respond to
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nasty experiences. And they question whether hyperactivity in this area is responsible for the
pessimism seen in depression. They are now investigating whether the structure is involved in the
condition. Scientists suggests the habenula is involved in helping people learn when it is best to stay
away from something and may also signal just how bad a nasty event is likely to be. (July 28, 2014)
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-28525974
Gene-hunt Gain for Mental Health. NATURE. Researchers seeking to unpick the complex genetic basis
of mental disorders such as schizophrenia have taken a huge step towards their goal. A recent
paper published in Nature ties 108 genetic locations to schizophrenia most for the first time. The
encouraging results come on the same day as a $650-million donation to expand research into
psychiatric conditions. Philanthropist Ted Stanley gave the money to the Stanley Center for
Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The institute describes the
gift as the largest-ever donation for psychiatric research. (July 22, 2014)
http://www.nature.com/news/gene-hunt-gain-for-mental-health-1.15602
Spark for a Stagnant Search. N.Y. TIMES. The Broad Institute, a biomedical research center, recently
announced a $650 million donation for psychiatric research from the Stanley Family Foundation
one of the largest private gifts ever for scientific research. It comes at a time when basic research
into mental illness is sputtering, and many drug makers have all but abandoned the search for new
treatments. Despite decades of costly research, experts have learned virtually nothing about the
causes of psychiatric disorders and have developed no truly novel drug treatments in more than a
quarter century. Broad Institute officials hope that Mr. Stanleys donation will change that, and they
timed their announcement to coincide with the publication of the largest analysis to date on the
genetics of schizophrenia. (July 21, 2014)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/science/650-million-psychiatric-research.html
Psychological Treatments: A Call for Mental-Health Science. Nature. How does one human talking to
another, as occurs in psychological therapy, bring about changes in brain activity and cure or ease
mental disorders? We don't really know. We need to. evidence-based psychological treatments need
improvement. Although the majority of patients benefit, only about half experience a clinically
meaningful reduction in symptoms or full remission, at least for the most common conditions.
Moreover, despite progress, we do not yet fully understand how psychological therapies work or
when they don't. Neuroscience is shedding light on how to modulate emotion and memory, habit
and fear learning. But psychological understanding and treatments have, as yet, profited much too
little from such developments. It is time to use science to advance the psychological, not just the
pharmaceutical, treatment of those with mental-health problems. (July 16, 2014)
http://www.nature.com/news/psychological-treatments-a-call-for-mental-health-science-1.15541
Mild Brain Injury Leaves Lasting Scar. SCI. AM. Although much attention has gone to severe forms
of traumatic brain injury (TBI) such as concussion-induced coma, far more common are the milder
impacts that come from falling off a bicycle, a low-speed car accident or taking a weak punch in a
fistfight. These injuries may not entail losing consciousness but rather just a brief lack in
responsiveness before recovering. Part of the challenge in understanding these injuries is how varied
they can be. Now a group of researchers in the U.K. have released results of a longer-term
investigation of individuals who have suffered such first-time, minor head injuries. Their findings
hint that the contusions leave a lasting trace in the brain. (July 16, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/m32e3o6
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ADDICTION & TREATMENT

Brief Counseling May Not Help With Most Drug Problems. NPR. Beating a drug habit is usually a long
process that includes talk therapy and, sometimes, medicine. Checking into a rehab facility can help
many people, too. But it can be hard to persuade someone to commit to that long-term treatment.
So public health officials lately have been cutting to the chase urging doctors in primary care and
in hospital emergency rooms to question all patients regarding drug use, then offer those with a drug
problem a 10- or 15-minute counseling session, right then and there. A small amount of treatment is
surely better than none, right? Maybe not. Two recent studies suggest such brief interventions may
not help people with drug problems at all. (Aug. 6, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/oyseppl
Orbitofrontal Activation Restores Insight Lost After Cocaine Use. NATURE NEUROSCIENCE. Addiction is
characterized by a lack of insight into the likely outcomes of one's behavior. Insight, or the ability to
imagine outcomes, is evident when outcomes have not been directly experienced. Using this
concept, work in both rats and humans has recently identified neural correlates of insight in the
medial and orbital prefrontal cortices. Researchers here found that these correlates were selectively
abolished in rats by cocaine self-administration. Their abolition was associated with behavioral
deficits and reduced synaptic efficacy in orbitofrontal cortex, the reversal of which by optogenetic
activation restored normal behavior. These results provide a link between cocaine use and problems
with insight. Deficits in these functions are likely to be particularly important for problems such as
drug relapse, in which behavior fails to account for likely adverse outcomes. (July 28, 2014)
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n8/full/nn.3763.html?WT.ec_id=NEURO-201408
PROSECUTORIAL & POLICE MISCONDUCT
U.S. Inquiry Finds a Culture of Violence Against Teenage Inmates at Rikers Island. N.Y. TIMES. In an
extraordinary rebuke of the New York City Department of Correction, the federal government said
on Monday that the department had systematically violated the civil rights of male teenagers held at
Rikers Island by failing to protect them from the rampant use of unnecessary and excessive force by
correction officers. The report, which comes at a time of increasing scrutiny of the jail complex after
a stream of revelations about Rikerss problems, also found that the department relied to an
excessive and inappropriate degree on solitary confinement to punish teenage inmates, placing
them in punitive segregation, as the practice is known, for months at a time. (Aug 4, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/lfq37q8
The Prosecutor and the Snitch. THE MARSHALL PROJECT. For more than 20 years, the prosecutor who
convicted Cameron Willingham of murdering his three young daughters has insisted that the
authorities made no deals to secure the testimony of the jailhouse informer who testified that
Willingham confessed the crime to him. Since Willingham was executed in 2004, officials have
continued to defend the account of the informer, Johnny Webb, even as a series of scientific experts
have discredited the forensic evidence that Willingham might have deliberately set the house fire in
which his toddlers were killed. But now new evidence has revived questions about Willinghams
guilt: In taped interviews, Webb, who has previously both recanted and affirmed his testimony, gives
his first detailed account of how he lied on the witness stand in return for efforts by the former
prosecutor, John H. Jackson, to reduce Webbs prison sentence for robbery and to arrange
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thousands of dollars in support from a wealthy Corsicana rancher. Newly uncovered evidence shows
that Jackson worked diligently to intercede for Webb after his testimony. (Aug. 3, 2014)
http://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/08/03/did-texas-execute-an-innocent-man-willingham/
Man Exonerated In 1982 D.C. Killing; DNA Reveals FBI Error in Conviction. WASH. POST. A D.C.
Superior Court judge has concluded that DNA evidence exonerates a man who spent 26 years in
prison in the 1982 killing of a Washington woman. Kevin Martins case marks the fifth time in as
many years that federal prosecutors in the District have acknowledged that errors by an elite FBI
forensic unit had led to a conviction that should be overturned. Martins is the first wrongful
conviction uncovered by prosecutors in the District review, and they said it is the only problem case
they have found. The public defenders office praised the effort to exonerate Martin but criticized
the U.S. attorneys offices review as secretive and the disclosure of the results as incomplete and
overdue. (July 21, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/lcgvczs
Complaints About Chokeholds Are Focus of Study. N.Y. TIMES. The city agency that investigates
allegations of police misconduct is studying the more than 1,000 complaints it has received in recent
years about police officers using chokeholds, the agency said on Saturday, two days after a man
died following a police encounter in which the hold appeared to be used. It has not been determined
whether the chokehold contributed to the death. The departments patrol guide prohibits
chokeholds, which it defines as including any pressure to the throat or windpipe, which may
prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air. (July 19, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/kzv3oqg
MEMORY
New Neurons Make Room for New Memories. SCI. AM. For many years scientists believed that you were
born with all the neurons you would ever get. We now know that the truth is not quite so simple. By
radioactively labeling DNA, researchers gradually began to find exceptions to the rule against new
neurons in the adult brain. Today scientists have identified two small regions where neurogenesis, or
the birth of new neurons, continues throughout life: the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus. The
former area is part of the brain's odor-discrimination system, so neurons there likely participate in
this process. But the hippocampus has a much broader function. It gives us memory. (Sept. 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/n72g5ky
All-Nighters Could Alter Your Memories. SCI. AM. False memories occur when people's brains distort
how they remember a past event whether it's what they did after work, how a painful relationship
ended or what they witnessed at a crime scene. People who don't get enough sleep could be
increasing their risk of developing false memories, a new study finds. When researchers compared
the memory of people who'd had a good night's sleep with the memory of those who hadn't slept at
all, they found that, under certain conditions, sleep-deprived individuals mix fact with imagination,
embellish events and even "remember" things that never actually happened. (July 28, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/p2ju6g8
If Trauma Victims Forget, What Is Lost to Society? NAUTILUS. Despite their sometimes debilitating
symptoms, veterans who have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are
working hard to carry out the tasks of day-to-day living. A cheap, generic pill commonly prescribed
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for high blood pressure may help these veterans do just that. The drug, a beta blocker called
propranolol, has gained attention for its potential to dial down traumatic memories, making them
less emotionally upsetting when theyre recalled. However, promising studies have also stirred
controversy, with some bioethicists warning that memory-dulling drugs could have profound,
unintended consequences for our psyches and our society. The debate is raising tricky questions
about whatand whomemory is for. Do we have the right to forget? (July 17, 2014)
http://nautil.us/issue/15/turbulence/if-trauma-victims-forget-what-is-lost-to-society
The Pill to Banish Painful MemoriesForget It! OXFORD PRACTICAL ETHICS. The idea that we should
greet with enthusiasm a pill that can eradicate memories of pain or trauma needs scrutiny. There are
four problems with such enthusiasm that should qualify any simple project for eliminating painful
memories. First, pains come in many different shapes, sizes and styles. Perhaps some dont deserve
to be called pain at all but if we use the expression pain to cover all sorts of suffering and
trauma, then it isnt at all clear (to put it mildly) that some slight electric shock item will have the
same neural status and be subject to the same memory elimination as the suffering involved in grief,
or unemployment, or humiliation or the extreme stress of training and striving for success in sport.
(July 10, 2014)
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/07/the-pill-to-banish-painful-memories-forget-it/
TRIAL ISSUES
Polygraphs Don't Work. So Why Do We Still Use Them? VOX. Polygraphs are regularly used by law
enforcement when interrogating suspects. In some places, they're used to monitor the activities of
sex offenders on probation, and some judges have recently permitted plea bargains that hinge on the
results of defendants' polygraph tests. Here's what makes this all so baffling: the question of whether
polygraphs are a good way to figure out whether someone is lying was settled long ago. They aren't.
This isn't exactly breaking news: a 1983 report for Congress ended up leading to a nationwide ban
on private employers giving polygraph tests to employees, and a 1998 Supreme Court decision
banned use of polygraphic evidence in federal courts because there is simply no consensus that
polygraph evidence is reliable. And yet polygraphs are still routinely used by government agencies
and law enforcement. This raises an obvious question: why are they relying on pseudoscience to
screen employees and solve cases? (Aug. 14, 2014)
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/14/5999119/polygraphs-lie-detectors-do-they-work
A Common Affective Code. NATURE NEUROSCIENCE. Our experiences of the external events and
objects that we encounter are colored by our internal subjective reactions to them; don rose-colored
lenses and even the gloomiest day gives way to a sunny disposition. But how does the brain encode
the affective valuepositive or negative valenceof stimuli? (July 28, 2014)
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n8/full/nn0814-1021.html
SENTENCING & PUNISHMENT
Do Prison Sentences Alter Oxytocin Levels? THE NEUROETHICS BLOG. With the increasing evidence of
epigenetics demonstrating the effects of the prison environment on the expression of genes and
hormones, it is important to realize that the first step of rehabilitating prisoners and transitioning
them back into society in a way that minimizes recidivism would be to focus on the conditions of
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their prison environment. Is this type of environment leading to emotional, physiological, and
biological changes within these men and women? And if so, is there a (neuro-)intervention that we
can use to further explore harmful effects on prison-mates (and reverberating effects on society)? A
possible candidate for such an exploration is oxytocin (OT), a peptide with a wide array of functions
in the human body both as a hormone and a neurotransmitter released by the hypothalamus, an area
of the brain that is primarily responsible for homeostasis throughout the body. Because recent
research has indicated the role of OT in social interaction and behavior, OT is being explored as a
potential treatment for antisocial disorders, autism, and psychopathologies. (July 29, 2014)
http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2014/07/do-prison-sentences-alter-oxytocin.html
Why the U.S. Should End the Death Penalty. N.Y. TIMES. The death penalty in the United States is in
crisis for many reasons. Most states now use injected drugs to kill death-row inmates, and those
drugs are in short supply as European manufacturers attempt to distance themselves from U.S.
executions. States have been left to concoct novel combinations of sedatives, anti-convulsants and
anesthetics and administer them without the help of professionals, who object to state-sponsored
life-taking. Meanwhile, a major reason the country has moved away from antique-seeming execution
methods toward lethal injection is that intravenous poisoning is less unpleasant for the public. The
nation has moved from treating executions like attractive public spectacles to being disgusted by the
act of purposely ending a human life. (July 26, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/k995tt5
Study: Cognitive Impairment, Other Mitigating Factors Present in Cases of Most Executed Inmates. ABA J. A
study of 100 inmates executed in 2012 and 2013 has found that the overwhelming majority had
mitigating factors in their backgrounds such as cognitive impairment and childhood trauma.
The study found that nearly nine out of 10 of the executed offenders fell into one or more of these
categories: They had an intellectual impairment, had not reached the age of 21 at the time of the
crime, suffered from a severe mental illness, or endured childhood trauma. More than half fell into
multiple categories. Severe functional deficits are the rule, not the exception, among the individuals
who populate the nations death rows. (July 24, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/khc95wb
Thousands of Felons Could Have Drug Sentences Lessened. WASH. POST. The U.S. Sentencing Commission
has decided that nearly 50,000 federal drug offenders currently in prison are eligible for reduced
sentences, a move that could flood the nations courts and prosecutors with applications for
leniency. By a unanimous vote, the commission made retroactive an earlier change that had
lightened potential punishments for most future drug offenders who are sentenced starting in
November. Fridays move extends that change to 46,000 current inmates, allowing them to have
their cases reviewed again by a judge. The vote is the latest sign of an emerging shift in the countrys
approach to criminal justice, particularly illegal drugs, in which the prevailing tough-on-drugs
mentality is giving way to an increased emphasis on treatment and health. (July 18, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/mdolvut
Why Don't You Ever See TV Interviews With Inmates? THE ATLANTIC. This summer marks the 40th
anniversary of Pell v. Procunier, in which four prisoners and three journalists challenged the
constitutionality of what was a recently revised section of the California Department of Corrections
Manual which states that [p]ress and other media interviews with specific inmates will not be
permitted. The plaintiffs lost. On June 24, 1974, the Supreme Court held that the regulation did not
violate the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First or 14th Amendments. Since Pell v. Procunier,
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access to inmates has diminished steadily from coast to coast. The fact that journalists are still
allowed direct contact through mail protects a decent portion of testimonial integrity. But what if the
inmate is illiterate? Or dyslexic? Or simply cant communicate well on the page? The ruling assumes
that visual and sonic information is not integral to reporting and does not carry its own unique body
of information. (July 15, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/ojcxse9
NEUROSCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
The Trouble With Brain Science. N.Y. TIMES. What would a good theory of the brain actually look like?
Different kinds of sciences call for different kinds of theories. Physicists, for example, are searching
for a grand unified theory that integrates gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak
nuclear forces into a neat package of equations. Whether or not they will get there, they have made
considerable progress, in part because they know what they are looking for. Biologists
neuroscientists included cant hope for that kind of theory. Biology isnt elegant the way physics
appears to be. The living world is bursting with variety and unpredictable complexity, because
biology is the product of historical accidents, with species solving problems based on happenstance
that leads them down one evolutionary road rather than another. (July 11, 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/pygltex
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