Law Commons^™

Imaging The Mind, Minding The Image: An Historical Introduction To Brain Imaging And The Law, Laura Stephens, Shahram Khoshbin

Faculty Scholarship

Since ancient times, people have yearned to attribute human behaviors to a physical source within the head. Recently, neuroimaging technologies have given us the technical ability to look at the living brain, its structures, and some of its functions without the need for invasive procedures. However, the science has a long way to go before these technologies can allow us fully to appreciate the anatomical and physiologic underpinnings of human thoughts, states of mind, motives, will, or behaviors.

In this Article, we use an historical overview to introduce the various new technologies for imaging the brain. Today, the goal of …

Pediatric Neuroimaging Ethics, Jocelyn Downie, Jennifer Marshall

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Neuroimaging has provided insight into numerous neurological disorders in children, such as epilepsy and cerebral palsy. Many clinicians and investigators believe that neuroimaging holds great promise, especially in the areas of behavioral and cognitive disorders. However, concerns about the risks of various neuroimaging modalities and the potential for misinterpretation of imaging results are mounting. Imaging evaluations also raise questions about stigmatization, allocation of resources, and confidentiality. Children are particularly vulnerable in this milieu and require special attention with regards to safety guidelines and modality adaptations. This article examines pediatric neuroimaging practice through an ethics lens. Most authors in the field …

Functional Neuroimaging And The Law: Trends And Directions For Future Scholarship, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Under the umbrella of the burgeoning neurotransdisciplines, scholars are using the principles and research methodologies of their primary and secondary fields to examine developments in neuroimaging, neuromodulation, and psychopharmacology. The path for advanced scholarship at the intersection of law and neuroscience may clear if work across the disciplines is collected and reviewed and outstanding and debated issues are identified and clarified. In this article, I organize, examine and refine a narrow class of burgeoning neurotransdiscipline scholarship; that is, scholarship at the interface of law and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Imaging Body Structure And Mapping Brain Function: A Historical Approach, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Now in its second decade, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) localizes changes in blood oxygenation that occur in the brain when an individual performs a mental task. Physicians and scientists use fMRI not only to map sensory, motor, and cognitive functions, but also to study the neural correlates of a range of sensitive and potentially stigmatizing conditions, behaviors, and characteristics. Poised to move outside the traditional clinical and research contexts, fMRI raises a number of ethical, legal, and social issues that are being explored within a burgeoning neuroethics literature. In this Article, I place these issues in their proper historical …

Functional Neuroimaging Information: A Case For Neuro Exceptionalism?, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

The field of neuroethics has been described as an amalgamation of two branches of inquiry: “the neuroscience of ethics” and “the ethics of neuroscience.” The neuroscience of ethics may be described as “a scientific approach to understanding ethical behavior.” The law and ethics of neuroscience is concerned with the legal and ethical principles that should guide brain research and the treatment of neurological disease, as well as the effects that advances in neuroscience have on our social, moral, and philosophical views. This Article is a contribution to the law and ethics of neuroscience.

No longer new or emerging, the burgeoning …

Neuroimaging And The "Complexity" Of Capital Punishment, O. Carter Snead

Journal Articles

The growing use of brain imaging technology to explore the causes of morally, socially, and legally relevant behavior is the subject of much discussion and controversy in both scholarly and popular circles. From the efforts of cognitive neuroscientists in the courtroom and the public square, the contours of a project to transform capital sentencing both in principle and in practice have emerged. In the short term, these scientists seek to play a role in the process of capital sentencing by serving as mitigation experts for defendants, invoking neuroimaging research on the roots of criminal violence to support their arguments. Over …