Neurorealism - describes how coverage of fMRI investigations can add an objective ‘realness’ in the eyes of the public. Neuroessentialism - can be depicted.

•Neurorealism - describes how coverage of fMRI investigations can add an objective ‘realness’ in the eyes of the public.

•Neuroessentialism - can be depicted as equating subjectivity and personal identity to the brain.

•Neuropolicy - describes attempts to use fMRI results to promote political and personal agendas, as in the case of interest groups that uphold an investigation of social problems using fMRI.

• “Because of the weight people give scientific evidence, brain images carry a power detached from expert analysis or judicial instruction”. [George Annes, legal scholar]

• “Responsibility attribution and related practices are human activities constructed by us for good reason, and they need not confirm to any genuine or ‘ultimate’ responsibility”. [Stephan Morse, legal scholar]

• “Neuroimaging research is at odds with legal perspectives of culpability, it cannot provide sufficiently reliable findings and neuroscientists need to act out against its use in court”. [Helen Mayberg, neuroscientist]

• “The brain is a decision-making machine, and consciousness is an ‘emergent’ property possibly to guide post-hoc analysis of behavioral consequences”. [Michael Gazziniga, neuroscientist]

• Roper vs Simmons - cited behavioral and sociological evidence that adolescents are not in full control of their actions and, accordingly, should not be held as culpable as adults for their crimes.

• The Supreme Court had received neuroscientific evidence of adolescent brain development, studies which illuminate the behavioral deficits on which the Court relied.

• Justice Kennedy held that juveniles were ‘categorically less culpable than the average criminal’ and, hence, ineligible for the death penalty.

• Brian Dugan convicted of rape and murder while already serving 2 life sentences.

• After presenting neuroimaging evidence of psychopathy, the jury spent 5+ hours deliberating on capital punishment.

• What should have been an open-and-shut case was cast into doubt after considering the mitigating neuroimaging argument.

• Jury not allowed to see scans, but neuroscientist allowed to interpret them for the jury.

• Atkins vs Virgina (2002) – The Supreme Court overruled the death penalty for mentally impaired persons.

• Frye vs U.S. – applied in courts for the last seven decades and still the standard. Require that an admissable technique have general acceptance in scientific community.

• Daubert vs Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals – calls on the courts to act as gatekeeper of the relevance and reliability of scientific evidence.

• Individuals suffering lesions in orbitofrontal cortex (including regions identified by fMRI studies as being involved in deception) exhibit “pseudopsychopathic personality” syndrome.

• Although these individuals may exhibit some characteristics of psychopathy (including impulsiveness and aggression) they also tend not to lie. On the contrary, they frequently exhibit a callous disregard for social conventions and a rather brutal honesty that may be offensive to decorum and the feelings of others (New et al, 2010).

• The technique known as “Brain Fingerprinting” has received considerable media attention as the next generation of lie detection.

• However, there is relatively little existing information regarding the neural correlates of deception in individuals with psychopathic traits.

• Fullam et al. (2009) found evidence that BOLD responses during deception in a number of brain areas of interest were correlated with some psychopathic personality traits such as prefrontal and orbitofrontal areas.

• Neuroethics – Mapping the Field: (i) the implications of neuroscience for notions of the self, agency and responsibility; (ii) social policy applications that make new resources such as healthcare and education available to society; (iii) therapeutic intervention through advances in clinical practice; and (iv) public discourse and training.

• Researchers in cognitive neuroscience widely accept that fMRI must be restricted to testing well-defined hyptheses to base meaningful Inferences.

• These studies use reverse inference to make claims about how differences in activation ‘blobs’ between two different images map onto mental processes.

• This method carries assumptions about the links between these processes and brain activity in localized regions.

• For instance, the claim that mothers show activation in additional areas to the cries of their own babies does not suggest the brain is hardwired for maternal instincts.

• Critics of such studies jokingly suggest that researchers who violate the assumptions of reverse inference should scan themselves before and after learning how to design an imaging experiment to find its neural correlate!

• In their discrediting of the field of neuroscience, researchers have accused legal scholars and journalists of the fallacy of composition – attributing beliefs about the revolutionary power of neuroimaging and the reduction of the mind to the field as a whole.

• While a degree of cynicism to the widespread use of neuroimaging is healthy, dismissing the entire field with swooping statements “has shed more light than heat” [Neuroscience and Law Blog].

• “I think that we have to distinguish here between reduction as a tool and reduction as a philosophy. As a tool, it’s very effective—you try to disassemble a piece of complex machinery by identifying and investigate each part at a time, and then proceed to explore the interactions of the part in the higher level…I am not sure how many investigators who use reductionist tools in their research would claim that the lowest level of analysis is sufficient to explain the entire system. I believe very few think that way”. [Abi-Rached, 2009]

• Racine et al. (2005) systematically reviewed media coverage of neuroimaging studies.

• They noted an ‘overwhelming optimism’ for the technology coupled with the neglect of technical and ethical concerns.

• With a commitment to communication, the neuroscience community could avoid the public backlash and funding freezes that have taken other areas by surprise – including stem cells, genetic testing and population screening. [Illes et al., 2010]

• Changes from Within – A useful method to regulate the quality of research so as to avoid overinterpretation is with ‘watchdog’ authorities.

• There is a vast community of web blogs that provide astute observations on research trends which, unlike peer-reviewed journals, can be unbiased in their selection of articles and objective in their critiques.

• The ‘Voodoo Correlations’ controversy highlighted the usefulness of open debate to raise issues about the ethics and conduct of research communication.

• Changes from Outside – Illes et al. (2010) highlight some major challenges to improve media engagement, such as: better funding and professional incentives; career development opportunities in media; innovative approaches to reach wide audiences.

• Traditional ‘awareness’ campaigns are rarely effective enough. A promising strategy used by the American Academy of Neurology was a YouTube channel for young film makers to compete for a grant by making short docs in brain disorders.

• As neuroscience has already amassed public interest, strategies that use creative platforms are likely to be successful.