Talk:Neurolaw

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 September 2019 and 4 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Warstepnick.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:09, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

WP is not a library list
See also section was completely unmanageable. I have eliminated all the refs from the see also section. Nevertheless they could be used as references for future use and integrated into the article. --Garrondo (talk) 15:58, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

List copied from see also section the 27-01-2011
Popular Press Articles

Rosen, Jeffrey (2007). The Brain on the Stand. New York Times. Magazine section, March 11.

Carlat, Daniel (2008). Brain Scans as Mind Readers? Don’t Believe the Hype. Wired Magazine, May 18. http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-06/mf_neurohacks

Talbot, M (2007). Duped: Can brain scans uncover lies? New Yorker vol. July 2 pp. 52-61.

Lehrer, J. (2008). Misreading the Mind: We’re looking for too much in brain scans. Los Angeles Times, Jan 20.

Neuroscience Articles and Reviews

Logothetis, N (2008) What we can do and what we cannot do with fMRI. Nature 453 (7197) pp. 869-78.

Haynes and Rees (2006) Decoding mental states from brain activity in humans. Nature Reviews Neuroscience: 7 (7) pp. 523-534.

McCabe, DP, and AD Castel (2008). Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition 107 (1) pp. 343-52.

Weisberg, DS, FC Keil, J Goodstein, E Rawson, JR Gray (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of cognitive neuroscience. 20 (3) pp. 470-7

Burns, JM and RH Swerdlow (2003). Right orbitofrontal tumor with pedophilia symptom and constructional apraxia sign. Archives of neurology 60 (3) pp. 437-40.

Wager, TD, JK Rilling, EE Smith, A Sokolik, KL Casey, RJ Davidson, SM Kosslyn, RM Rose, JD Cohen (2004). Placebo-induced changes in FMRI in the anticipation and experience of pain. Science 303 (5661) pp. 1162-7

Law Review Articles and “Neurolaw” Scholarship

Greely, H and J Illes (2007). Neuroscience-based lie detection: The urgent need for regulation. American Journal of Law and Medicine 33 pp. 377-431.

Roskies, A. (2008). Neuroimaging and inferential distance. Neuroethics 1 (1) pp. 19-30.

Feigenson, N (2006). Brain imaging and courtroon evidence: on the admissibility and persuasiveness of fMRI. International Journal of Law in Context 2 (03) pp. 233-255.

Mobbs, D, HC Lau, OD Jones, CD Frith (2007). Law, responsibility, and the brain. PLoS Biology 5 (4) pp. e103.

Morse SJ. (2007) The non-problem of free will in forensic psychiatry and psychology. Behavioral Sciences and the Law 25 pp. 203-220.

Books

Frith, C (2007) Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World. Blackwell Publishing.

Notice about page revisions
As part of a project for my Neuroscience class at Boston College, I will be updating this article with two of my peers in hopes of obtaining good article status. The page will undergo substantial revisions over the next month as we complete this task. Other editors are free to help by either editing the article directly, or sending messages to my talk page. If you have questions about the project, please also see my talk page. Pathyland (talk) 16:21, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Cool! Looie496 (talk) 01:03, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Unsourced questions
I moved the unsourced questions from the old version here if anyone wants to use it. Viriditas (talk) 08:17, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Some questions to which neurolaw practitioners seek answers include:


 * How will increasingly accurate lie detection technologies impact our court system?
 * How will new insight into brain disorders affect legal notions of intent and culpability?
 * How would legal standards (such as self-defense, sentencing, intent to kill, competence to stand trial, cruel and unusual punishment…) change in the face of developments in neuroscience? Should they change?
 * Who should be responsible for the integration of new neuroscience into our legal system - judges, legislators, executive leaders, scientists, or some combination thereof?
 * How might neuroscience-based understanding of behaviors such as addiction lead to changes in sentencing or treatment guidelines?
 * How is neuroscience evidence being used by legal decision makers? Is the evidence being used appropriately?

DARPA?
I have no idea why material about DARPA research is being added to this article. What does that have to do with the relationship between neuroscience and the law? Looie496 (talk) 05:50, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I can't find any relationship, and would support removing that section. Kansan (talk) 05:51, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The relationship is there, but it has not yet been made explicit due to poor use of sources. See my comments below. The original editor is trying to lead up to a discussion of the ethics of consent when it comes to the use of enhancements which Begley 2006 alludes to in a legal context.  Wikipedia is strict when it comes to making sources and the source material explicit, so either more sources need to be found and/or major editing needs to take place. Viriditas (talk) 07:32, 23 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Addendum: It does seem that an educational assignment relating to this page is currently taking place, which could potentially be the source: Kansan (talk) 05:52, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm one of the group members working on the assignment. I'm not sure it why it was added either. I'll talk to the group member and see if it's justified, otherwise it'll come down soon.Pathyland (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:01, 23 March 2011 (UTC).
 * The editor is on the right path but subsequent edits will be needed. For example, the Begley 2006 source says the following:
 * "Presumably, workers and students will have the legal right to reject such 'enhancements,' Prof. Moreno says. Soldiers might not. Should they? Will employers or others pressure people to accept better thinking through technology? Will the use of such 'augmented cognition' by business competitors have the same effect as steroids in baseball, where the perception that everyone is using them exerts pressure to do the same, to keep the playing field level? There has been virtually no debate on the ethical questions raised by the brave new brain technologies."


 * This has not yet been added to the article yet, which is why Looie496 (and myself) were initially confused. On Wikipedia, the general rule of thumb is to rely heavily on secondary sources that explicitly mention the topic.  Otherwise, there could be problems with topic scope and relevancy when the article comes up for independent review.  It is also a good idea for an editor to search out better sources on the subject when we run into situations like this.  If none can be found, then the material should be removed. Viriditas (talk) 07:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Added Offtopic until context is made explicit. Much of this can be salvaged with either more sources or better use of the current sources. Viriditas (talk) 07:36, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation issue
I've noticed that older sources (particularly from the 1990s) use the concept of "neurolaw" in a different context, usually referring to TBI and SCI. I am not clear if the term for this type of injury law has changed or how it relates to this topic. My guess is that it does not, and the term is no longer used to refer to this type of law practice. Can someone look into this? I will post a query on the law project as well. Viriditas (talk) 02:01, 24 March 2011 (UTC)


 * From my understanding, the references to TBI or SCI are applications of neurolaw, in that they are accessing culpability of a criminal action. Because diseases and injuries can affect the decision making process, the neuroimaging of TBIs and SCI's have been used in legal courts. Shortly a section will be added under criminal law that describes its relation in further detail. If the sources you found do not coincide with my understanding, could you cite them so I can take a better look at the subject. Boothra (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:57, 24 March 2011 (UTC).


 * That sounds reasonable. My concern arose when I noticed there was nothing about the origins of the field in the article.  I went looking and found several sources that attribute the modern origins of the term to J. Sherrod Taylor.  Perhaps you could look into that.  Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 00:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Peer Review
This topic seems very relevant and controversial in today's society, and I thought you guys have done a really good job of providing an extensive, unbiased account of the issue. I especially like the "criticism section." I thought it was well done and had a lot of valid points. One portion of the page that I thought was a little confusing and could use some elaboration is the part about the effect of the environment, law, and behavior on each other. It seems interesting, but I couldn't quite follow what you meant, and then it seems as if it is just left abruptly and only talked about briefly. I wasn't quite sure how it fit into the rest of the paragraph, though it did have a figure associated with it. Also, this might be a bit of a judgement call, but I thought there was a couple of instances where a word or phrase was unnecessarily linked, like "grey area" and the word "intentionality." Otherwise, great job, I couldn't find any obvious grammar or capitalization mistakes, and I thought the whole article flowed really well. Easy to read and informative. Gleasoda (talk) 06:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the suggestions Danny. We got rid of the "environment-law-behavior" diagram that I think you're referring to as being confusing. I would agree, and I think the page flows better now without it, while still providing the same information. We also deleted the link to "grey area"- I'm not sure why it was in there in the first place. "Intentionality" actually does have a lengthy article about it however, and it seems like it would be worthwhile to still link it, so I'm not going to change that one. Glad to hear you thought the article was good, and thanks for the advice.Pathyland (talk) 15:38, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting topic. I agree that the beginning of the Criminal Law section is pretty confusing, but the idea seems promising. Try to rework that part. You do a good job describing the debates surrounding neurolaw and the potential effect of popular culture on people's perceptions of it. In the section about Crime Prediction you don't explicitly state whether neuroscience has been put to use in that are or whether there's research being done on it or if it's still just an idea. I though the sections on Nootropics and military usage of neuroscience were really interesting and relevant to your topic. Good job all around. mccartqd (talk) 19:18, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the suggestions- we've modified the Criminal Law section to clarify the information and hopefully make it less confusing. We also expanded the Crime Prediction sub-section to emphasize that it is not actually being used in practice, but is the subject of some research and mostly an idea for the future. Good to hear that you found the Nootropics & Military sections interesting. Thanks for the help. Pathyland (talk) 03:52, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The introduction concisely explains the field of neurolaw. I think it would be nice if there was more info on the underlying technologies. Also it was interesting hearing about the potential use of neuroimaging in lie detection and it would be nice if there was more information on this. The ongoing research section could also be expanded. In addition, I do not feel that figure one is necessary. In general, the article covers field of neurolaw well and flows cohesively. canesir (talk) 20:38, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your suggestions. I agree that the lie detection information should be expanded upon, seeing that it is a large component of how neuroscience is hoping to be additive. Boothra (talk) 16:26, 27 April

Peer Review 2
In examining the content of the project topic, this page is well done in the breadth of information given. I like how the lead contains questions as an introductory hook. However, I am wondering if a couple of subtopics could be expanded. It may be interesting to add a heading at the end for 'research directions' so that the ending of the page is not so abrupt - either by adding more about future research, or combining the two subsections you have that allude to research, just to keep the flow more organized. I also agree with the above poster about the discussion of environmental pressures affecting the proposal of laws; I would have liked more explanation about that because I did not really understand how it related to that section of criminal law. In terms of writing voice and grammar, be careful to keep a neutral tone because sometimes I caught instances of phrases such as "the legal system MUST" - see if there is a way to neutralize the tone in those types of sentences. I did see some grammatical and spelling mistakes such as the misuse of "its" vs. "it's" and "conscience" vs. "conscious" along with a couple of typos. Finally, when mentioning terms that can be acronyms, it's easiest to mention the full version of the term the first time it appears in the article, and then put the acronym in parentheses, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) - and then each time after that when you use the same term, you can just use the acronym and not have to worry about having to explain what it stands for again. Similarly, when doing internal links, you may want to just link the word the first time it appears and then keep it in regular type for each subsequent time it comes up. Overall though, this article is very informative-keep up the good work! -- JCal2011 (talk) 20:38, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * We've expanded a subsection in the "Underlying science" section to address current on future research. Hopefully this will address the point that you bring up about research directions. However, we've placed it in the middle section of the article instead of at the end as you suggested. This is because it seems to be more appropriate to that section, rather than as a concluding paragraph. Also, we cleaned up the section about "environmental pressures" and removed a diagram that seemed to be confusing a lot of reviewers and readers as you mentioned. In regard to your warning about neutral tone, I read through it and didn't find any particularly noticeable problems with the POV. I think some of the examples of what you were referring to were more for emphasis, rather than promoting a certain approach to neurolaw over another. None of the experienced Wikipedia reviewers seemed to have any complaints, so I don't think there are any major changes necessary for this. Nevertheless, I'll keep an eye out for bias when I do the final read through before the deadline. Thanks for mentioning some of the grammer/spelling problems; I'm cleaning those up as I go along and will be sure to fix anything. Same goes for acronyms- I'll be sure to look for those and explain/link them as necessary as the article is completed. Thanks for the review! Pathyland (talk) 23:45, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Peer Review 3
Overall I found the article to be well developed with informative subtopics. The article contained an intriguing overview of Neurolaw by presenting the material in a manageable, easy to read manner. I found the article’s external links to be especially interesting and relevant to the topic at hand. However, I did encounter some minor errors. The peer reviewer before me addressed a couple of grammatical errors that I thought should be quickly addressed too (conscience → conscious; it’s → its). Furthermore, the case sited within the Brain Death subtopic regarding the 23-year-old female in a vegetative state, seems to be lacking essential background information. For such a monumental case it seems as though you might want to provide readers with additional case information in regards to the women’s name, where the research was conducted, when the study was done, by whom the study was done by, ect. Otherwise, I really thought the question section within the Nootropics top was a useful way to invite and encourage future writers to expand the article even more. --Patrickmcgillen (talk) 01:47, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads up on some of the smaller gramatical and spelling errors- we're fixing those as we go along and we'll definitely make sure to do a final check before the deadline. I expanded the brain-death subtopic as per your suggestions. The patient's name is unavailable as it was likely anonymized for her privacy. I tried to include more specific examples how of the study was conducted and what was notable, but the institution where the research was conducted and lead authors did not seem very relevant to neurolaw itself and so I omitted it. Wikipedia tends to avoid excess information such as this beyond what is actually important to the underlying points. Of course, the case is cited and all of this would be available to an interested reader. Thanks for the suggestions- we'll definitely keep it all in mind as we finish revising the page. Pathyland (talk) 04:32, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Peer Review 4
After reviewing the article, it seems very well put together and comprehensive in its elaboration of Neurolaw; however, the page begins in "Underlying Technology" with emphasis on neuroimaging. I believe that your article would be improved if you discussed additional scientific approaches to criminal law. For instance, there is ongoing research that claims certain genes are linked to violence among males, such as a defect in monoamine oxidase A. These types of research are being used to predict criminality in patients. The implications of genetic profiles in criminal law are clear violation of the Constitutional right to privacy. In addition, I believe readers would enjoy a greater depth of discussion on how specifically the neuro-imaging technologies are used in the court of law as evidence. Under the Criticism section, it might be prudent to include an example or case where neuroimaging technology proved fallible or unreliable. Keep up the good work! Robinsao (talk) 09:08, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your advice. The order of the article has been rearranged to emphasis certain topics under neurolaw. For example, criminal law was placed before underlying technology to manipulate the direction of the article. Also, several additions to subtopics have been added to give a more scientific approach, like you mentioned. In response to your suggestion to include genetic profiling, we are not going to add genetic profiling into the article because it is not essential information to the understanding of neurolaw in an encyclopedia setting. Neurolaw is an extremely interdisciplinary field that can be applied or abused in almost every legal setting. Boothra (talk) 01:38, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Peer Review 5
The article is very well organized and flows quite well. What may throw the reader off a bit could be the first topic that you start off with: Underlying technology. If I may point out as a suggestion, starting off with criminal law would increase flow, and set the ground for why neuroimaging is needed in the first place. I also found the section of nootropics to be particularly interesting as it is a major issue in any learning environment. Perhaps including some statistics about the number of nootropic users and those who use it without being prescribed for it could give some insight into the reality of the situation on a college campus and to your question: Will it become necessary to use an enhancing drug simply to remain competitive? Other than that, keep up the great stuff! (Luhizi (talk) 19:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC))
 * Thanks for the suggestions. I agreed with moving the Underlying Technology section, so it is now after "Role in criminal law" and "Nootropics". With Nootropics though, as much as I would like to include statistics as per your suggestion, I don't know if we would be able to and still meet Wikipedia's verifiability standards. Most of the articles I have read about nootropics do not discuss current use, but describe the possibility of how they could affect the future. Illegal use of Adderall etc. is prevalent, but articles seem hesitant to put forward any precise statistics. I have yet to find any rigorous study that has a percentage of users or other anything else. Overall, I think it's best to leave something like that out until stronger data becomes available. Thanks for the ideas though! Pathyland (talk) 17:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Peer Review 6
Good work! The information is organized very well within individual paragraphs and is fairly comprehensive. The introduction seems fairly solid but includes some run on sentences which it might be good to break up and elaborate on slightly. Additionally, I would consider rephrasing the question statements as an inquiries. For instance, rather than stating that the question being asked is "To what extent can a tumor or brain injury alleviate criminal punishment?" Instead I might state something more along the lines of"...neurolaw is examining the extent to which a tumor or brain injury could alleviate criminal punishment." This type of polishing could be used throughout the rest of the paper, however individual sections are fairly solid as far as what is being said. However, there is some editing that seems necessary to improve the flow of the article as a whole. Agreeing with the previous reviewer, it would seem more logical to begin with criminal law, particularly as this section also introduces origination of neurolaw. The underlying technology section might be retitled and inserted after crime prediction. I do like the Nootropics area but I would either look for a way either to connect it better to the rest of the information or link out to other wikipedia articles which discuss these subsections rather than going into as much description. For example, statements such as "The brain has long been known to react to certain chemicals, such as the stimulatory effects of caffeine. Similarly, current research suggests that the future may hold even more powerful medications that can specifically target and alter brain function." - Seem slightly strange and irrelevant. Also, I think it would be best to combine the nootropics and neuropharmacology sections. I realize that the neuropharmacology topic is connected to your section on the relevance to military. However, I think more important than this connection would be to have the information consolidated more logically.

Really good job so far! Great information! I mainly just recommend reworking how the information is organized. Reedyziw (talk) 03:38, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your comments. The inquiries you've mentioned have been seen as a positive aspect in the introductory paragraph by other peer reviews and we think that they give a good lead in to the rest of the article so we are going to keep those. We have gone back through to polish the subtopics in terms of grammar and word ordering so that the article flows nicer. Underlying technology has retained its title because it is essential to understand the underlying technology section to understand the basic potential that neuroscience has in the legal system. We considered your suggestions pertaining to the reorganization of neuropharmacology and nootropics; however, we feel it makes sense where it is because neuropharmacology is neurolaw in practice rather than a potential application of neurolaw. Also, other wikipedia editors have expressed views that agree with our ordering. Boothra (talk) 01:51, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

End of Boston College BI481 Project
Hi guys, nice job on this topic, it's in much better shape than before: A few issues: NeuroJoe (talk) 21:49, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The section on DARPA is still a bit incomplete. "Another area of interest to the military is the use of human enhancement drugs". What do you mean by "human enhancement"? That needs to be spelled out more clearly. Also, "However, because these chemical drugs directly affect natural chemical reactions and receptors in the body, the ethics of their use as well as safety are in question". Most drugs are some sort of chemical compound, and most drugs we take affect chemical reactions in the body, some binding to receptors as agonists or antagonists. So you haven't really specified what's unique about the drugs that DARPA is working with and why the ethics and safety of their use is in question.
 * Your writing needs to be a bit more precise in areas. For example: "This led to an increasing pull to publish books, articles, and other literature". Was someone literally tugging on these people to publish their texts?
 * The "Brianlies" figure in your article is indeed under a Creative Commons license but the original source is not linked properly.

Caveats?
"Caveats // Neuroscience is a complex field and one not well understood by the general public." <-- either a variant of this sentence belongs at the bottom (or top) of practically every article about a field of study, or it's entirely extraneous to this article. 168.156.45.14 (talk) 17:03, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Neurolaw. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.lawneuro.org/About-Us/History.aspx
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110514220120/http://www.neulaw.org/goals to http://www.neulaw.org/goals
 * Added tag to http://neuro.bcm.edu/eagleman/neurolaw/papers/%5BSapolsky%5DFrontalCortexandJustice2004.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110114004801/http://neulaw.org/papers/%5BAbe2008%5DCorrelatesofFalseMemory.pdf to http://neulaw.org/papers/%5BAbe2008%5DCorrelatesofFalseMemory.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20111002041436/http://bioethics.stanford.edu/research/projects/illes_advanced_neuro.html to http://bioethics.stanford.edu/research/projects/illes_advanced_neuro.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 14:43, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Page Revisions
Hi all! I am a senior Neuroscience major at Northeastern University. As a project for my Advanced Writing class, I will be updating and revising this article over the next month or so. If you have any comments or concerns about the information that I am editing or adding, please feel free to reach out to me!

Warstepnick (talk) 16:10, 20 November 2019 (UTC)