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Research Networks Network on Differing Brains The law is deeply concerned with the mental abilities of the individuals who come before it, whether as witnesses, makers of wills or contracts, civil plaintiffs, or criminal defendants. In many instances the law limits the powers, or the punishment, of those who fall too far below normal levels. The Network on Differing Brains will use new techniques of neuroscience to try to throw scientific light on these legal issues. Neuroscience should be able to bring the law more understanding of several aspects of differing brains. It may be able to provide better diagnostic tools to know whether a personís brain is truly impaired. It may show us the limits of the capabilities of such damaged brains. It may tell us more about the causes of the damage or about the value of different methods to repair it. It may also tell us that correlations between brain damage and impulsivity are going to be difficult to establish. Consider diagnoses first. Dissimulation and malingering plague the lawís efforts to deal with behavioral problems. Is a criminal defendant, or an applicant for disability payments, truly suffering from mental illness or neurological disease or merely pretending? Neuroimaging and other neuroscience technologies should be able to create better diagnostic methods, leading to legal results that are more accurate. For example, the work on frontal lobe damage at the University of California, Berkeley, may lead to important insights here. Second, neuroscience may be able to tell us more about the mental limits of people with brains that are abnormal, at least from those of healthy adults. It may be able to show us whether or to what extent individuals can exercise moral judgment (a focus of work at the University of California, Santa Barbara) or whether they are incapable of making rational calculations. The former could be important in assessing liability or passing sentence in criminal cases; the latter could be essential in civil disputes about a personís competence to make contracts or wills. Finally, neuroscience may be able to tell the law something about the causes of some forms of abnormal brains. Consider, for example, the vast and extremely expensive litigation over whether particular children had brain damage as a result of the management of labor and delivery. If neuroscience can help distinguish between brain damage caused around birth, and hence possibly by malpractice, and brain damage with an earlier and different cause, the tort system will work more accurately. More importantly, it will work more efficiently as parents and doctors are able to focus very early on scientifically plausible cases. It might even spur further legislative reform in this area. This network will pay particular attention to psychopathy and damage to the orbital sector of the frontal lobe, which is often followed by impulsivity and social misconduct. To identify the causes of such misbehavior in a particular person, researchers will need to distinguish different subareas within the orbital frontal cortex and also to determine the extent of variation among individuals. Comparisons of adult and pediatric patients will be crucial, since the timing of damage affects outcomes. It will also be important to separate various factors that set the stage for such behaviors, including foresight, inhibition, emotion, and moral judgment. A large coherent set of research projects is the only way to progress beyond mere correlation to discover the causes of wrongdoing in this group of subjects. These sub-sectors of frontal cortex affect behaviors that are central to criminal responsibility and treatment, as well as to social interactions that influence the legal system in the areas of prosecution, defense, and jury behavior. The following experts have agreed to serve as members of a MacArthur Network on Differing Brains: Neuroscientists
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