xkcd
Campaigns
TS-Si supports open and immediate access to publicly funded research.
Petition: remove women of transsexual / intersex history from the GLAAD Media Reference Guide. [ sign ]
Read: Andrea Rosenfield's call for reform.
Opening Doors to Transsexual Medical Research
TS-Si
is dedicated to the acceptance, medical
treatment, and legal
protection of individuals correcting the misalignment
of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition
into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.
is dedicated to the acceptance, medical
treatment, and legal
protection of individuals correcting the misalignment
of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition
into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.
| Crime, Punishment and Thinking Brains |
 |
 |
| SciMed - Neuroscience | |||
| TS-Si News Service | |||
| Monday, 15 December 2008 22:00 | |||
 Nashville, TN, USA. When someone is accused of committing a crime, it is the responsibility of impartial third parties, generally jurors and judges, to determine if that person is guilty and, if so, how much he or she should be punished. But how does one’s  brain actually make these decisions? In a new study that combines expertise from law and
neuroscience, Vanderbilt University researchers observed changes in the brain when people think about crime and punishment. The team scanned the brains of subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see how the brain activated when a person judged whether or not someone should be punished for a harmful act — and how severely the individual should be punished. The findings, reported in the journal Neuron, show that two distinct areas of the brain assess guilt and decide penalty.
 Brain Cells: Classic Model
Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts put forth the classic model of how brain cells communicate in 1943.
By that time the first digital computers were envisaged and the McCulloch-Pitts model suggested that brain cells communicate in a binary fashion, represented by a “1” for firing and a “0” for not firing (much as a modern computer functions).
It is common, but imprecise, to say that a mammalian brain functions like a computer. In part, this is because current observations suggest that gap junctions cause “short circuiting” as part of the brain’s normal functions. (A computer could not function if it short circuited.)
It is possible that these short circuits in the mammalian brain generally enhance brain function and adaptation to the environment. This could permit creative thinking, the combining of isolated facts into new ideas.
Additionally, Dr. Jeremy Coplan, a professor of psychiatry at SUNY Downstate –- has proposed that excessive firing of these circuits along gap junctions may play a role in psychosis and mania.
Given such uncertainty, the human brain may have adaptive and management capabilities that exceed current computer technology.
The brain presents things we do not fully understand. New ways of seeing (and understanding) become critical to further advances. “We were looking for brain activity reflecting how people reason about the differences in the scenarios,” said Jones. “There are long-running debates about the proper roles in law of ‘cold’ analysis and ‘hot’ emotion … Our results suggest that, in normal punishment decisions, the distinct neural circuitries of both processes may be jointly involved, but separately deployed.”
During the study:
The researchers found that activity in an analytic part of the brain, known as the right dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex, tracked the decision of whether or not a person deserved to be punished but, intriguingly, appeared relatively insensitive to deciding how much to punish. By contrast, the activity in brain regions involved in processing emotions, such as the amygdala, tracked how much subjects decided to punish.“These results raise the possibility that emotional responses to criminal acts may represent a gauge for assessing deserved punishment,” said Marois.
Another intriguing result of the study was that the part of the brain that third-party subjects used to determine guilt in this study was the same brain area that has previously been found to be involved in punishing unfair economic behavior in two-party interactions.
“The convergence of findings between second-party and third-party punishment studies suggests that impartial legal decision-making may not be fundamentally different from the reasoning used in deciding to punish those who have harmed us personally,” said Marois.
FundingThis study was published with funding, in part, from the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project. Both Owen D. Jones and René Marois are members.
CitationThe Neural Correlates of Third-Party Punishment. Joshua W. Buckholtz, Christopher L. Asplund, Paul E. Dux, David H. Zald, John C. Gore, Owen D. Jones, and René Marois.
Neuron 60(5): 738. doi: 10.1016 / j.neuron.2008.10.016Abstract Legal decision-makers have two tasks: determining whether to punish based on criminal responsibility and arriving at an appropriate punishment for the severity of their crime. In this manuscript, Buckholtz and colleagues demonstrate that these two decisions engage distinct neural circuitry. One set of brain regions, most notably dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is sensitive to responsibility, while another network comprised in part by amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex is involved in deciding punishment magnitude. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has also been linked to second-party punishment in economic contexts, implicating this area as a key node in norm enforcement. The context and significance of these findings are discussed in a Preview by Fehr and Haushofer.  The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. Sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.TS-Si is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.
Email this
Comments (0)
 Write comment
|
|||
| Last Updated on Monday, 15 December 2008 14:26 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/hide comments
Show/hide comment form
The TS-Si News Service
and the TS-Si Research Service are collaborations of TS-Si officials, staff, contributors, and corresponding institutions. The contents do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si or its owners, participants, partners, or affiliates.