Behavioral & Neuroscience Law Committee (BNLC)

News and Research Blurb

Dear Readers,
Please enjoy Decembers edition of the BNLC blurb! Feel free to email me your suggestions for the
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Sincerely,
Janet Smith
Eric Y. Drogin, J.D., Ph.D., ABPP
BNLC Chair
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA
339.200.9131
eyd@drogin.net
edrogin@bidmc.harvard.edu

Kate Mayer Mangan, J.D.

BNLC Vice Chair
Donocle
San Diego, CA
kate@donocle.com

Jana Robinson, J.D., M.A.

BNLC Vice Chair
Family Division, NJ Superior Court
Trenton, NJ
janet.robinson@icloud.com

Carol Spaderna, LL.B.

BNLC Vice Chair
Aberystwyth University
Aberystwyth, Wales
cas55@aber.ac.uk

Janet M. Smith
Editor, BNLC News and Research Blurb
William & Mary Law School, 2017
Williamsburg, VA
jmsmith03@email.wm.edu

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DECISION-MAKING & RESPONSIBILITY

The Infamous Reddit As a Rapist Thread is Now the Subject of a Research Study. SLATE. The anonymous
confessions solicited by the ask-a-rapist thread on Reddit provided researchers at Georgia State
University with a rare chance to study the interpretive lens perpetrators use to justify their actions.
Published in the journal Psychology of Violence, the resulting study found that the stories
perpetrators tell themselves blend shocking violence with familiar sexual scripts, such as the
expectation that men will initiate sex and women will demur. Researchers noted that culturally
supplied narratives turned into excuses for men to blame their victims. Rape victims characterized
the thread as enabling rapists to overcome emotional turmoil by recasting events in a way that
blamed the victim. But researchers hope that this study will provide useful guidance for rape
prevention efforts. (December 21, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/odsf9tf
Evidence of a Christmas Spirit Network in the Brain: Functional MRI Study. BMJ. Significant clusters of
increased BOLD activation in the sensory motor cortex, the premotor and primary motor cortex,
and the parietal lobule (inferior and superior) were found in scans of people who celebrate
Christmas with positive associations compared with scans in a group having no Christmas traditions
and neutral associations. These cerebral areas have been associated with spirituality, somatic senses,
and recognition of facial emotion among many other functions. There is a Christmas spirit
network in the human brain comprising several cortical areas. This network had a significantly
higher activation in people who celebrate Christmas with positive associations as opposed to people
who have no Christmas traditions and neutral associations. Further research is necessary to
understand this and other potential holiday circuits in the brain. Although merry and intriguing,
these findings should be interpreted with caution. (December 16, 2015)
http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6266
What Makes One Person More Generous Than Another? It Could be in the Genes. GLOBE & MAIL. Using
mathematical modeling, researchers analyzed how much of the subjects willingness to donate blood
was inherited. The result: 50 per cent. Researchers estimate that 30 per cent was explained by sharing
a common environment and 20 per cent by random factors or chance. The research suggests that
blood-donation campaigns may be better able to recruit new donors by targeting families rather than
individuals, since relatives of active donors may be more likely to give. (December 6, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/grxr3yr
Twitter May be an Excellent Way to Understand Human Behavior and Psychology. MEDICAL DAILY. Recent
studies have found status updates and tweets can be used to accurately predict a persons personality
and psychopathy. A new study published in PLOS ONE looks specifically at Twitter, and how it can
be used to extract meaningful information from situations users experience in their daily lives. The
study has implications for what might be learned about the human experience during sporting
events, political upheavals, and even natural disasters. (November 14, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/hkgy9nf
The Weak Science Behind the Wrongly Named Moral Molecule. ATLANTIC. Recently, several scientists have
shown the tower of evidence for oxytocins positive influence is built on weak foundations. For the
hormone to exert an influence on behavior, it presumably needs to reach neurons in the brain, and
dock at proteins call oxytocin receptors. No one knows if the nasal sprays that have been the
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bedrock of human studies can actually deliver oxytocin to those neurons. And, the hormone is
highly contextual in its influence, triggering positive behavior in some settings, but negative ones
(like distrust, favoritism, envy, and schadenfreude) in others. Animal studieswhere oxytocin is
injected directly into the brainshow that the hormone increases the salience of social cues, causing
animals to pay more attention to certain social information. More robust research should be done in
clinical settings before oxytocin is used as a treatment protocol for those struggling with autism
spectrum disorders or depression. (November 13, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/o8nh2d2
Can Neuroscience Explain Why People Are Sexist? NEW YORK MAGAZINE. A recent Japanese study
published in Scientific Reports found that those expressing sexist attitudes demonstrate a common
neurological imprint. Researchers discovered that lower scores on the Sex Role Egalitarianism (SRE)
scale (that is, holding more sexist or gender-discriminating beliefs) correlated, in men and women,
with more dense gray matter in the posterior cingulate cortex (an area associated with processing
anger, fear, and pain) and correlated with reduced gray-matter density in the right amygdala (another
area important to processing emotions, especially fear). People who espoused sexist beliefs tended to
score higher in their anger, depression-proneness, and competitiveness, which fits with previously
published research into the personality correlates of sexism. (October 28, 2015)
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/10/can-neuroscience-explain-why-people-are-sexist.html
The Human Brain Reacts to Guns as if They were Spiders or Snakes. MOTHER JONES. Dozens of studies
have confirmed what researchers dub the weapons effect. People act more aggressively in the
presence of a weapon, especially when something angers them. One study found that drivers with
guns in the car were more likely to engage in road rage. Other studies found that the presence of
guns causes participants enraged by another to choose to make that person physically uncomfortable
for longer periods of time, delivering more electric shocks or forcing them to hear louder noises or
keep their arms plunged in ice water for longer durations. In a meta-analysis of 50 such studies,
researchers found that the weight of evidence not only supports the weapons effect for those that
had been angered, but also for those that had not been angered. A saliva test measuring testosterone
in male participants found that testosterone levels rise when a weapon is present in the absence of
anger or agitation. (October 26, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/psdbekq
Why Self-Driving Cars Must be Programed to Kill. MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW. How should the car be
programmed to act in the event of an unavoidable accident? Should it minimize the loss of life, even
it if means sacrificing the occupants, or should it protect the occupants at all costs? Should it choose
between these extremes at random? Is it acceptable for an autonomous vehicle to avoid a
motorcycle by swerving into a wall, considering that the probability of survival is greater for the
passenger of the car, than for the rider of the motorcycle? Should different decisions be made when
children are on board, since they have both a longer time ahead of them than adults and less agency
over being in the car in the first place? If a manufacturer offers different versions of its moral
algorithm, and a buyer knowingly chooses one of them, is the buyer to blame for any harmful
consequences of the algorithms decisions? (October 22, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/p6w7rw8

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TERRORISM & RADICALIZATION

The Psychology of Radicalization: How Terrorist Groups Attract Young Followers. NPR. It is unsettling to
think that terrorists who commit violent acts are not psychologically disturbed or brainwashed. But
that is what a trove of social science research reveals. Most foreign volunteers and supporters fall
within the mid-ranges of the normal distribution of psychological attributes (like empathy,
compassion, idealism). Research has found that suicide bombers are not usually drawn from the
ranks of the mentally ill. While terrorists often invoke God, many social scientists are skeptical that
religious extremism can explain why people commit acts of terror. Researchers note that terrorist
group members demonstrate common mindsets, which include a belief that the world is a disaster,
that peaceful change is not possible, that self-sacrifice is honorable, that noble ends justify immoral
means, and that it is possible to create a utopia. Terrorists believe that they make the world a better
place, which is a critical fact that may be overlooked when ISIS is labeled as nihilistic. Researchers
who study terrorist groups suggest that communities can counteract mindsets susceptible to
radicalization by teaching students such values as being comfortable with the worlds imperfections,
tolerating differences, and not idealizing distant utopias. Other researchers suggest that countering
ISIS should involve drawing on the same methods ISIS usesleveraging peer networks to help
people find their place in the world and giving young people opportunities for a purpose greater
than themselves. (December 15, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/ondeawh
Most Violence in the World is Motivated by Personal Morality. QUARTZ. Professor Rai of MITs Sloan
School of Management has studied a wide range of violent incidents from parents spanking children
as a disciplinary measure to drill sergeants and gang leaders using violent hazing as a means to build
group cohesion and loyalty. Rais research reveals that morality is the primary motivation for
violence. Perpetrators do not commit violent acts because they enjoy violence, but deploy violence
in the service of some notion of the greater good. Violence is intended to regulate social
relationships and sustain a moral order. The perpetrators are in control of their actions; they know
they are hurting fellow human beings, and that is exactly what they intend to do. Reducing
violencewhether targeting police use of force or lone-wolf attacks by ISIS recruitsthus requires
correcting pathological notions of the greater good. (December 8, 2015)
http://qz.com/566579/most-violence-in-the-world-is-motivated-by-personal-morality/
ISIS and Its Atrocious Acts. HUFFINGTON POST. Combining the lessons learned from the work of
Stanley Milgram and from the Stanford Prison Experiment, the human capacity for evil acts appears
to occur when an authority figure grants permission for the bad act, no blame or guilt is applied by
others in the group, the opportunity for violence becomes commonplace, and no reprisal or
punishment threatens the wrongdoers. Accordingly, U.S. policy on ISIS should focus on refusing
the requisite permission by recruiting those with authority to voice such refusal, encouraging former
group members to assign blame in a public manner, limiting and policing the opportunity for
violence, and meting out punishment to wrongdoers. (December 8, 2015)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/post_10684_b_8738614.html
An Expert Explains How Social Media Can Lead to the Self-Radicalization of Terrorists. VICE. Unlike faceto-face conversations, communicating online allows us to forget about the immediate consequences
of our conversations. Communicative behavior may become more aggressive; the attitudes
expressed may become more extreme. When all participants in a conversation behave this way, the
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result is polarization. The extent to which social media is an effective recruitment tool has yet to be
determined. Social media may amplify and calcify burgeoning extremism, but the actual recruitment
process is more likely a function of direct, personal communication over time. In societies where
women do not enjoy the freedoms afforded to men, women may be particularly susceptible to
recruitment given that ISIS may provide a voice for otherwise silenced women. (December 7, 2015)
http://www.vice.com/read/we-asked-an-expert-how-social-media-can-help-radicalize-terrorists
LAW ENFORCEMENT
To Foster Public Health, Track Law Enforcement-Related Deaths, Researchers Urge. LOS ANGELES TIMES. A
recent report in PLoS Medicine noted that the number of deaths attributable to law enforcement in
the United States remains a mystery. In a nation where law enforcement organizations are largely
state and local, no uniform rules require public notification of such incidents. In many cases, police
departments are reluctant to release timely details to the public. Despite those obstacles, deaths of
citizens at the hands of police should be classified as a notifiable condition, requiring public health
agencies to report them promptly to the public. (December 8, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/hwltpho
The Neuroscience Behind Why White Cops Kill Black Men. ALTERNET. In an experiment employing a
visual search task, participants are instructed to locate one specific object in a clutter of objects on
a computer screen while their eye movements are tracked. The data has shown that people are able
to locate threatening objects, like spiders or angry faces, much faster than they can find nonthreatening ones, like ladybugs or happy faces. This makes sense in terms of evolution. Being able to
rapidly locate threats in the environment allowed our ancestors to survive in an unpredictable and
dangerous natural world. Scientists have also found that white individuals have a similar attention
bias for black faces, even when those faces have non-threatening expressions. White participants
tend to orient their attention towards black faces more quickly than same-race faces. These findings
show that on average, whites tend to subconsciously perceive black faces as threatening, no matter
how opposed to stereotypes or racial discrimination they may be. (December 2, 2015)
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/neuroscience-behind-why-white-cops-kill-black-men
JUVENILE ISSUES
Raise the Minimum Age a Juvenile Can Be Tried As An Adult to 21. NEW YORK TIMES. Based in part on
neuroscience research, a recent Harvard Kennedy School report recommends raising the age at
which juveniles enter the adult criminal justice system to at least 21, with gradually diminishing
protections that extend to age 25. In Connecticut, Governor Malloy is already seeking to raise the
age to 21 in his state. (December 14, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/gmktko2
Emotional Child Abuse May be Just as Bad as Physical Harm. REUTERS. Recent research published in
JAMA Psychiatry found that children suffered similar problems regardless of the type of
maltreatment endured. Physically abused children and emotionally abused children had very similar
problems related to anxiety, depression, and aggression. Researchers are hopeful that this study will
right a longstanding error and prejudice about the differences between these common childhood
adversities. When considering prevention, screening, or treatment, our notions of childhood

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mistreatment need to be broader and more holistic than they have been. There are no hierarchies
when it comes to child maltreatment. (October 19, 2015)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-childabuse-emotional-idUSKCN0SD2C720151019
MENTAL ILLNESS & TREATMENT
PTSD Resources for Non-Vets Need Improvement. PSYCHIATRY ADVISOR. Recent report in the Harvard
Review of Psychiatry finds that PTSD treatment resources geared toward nonveterans remain
insufficient. For the other people affected by PTSD victims of sexual assault, child abuse and
natural disasters there really isn't an organized body of research that generates guidance for how
they and their caregivers should deal with their PTSD. Currently available research does not provide
a robust evidence base for treating PTSD in specific vulnerable subpopulations, by either
sociodemographic cohort or by cause of PTSD. (December 21, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/pvje633
Research Breakthrough: Protein Injection Could Stop Terror Trauma for PTSD Victims. DAILY TELEGRAPH.
Preclinical results indicate that a simple protein injection could prevent post-traumatic stress
disorder for security personnel and citizens caught up in horrific events such as the Paris attacks.
Clinical trials would see potentially vulnerable patients injected with FGF2 in the aftermath of a
traumatic event. The injections would coincide with behavioral therapy. The naturally occurring
protein has already been injected into patients with heart disease and is being tested in the US as an
antidepressant. (November 21, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/nlqva9d
Is Your Tongue the Key to a Neuroscience Breakthrough? FORBES. Research indicates that the tongue may
be a shortcut to the most primitive parts of the brain. With the knowledge of such a rich nerve
connection to the brain, scientists are turning to the tongue as a way to stimulate the brain for neural
retraining and rehabilitation after traumatic injuries or disease. Researchers have demonstrated that
stimulation of various nerves improves symptoms of a range of neurological diseases. The tongue
may provide a much more elegant and direct pathway for stimulating brain structures and inducing
neuroplasticity. (November 2, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/nc7448v
MEMORY & PERCEPTION
How Our Brains Overrule Our Senses: Experiments Reveal Brain Circuits that Shape Sensory Perceptions.
SCIENCE DAILY. Scientists have long known that when sounds are faint or objects are seen through
fog in the distance, repetition of these weak or ambiguous sensory inputs can result in different
perceptions inside the same brain. Recent research, published in Nature Neuroscience, identifies the
brain processes in mice that may help explain the differences observed. Previous experiments
focused on the primary sensory area of the cortex (S1). Deeper into the brain, however, is another
set of neurons involved in higher aspects of perception, cognition and memory (S2). When the
scientists monitored activity sent backward from these S2 neurons to those in S1, they saw
patterns that did indeed predict and align with an animals perception, implying that the activity in S1
is shaped by S2 and providing support for supposition that what we perceive is not only based on
sensory input but influenced by prior experiences and current brain states. More research is needed

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to determine what accounts for the differences in S2 signaling, which may be a function of recently
recalled memories or to what a brain has recently paid attention. (December 7, 2015)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151207131743.htm
Fake Memories of US Muslims Cheering 9/11: Why? DISCOVERY NEWS. Incidents such as the September
11 terror attacks and the 1987 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion can generate what are called
flashbulb memories, which, though vivid and descriptive, lose accuracy over time. We may also be
influenced by what other people tell us about their experiences of the same event. It is possible to
subconsciously incorporate details from other peoples experiences of a shared event into our own
first-person eyewitness accounts. One study showed faked videotape of something subjects had
personally experienced and asked subjects to confirm whether or not the tape was accurate. Those
who watched the tape were three times more likely to affirm the accuracy of the faked tape than
controls who were merely told what the tape showed. This demonstrates that some subjects
incorporated what they saw on a television screen into their real, personal memories, and when
given a choice between relying on what they actually remembered and what they saw represented as
reality on television, they chose the latter. (November 24, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/zybjwvl
Memory-Boosting Devices Tested in Humans. NATURE. The US military is funding research designed to
improve memory by delivering brain stimulation through implanted electrodes in the hopes that the
approach might help many of the thousands of soldiers who have developed deficits to their longterm memory as a result of head trauma. By mimicking the electrical patterns that create and store
memories, the researchers found that gaps caused by brain injury can be bridged, raising the
possibility of a neuroprosthetic that might automatically enhance flagging memory not only in braininjured soldiers, but also for those suffering memory loss following strokes. Human trial subjects are
those suffering from epilepsy who already have implanted electrodes. The research looks promising,
but is far from conclusive. One team has found that stimulating the medial temporal lobe, which
houses the hippocampus, improves memory that is functioning poorly, but when memory is
functioning well, stimulation impedes memory formation. (November 3, 2015)
http://www.nature.com/news/memory-boosting-devices-tested-in-humans-1.18712
Do Long-Term Memories Punch Holes in the Brain? BRAINDECODER. Neuroscientists hypothesize that
long-term memories are stored in patterns of holes created within a lattice-like structure called the
perineuronal net, a specialized extracellular matrix, consisting of fibrous proteins and carbohydrates
that form a coat surrounding nerve cell bodies, which plays a critical role in the formation,
stabilization, and maintenance of synaptic connections. One set of experiments showed that mice
lacking the enzymes needed to degrade the perineuronal net had deficits in long-term, but not shortterm, memories, adding weight to the idea that the perineuronal net contributes to the storage of
information over long periods of time. Some post-mortem studies show that certain components of
the perineuronal net are lost in the brains of patients with Alzheimers; in others, however, the net
remains unaffected, and in some, the net even appears to protect neurons against degeneration.
(October 23, 2015)
https://www.braindecoder.com/memory-perineuronal-nets-1418933042.html

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SENTENCING & PUNISHMENT

Brain Scans Explain Quickness to Blame. DUKE TODAY. New research from Duke University helps
explain the paradox of why we are quick to blame people for their actions, but slower to give them
credit. Researchers found that people use two different mechanisms to judge how intentional an
action was. If the action produced a negative effect, participants were more likely to draw on brain
areas involved in processing emotion (in particular, the amygdala, a pair of almond-shaped structures
deep in the brain that is well known for its role in processing negative emotions). The greater the
emotional reaction the participant reported having to a particular story, the stronger it activated their
amygdala. But if an action produced a positive effect, it was less likely to set off the amygdala. For
positive outcomes people relied less on emotion and more on probabilities; they thought about how
often people in a particular situation would behave in a similar way. The study suggests that moral
judgments about whether an action harmed others may influence judgments about how intentional
that action was in the first place. (December 4, 2015)
http://today.duke.edu/2015/12/intentionality
Pinpointing Punishment. HARVARD GAZETTE. Recent research identifies the dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex (DLPFC) as the brain region that coordinates third-party punishment decisions of the type
made by judges and juries. DLPFC integrates information from other parts of the brain to determine
punishment and shows a clear neural dissociation between punishment decisions and moralresponsibility judgments. Researchers employed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive technique that uses powerful electromagnets to reversibly interrupt brain information
processing. Participants estimated perpetrators level of blameworthiness for each crime, and
decided how much punishment each perpetrator should face. TMS disruption of DLPFC activity
did not alter blameworthiness evaluations, but such disruption did reduce the punishments assigned
to morally responsible agents. (October 28, 2015)
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/10/pinpointing-punishment/
Oxford Professor Talks Science and Moral Behavior. HARVARD CRIMSON. Professor Julian Savulescu
argued for the practice of taking controversial biological measures to foster moral improvements in
society. Continued research in life sciences and neuroscience may lead to future opportunities in the
use of biological markers that can test for certain genes that predict aggressive behavior, providing a
basis for alterations to the criminal justice system. Savulescu countered his critiques by pointing to
potential societal benefits. Putting someone on Ritalin after one violent crime reduces the reoffense rate; reduction of violence against innocent people is absolutely a moral outcome, the
professor said. Following the lecture, a neurology professor at Harvard Medical School, warned of
the dangers of adopting this practice too quickly. We are really in the infancy of this technology.
These traits that were talking about are incredibly complex, even if youre referring to them on an
abstract level. There certainly is a risk of adopting this technology too early. (October 21, 2015)
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/10/21/oxford-professor-science-morality/
Federal Judge Says Neuroscience is not Ready for the CourtroomYet. ABA JOURNAL. Neuroscience has
been creeping into the nations courtrooms with greater frequency. Yet the science, while promising,
is not quite ready for use as evidence in most legal cases, Judge Rakoff told a group of
neuroscientists gathered in Chicago. Judge Rakoff emphasized that history has given judges reason
for caution about sanctioning the use of any kind of science. During the last century, the law
embraced science in ways that were inhumane, harmful, and eventually discredited. Neuroscience is
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not yet at the stage where it can be introduced in individual cases with much scientific validity.
Meanwhile, neuroscience has provided a better understanding of addiction, helping to disperse the
view that addiction is immoral and should be punished. And neuroscience has provided insight into
the adolescent brain to improve public policy decisions about how to handle juvenile defendants.
Judge Rakoff warned of the dangers of allowing neuroscience greater case-specific access to the
courtroom before the discipline is ripe for such introduction. (October 20, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/zr7qsxr
NEUROSCIENCE
Neuroscientists Now Can Read the Mind of a Fly. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY. The fluorescent labeling
technique is the first to allow scientists to identify individual synapses that are active during a
complex behavior, such as avoiding heat. The fluorescent signal persists for hours after the
communication event, allowing researchers to study the brains activity after the fact, under a
microscope. To create the labels, the scientists split a fluorescent molecule in half, one half for the
talking neuron and one half for the listening neuron. If those neurons talked to each other when a
fly was exposed to banana smell or heat, the two halves came together and lit up. By reading the
fluorescent signals at the site of active synaptic transmission, the researchers could tell if a fly had
been in either heat or cold for 10 minutes an entire hour after the sensory event had happened. They
also could see that exposure to the scent of a banana activated neural connections in the olfactory
system that were different from those activated when the fly smelled jasmine. (December 4, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/zo6tnkd
fMRI Goes Individual. NATURE METHODS. Researchers set out to determine whether fMRI as a
technique is robust and reliable enough to capture individual variability across several days and
cognitive tasks. In other words, does it matter what people are doing, or does it matter who they
are? To answer this question, the researchers compared a persons connectivity matrix from a
particular session with the connectivity matrices from all subjects obtained during a different day.
We wanted to show that for the same person doing two different things, you can still pick someone
out of a crowd, regardless of how their brain is engaged during the scan. Researchers indeed found
that it was possible to identify a person from his or her brain activity data even when the data were
acquired in different sessions on different days. (December 1, 2015)
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v12/n12/full/nmeth.3677.html
An MIT Neuroscientists Startup is Connecting Researchers with Test Subjects. BOSTINNO. Many studies
require human test subjects who possess certain qualities or conditions. For studies with more niche
focuses, it can be tough to recruit people with the highly particular and even rare characteristics
needed to conduct research. With the release of this online network, the Xperii team hopes to
facilitate easier access to eligible research subjects. To protect subjects safety, scientists seeking
subjects through Xperii will undergo a vetting process to ensure requests originate from reputable
labs. (November 19, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/zooj97x
What is Consciousness? Neuroscientist May Have Answer to the Big Question. ALTERNET. The attention
schema theory provides a scientifically plausible explanation of consciousness. The theory relies on
the intersection of two brain tasks. First, the brain uses attention as a data-handling trick for deeply
processing some information at the expense of most information. Second, the brain uses internal
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data to construct simplified, schematic models of objects and events in the world, which enable
predictions and planning. In theory, awareness is the brains simplified, schematic model of the
complicated, data-handling process of attention. A brain can use the construct of awareness to
model its own attentional state or to model someone elses attentional state (e.g., Dad is staring at
the stain on his shirt, so he is not listening to me.). The attention schema approach to
consciousness fuses many previous theories to build a single conceptual framework that may enable
researchers to test assumptions about consciousness. (November 18, 2015)
http://www.alternet.org/books/what-consciousness-neuroscientist-may-have-answer-big-question
Can a Futures Market Save Science? A Creative Solution for Psychologys Replication Problem. ATLANTIC. Anna
Dreber from the Stockholm School of Economics created a stock market for scientific publications,
where psychologists could buy or sell stocks in 44 published studies based on how reproducible
they deemed the findings. These markets predicted the outcomes of actual replications attempts
pretty well, and certainly far better than any of the traders did on their own. Market participants only
care about whether the study will replicate, while peer reviewers are also looking at experimental
design, importance, and other factors. Also, peer reviewers, by their nature, work alone, and
Drebers traders performed poorly when working solo. Collectively, they became more effective
because they were privy to what their peers were thinking. And, unlike peer reviewers, the most
successful traders in the two-week experiment looked beyond statistical power or study protocol to
rely on gut instincts about whether the original finding felt plausible. (November 9, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/ho4qs2x
Mediators Find More Tools Through Neuroscience. ABA JOURNAL. Mediators and other practitioners of
alternative dispute resolution are using information gleaned from the research of world-class
neuroscientists to calm emotions and help mediations resolve more easily. With the advent of
functional magnetic resonance imaging and the growing interest in brain mapping, neuroscientists
and those trained by them are teaching thousands of mediators how to ease clients through a
conflict-ridden process. One mediator has developed what she calls gentle modalities for bringing
peoples stress response down. She uses mirroring, for example, to calm clients by reflecting back a
clients emotional state. Some practitioners even mimic clients movements, such as picking up a
coffee cup. Mirroring, the mediator notes, creates trust, and you can slowly start to move them
out of a highly activated state. (November 1, 2015)
http://tinyurl.com/jdtqko2
Russian Secret Service to Vet Research Papers. NATURE. A biology institute at Russias largest and most
prestigious university has instructed its scientists to get all research manuscripts approved by the
security service before submitting them to conferences or journals. The Russian government says
that the amended law on state secrets is not designed to restrict the publication of basic, non-military
research. However, President Vladimir Putin used a decree to expand the scope of the law to include
any science that can be used to develop vaguely defined new products. It appears that all scientific
output is to be treated as potentially classified. (October 20, 2015)
http://www.nature.com/news/russian-secret-service-to-vet-research-papers-1.18602
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