Behavioral & Neuroscience Law Committee (BNLC)

News and Research Blurb

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Paul-Michael Lowey
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 Williams, LL.B.

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

Paul-Michael R. Lowey
Editor, BNLC News and Research Blurb
William & Mary Law School, 2017
Williamsburg, VA
prlowey@email.wm.edu

BNLC BlurbAugust 2016

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Decision-Making & Responsibility

The Neuroscience Behind Bad Decisions. QUANTA MAGAZINE. Paul Glimcher, a neuroscientist at New
York University claims his neuroscience-based model outperforms standard economic theory at
explaining how people make decisions when faced with several options. Glimchers model is built
upon the idea that neuronal tissue uses a disproportionate amount of energy relative to its mass.
Because neurons are so energy-hungry, the brain is a battleground where precision and efficiency are
opponents. Glimcher argues that the costs of boosting our decision-making precision outweigh the
benefits. Glimcher proposes that the brains decision-making machinery works the same way.
Imagine a simple decision-making scenario: a monkey choosing between two cups of juice. For
simplicitys sake, assume the monkeys brain represents each choice with a single neuron. The more
attractive the choice is, the faster the neuron fires. The monkey then compares neuron-firing rates to
make his selection. The first thing the experimenter does is present the monkey with an easy choice:
a teaspoon of yummy juice versus an entire jug. The teaspoon neuron might fire one spike per
second while the jug neuron fires 100 spikes per second. The situation gets muddled when the
monkey is then offered the choice between a full jug of juice and one thats nearly full. Glimcher
proposes that the brain avoids this problem by recalibrating the scale to best represent the new
choice. The neuron representing the almost-full jug now the worst of the two choices scales
down to a much lower firing rate. Glimchers model, dubbed divisive normalization, spells out the
math behind this recalibration process. It proposes that neurons can send more efficient messages if
they encode in their sequence of spikes only the relative differences among the choices.(August 23,
2016).
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160823-the-neuroscience-behind-bad-decisions/
Poor Pregnancy Diet Linked To ADHD: Too Much Sugar, Fat Affects Unborn Baby. MEDICAL DAILY.
Researchers at Kings College, London, found mothers who had eaten high quantities of sugar, fat,
and processed foods throughout their pregnancy were the most likely to give birth to children with
conduct problems. Research suggests that a mothers diet during pregnancy had the power to
influence epigenetic changes in the babys brain. These type of changes affect the genetic code itself,
switching genes on and off in a person. In the case of ADHD, a highly processed diet laced with
sugar and fat switched on the IGF2 gene, which causes the fetal development of ADHD in the
brain. The higher the IGF2 gene was expressed, the higher the childs ADHD symptoms were
between the ages of 7 and 13. (August 18, 2016).
http://tinyurl.com/z4cmtj3
By Age Three, Kids Know When You Owe Them One. THE BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. You most
likely have a running tally in the back of your mind of who owes you a favor. It is how we avoid
being taken advantage of by deadbeats and freeloaders. A new study published in the journal,
Developmental Psychology, suggests that children as young as three years old recognize when others are
indebted to them. Markus Paulus at Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich set up a multi-part
sharing experiment with 40 toddlers. The children distribute stickers to toy animals, and then over
several rounds the same two toy animals were shown in possession of various enticing toys, such as
balloons, marbles and coloring pictures (each animal always had the same number). Each round, the
children were given the chance to ask one animal if they could share their toys, and the interesting
test was which animal they would approach. The children showed a consistency tendency to ask for
toys from the animal to whom they had earlier given more stickers. (August 12, 2016).
http://tinyurl.com/jf3bx4n
BNLC BlurbAugust 2016

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Investigation & Trial

Chicagos Experimental Policing Tool Is Hurting the People Its Supposed to Be Helping. MIC. Since 2013,
Chicago has been home to one of the most controversial crime-prevention experiments in the
country: the Strategic Subjects List. Spearheaded by the Chicago Police Department in collaboration
with the Illinois Institute of Technology, the pilot project uses an algorithm to rank and identify
people most likely to be perpetrators or victims of gun violence based on data points like prior
narcotics arrests, gang affiliation and age at the time of last arrest. A recently published study by the
RAND Corporation, a think tank that focuses on defense, found that using the list didn't help the
Chicago Police Department keep its subjects away from violent crime. Neither were they more likely
to receive social services. The only noticeable difference it made was that people on the list ended
up arrested more often. (August 17, 2016).
http://tinyurl.com/hqvdlyu
Witnesses Confuse Innocent And Guilty Suspects With Unfair Lineups, Psychology Research Shows. PSYPOST.
Police lineups in which distinctive individual marks or features are not altered can impair witnesses
ability to distinguish between innocent and guilty suspects, according to new research in Psychological
Science. Colloff and colleagues examined the three methods currently used by English police forces to
manipulate digital images in order to counteract the effect of any distinguishing marks such as black
eyes, eyeglasses, and beards. In an online experiment with almost 9,000 participants, the researchers
compared the three techniques pixelating part of the face, hiding part of the face, or manipulating
the photos so they contain the same feature (e.g., adding a beard) with digital lineups that were not
manipulated. Participants watched a brief video of a crime and were told to pay attention as they
would be asked questions about it later. They were then presented with a lineup composed of two
rows of three photos and were told that the culprit may or may not be present in the lineup. The
participants were asked to select one of the photos in the lineup as the culprit or choose the option
labeled not present. Finally, they rated how confident they were in making their identification (1 =
completely uncertain, 100 = completely certain). The results showed that participants were more
willing to identify the suspect when they viewed a lineup in which the suspect alone had a
distinguishing feature compared with the altered lineups. When the suspect was the only person
with the distinctive feature, this actually made people more likely to confuse who was guilty and who
was innocent, Colloff explains. Thats because they werent really using their memory of the
culprits face, they were just picking the only plausible option the only one with the scar that they
remembered from the crime video and this made it difficult for people to tell the difference
between the real culprit and an innocent suspect who had a similar feature. (July 26, 2016).
http://tinyurl.com/zkl2383
Neuropharmacology
Antipsychotics During Pregnancy Not Tied to Birth Defects. NEW YORK TIMES. Antipsychotics are used to
treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and other psychiatric disorders. Previous studies of
their use during pregnancy have been small and have had mixed results. This study, in JAMA
Psychiatry, reviewed records of 1,341,715 pregnant women, of whom 9,258 filled prescriptions for the
newer atypical antipsychotics like quetiapine (Seroquel) or aripiprazole (Abilify), and 733 for older
typical antipsychotics such as haloperidol (Haldol). After controlling for race, number of
pregnancies, smoking, alcohol use, psychiatric conditions, additional medications and other
variables, there was no difference in the risk for birth defects between those who took the drugs and
BNLC BlurbAugust 2016

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those who did not. One possible exception was a marginal increase in risk with one drug,
risperidone (Risperdal), which the authors said will require further study. (August 18, 2016).
http://tinyurl.com/hck8myr
Scientists Engineer An Opioid That May Reduce Pain With Less Risk. NPR. The recent opioid epidemic
has spurred a search for a painkiller that relieves pain without triggering the euphoria, dependence
and life-threatening respiratory suppression that causes deadly overdoses. That wasn't thought
possible until 2000, when a scientist named Laura Bohn found out something about a protein called
beta-arrestin, which sticks to the opioid receptor when something like morphine activates it. When
she gave morphine to mice that couldn't make beta-arrestin, they were still numb to pain, but a lot
of the negative side effects of the drug were missing. They didn't build tolerance to the drug. At
certain dosages, they had less withdrawal. Their breathing was more regular, and they weren't as
constipated as normal mice on morphine. After Bohn's discovery, a number of people, including a
team that includes Manglik, started looking for a drug that could connect to the mu-opioid receptor
in a way that avoids the negative effects of beta-arrestin. . To do that, they mapped the receptor's
structure in a computer program and started looking for chemicals that would stick to it. "We tried
to look for molecules that would still bind to this 3-D structure, but are as far away from morphine
and codeine as possible," Manglik says. The team ran 3 million possibilities through the computer
and picked the 23 best candidates to test in a lab. One chemical, PZM21, seems to do what they
hoped: Turn the opioid receptor on without using much beta-arrestin. (August 17, 2016).
http://tinyurl.com/ze36f4f
Neurodegenerative Disorders
Parkinson's Could Potentially Be Detected By An Eye Test. BBC. Scientists at University College London
believe the results from animal tests could eventually lead to a cheap and non-invasive way to spot
Parkinsons. "Although the research is in its infancy and is yet to be tested on people with
Parkinson's, a simple non-invasive test - such as an eye test - could be a significant step forward in
the search for treatments that can tackle the underlying causes of the condition rather than masking
its symptoms," he added. "Having a biomarker for Parkinson's would help diagnose Parkinson's
earlier, when people are most likely to benefit from the new treatments aimed at slowing
progression," he explained. Their research is published in Acta Neuropathologica Communications.
(August 18, 2016).
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37107189
Zika Kills Brain Cells In Adult Mice. SCIENCE NEWS. The virus, which can cause brain damage in
infants infected in the womb, kills stem cells and stunts their numbers in the brains of adult mice,
researchers report August 18 in Cell Stem Cell. Though scientists have considered Zika primarily a
threat to unborn babies, the new findings suggest that the virus may cause unknown and potentially
long-term damage to adults as well. In adults, Zika has been linked to Guillain-Barr syndrome, a
rare neurological disorder. But for most people, infection is typically mild: a headache, fever and
rash lasting up to a week, or no symptoms at all. In mice infected with Zika, the virus hit the
forebrain and hippocampus hard. Nerve cells died and the regions generated one-fifth to one-half as
many new cells compared with those of uninfected mice. The results might not translate to humans;
the mice were genetically engineered to have weak immune systems, making them susceptible to
Zika. (August 18, 2016).
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/zika-kills-brain-cells-adult-mice?tgt=nr
BNLC BlurbAugust 2016

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Do Schizophrenic Brains Repair Themselves? THE SCIENTIST. A number of psychiatrists have noticed that
some patients with schizophrenia seem to improve over time, unlike those with degenerative
neurological disorders such as Alzheimers disease, Huntingtons, or Parkinsons. So far, most
research has focused on the neurological decline associated with schizophreniatypically involving
a loss of brain tissue. Lena Palaniyappan and his colleagues wondered whether there might be
something happening in the brain [that] helps them come to a state of stability. To get at this
question, he and his colleagues performed MRI scans to assess the cortical thickness of 98
schizophrenia patients at various stages of illness. Sure enough, the researchers noted that, while
patients who were less than two years removed from their diagnosis had significantly thinner tissue
than healthy controls, those patients whod had the disease for longer tended to show less deviation
in some brain regions, suggesting some sort of cortical amelioration. Some brain regions are
regaining or normalizing while other brain regions continue to show deficits, Palaniyappan says. To
better understand how the brain changes over time in this disease, it will be necessary to follow
individual patients, taking multiple brain scans over the course of their illness, he says. Palaniyappan
is anxious to understand if the reparatory effect he and his colleagues observed is replicable, and if
so, to study what factors might be contributing. All of Palaniyappans study subjects were on
antipsychotics at the time of their MRI scans, he notes, so whether the same changes would have
been seen without treatment remains unclear. But we never used to think that the schizophrenic
brain can recover, he says. (August 1, 2016).
http://tinyurl.com/hgf4o9m
Neuroscientific Research & Technology
A Simple Phone Game Could Diagnose Autism. REAL CLEAR SCIENCE. Researchers from Jagiellonian
University in Poland and the University of Strathclyde in the United Kingdom hope they have found
a cheap and effective way to diagnose autism spectrum disorder (ASD).They aim to diagnose autism
with a simple game played on a phone or tablet. Prior research has hinted that children diagnosed
with ASD demonstrate distinct patterns in motor control, particularly with their hands. With this in
mind, authors Anna Anzulewicz, Krzysztof Sobota, and Jonathan T. Delafield-Butt recruited 37
children between the ages of three and six years old and matched them with 45 typically-developing
controls of equal age at the same gender ratio. One-by-one, each child was brought into a room, sat
in front of an iPad mini affixed to a table, and instructed to play two basic games for seven minutes
each. In those short and painless moments, the researchers collected heaps of data on the children's
finger movements extracted via inertial sensors and the tablet's touchscreen. As predicted, their
results showed children with autism touched the screen with more impact force and greater pressure
compared to controls. They also swiped faster and tapped the screen more quickly. Utilizing those
touch patterns, the algorithm devised diagnostic criteria for autism based on the children's gameplay.
The criteria successfully identified the autistic children with an impressive 93 percent accuracy. The
study is an exciting proof-of-concept, the researchers say, but more work needs to be done. Next,
they aim to test their approach on many more subjects in order to refine the algorithm's diagnostic
criteria and eliminate potential confounding variables. (August 25, 2016).
http://tinyurl.com/hlyfg7u
Seeing Through to a Mouses Nervous System. NEW YORK TIMES. Neuroscientists have developed a way
to turn an entire mouse, including its muscles and internal organs, transparent while illuminating the
nerve paths that run throughout its body. The process, called uDisco, provides an alternate way for
researchers to study an organisms nervous system without having to slice into sections of its organs
or tissues. It allows researchers to use a microscope to trace neurons from the rodents brain and
BNLC BlurbAugust 2016

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spinal cord all the way to its fingers and toes. So far, the technique has been conducted only in mice
and rats, but the scientists think it could one day be used to map the human brain. They also said it
could be particularly useful for studying the effects of mental disorders like Alzheimers disease or
schizophrenia. Researchers often study these diseases by examining thin slices of brain tissue under a
microscope. That is not a good way to study neurons because if you slice the brain, you slice the
network, Dr. Ertrk said. The best way to look at it is to look at the entire organism, not only the
brain lesion but beyond that. We need to see the whole picture. (August 22, 2016).
http://tinyurl.com/hrhaak6
Sleep Deprivation Hits Some Brain Areas Hard. SCIENCE NEWS. Pulling consecutive all-nighters makes
some brain areas groggier than others. Regions involved with problem solving and concentration
become especially sluggish when sleep-deprived, a new study using brain scans reveals. Other areas
appear to be less affected by a mounting sleep debt. Dijk and collaborators at the University of Liege
in Belgium assessed the cognitive function of 33 young adults who went without sleep for 42 hours.
Over the course of this sleepless period, the participants performed some simple tasks testing
reaction time and memory. The sleepy subjects also underwent 12 brain scans during their ordeal
and another scan after 12 hours of recovery sleep. Throughout the study, the researchers also
measured participants levels of the sleep hormone melatonin, which served as a way to track the
hands on their master circadian clocks. Activity in some brain areas, such as the thalamus, a central
hub that connects many other structures, waxed and waned in sync with the circadian clock. But in
other areas, especially those in the brains outer layer, the effects of this master clock were
overridden by the bodys drive to sleep. Brain activity diminished in these regions as sleep debt
mounted, the scans showed. While the brains circadian clock signal is known to originate in a
cluster of nerve cells known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, it is not clear where the drive to sleep
comes from, says Charles Czeisler, a sleep expert at Harvard Medical School. The need to sleep
might grow as toxic metabolites build up after a days worth of brain activity, or be triggered when
certain regions run out of fuel. (August 11, 2016).
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sleep-deprivation-hits-some-brain-areas-hard
New Ways To Mass Produce Human Neurons For Studying Neuropsychiatric Disorders. MEDICAL XPRESS.
Scientists from Singapore have streamlined the process of using human stem cells to mass produce
GABAergic neurons (GNs) in the laboratory. GNs are inhibitory neurons that reduce neuronal
activation, and make up roughly 20 per cent of the human brain. They work alongside excitatory
neurons (ENs) to ensure balanced neural activity for normal brain function. The coordinated
interplay between GNs and ENs orchestrate specific activation patterns in the brain, which are
responsible for our behavior, emotions, and higher reasoning. Functional impairment of GNs results
in imbalanced neural activity, thereby contributing to the symptoms observed in many psychiatric
disorders. The availability of high quality, functional human GN populations would facilitate the
development of good models for studying psychiatric disorders, as well as for screening drug effects
on specific populations of neurons. Drugs and small molecules may now be screened at an
unparalleled rate to discover the next blockbuster treatment for autism, schizophrenia, and epilepsy.
(August 4, 2016).
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-08-ways-mass-human-neurons-neuropsychiatric.html
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BNLC BlurbAugust 2016

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