Spring 2012

June 11-12, 2012
CBD Conference: From NeuroSelves to NeuroSocieties: Cross-Disciplinary Conversations around The Neurosciences and Society
Now accepting proposals from faculty and graduate students!

March 27, 2012
CBD Public Lecture: The Shortsighted Brain: Neuroeconomics and the Governance of Choice in Time, by Natasha Dow Schüll
This event will be held in Franklin Patterson Hall,  Main Lecture Hall from 5:30-7:00pm

ABSTRACT:
The young field of neuroeconomics converges around behavioral deviations from the model of the human being as Homo economicus, a rational actor who calculates his choices to maximize his individual satisfaction. In a historical moment characterized by economic, health, and environmental crises, policymakers have become increasingly concerned about a particular deviation for which neuroeconomics offers a biological explanation: Why do humans value the present at the expense of the future? There is contentious debate within the field over how to model this tendency at the neural level. Should the brain be conceptualized as a unified decision-making apparatus, or as the site of conflict between an impetuous limbic system at perpetual odds with its deliberate and provident overseer in the prefrontal cortex? Scientific debates over choice-making in the brain, I will argue in this talk, are also debates over how to define the constraints on human reason with which regulative strategies must contend. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, I will explore how the brain and its treatment of the future become the contested terrain for distinct visions of governmental intervention into problems of human choice-making.

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT:
Natasha Dow Schüll is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor at the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. She has recently completed a book based on extended research in Las Vegas among gambling addicts and the designers of the slot machines they play. Her current, ongoing research concerns the field of neuroeconomics and what its questions and methods reveal about larger cultural values and priorities. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, among other sources.

Fall 2011

October 27, 2011
CBD Public Lecture: Intersecting Complexity: Neuroscience, Lie Detection. and the Legal Admissibility Matrix, by Jane Campbell Moriarty

ABSTRACT:
Neuroscientists have made substantial progress in the last decade using neuroimaging in controlled laboratory studies to distinguish between truth-telling and deception. fMRI technology integrates physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, physiology, and statistical analysis to measure changes in brain activity. When synchronized with an appropriate behavioral paradigm, fMRI can discriminate between lies and truth in individual subjects with an accuracy rate of greater than 75%. While most neuroscientists believe that fMRI lie detection is not courtroom-ready, commercial entities are attempting to introduce tests results in trials. Proper legal analysis of the admissibility of scientific evidence balances many factors, including constitutionality; reliability; the role and limitations of juries; and social policy. The point where these two complex systems of science and law intersect is the courtroom. This presentation asks whether the science is good enough for the courtroom and whether the courtroom is capable of managing the science. Creating an "admissibility matrix," the lecturer attempts to deconstruct and explain the complexities of science and law to determine if there is a future for neuroscience lie detection in court.

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT:
Jane Moriarty is professor of law and Carol Los Mansmann chair of faculty scholarship at Duquesne University School of Law, where she teaches Evidence, Professional Responsibility, and Scientific and Expert Evidence. She was previously a professor of law and director of faculty research and development at the University of Akron School of Law. Her scholarship focuses on expert evidence and professional responsibility. She is a co-author of Scientific and Expert Evidence (Aspen, 2nd ed. 2011), the author and editor of Psychological and Scientific Evidence in Criminal Trials (West, 1996-2006), and the editor of Women and the Law (1998-2010). She has published several articles on forensic evidence, neuroscience evidence, and expert evidence. In addition to practicing law in both Boston and Pittsburgh, Professor Moriarty was a law clerk to the Honorable Ralph J. Cappy, Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and served as a law clerk to the Superior Court of Massachusetts.

October 15, 2011
CBD Student Symposium: “What I Did This Summer.” Student Presentations and Internship Panel Discussion