Recent developments in the neuropsychology of criminal behavior have given rise to concerns that neuroimaging evidence (such as MRI and functional MRI [fMRI] images) could unduly influence jurors. Across four experiments, a nationally representative sample of 1,476 jury-eligible participants evaluated written summaries of criminal cases in which expert testimony was presented in support of a mental disorder as exculpatory. The evidence varied in the extent to which it presented neuroscientific explanations and neuroimages in support of the expert's conclusion. Despite suggestive findings from previous research, we found no evidence that neuroimagery affected jurors' judgments (verdicts, sentence recommendations, judgments of the defendant's culpability) over and above verbal neuroscience-based testimony. A meta-analysis of our four experiments confirmed these findings. In addition, we found that neuroscientific evidence was more effective than clinical psychological evidence in persuading jurors that the defendant's disorder reduced his capacity to control his actions, although this effect did not translate into differences in verdicts.

BackgroundViolence that leads to homicide results in an extreme financial and emotional burden on society. Juveniles who commit homicide are often tried in adult court and typically spend the majority of their lives in prison. Despite the enormous costs associated with homicidal behavior, there have been no serious neuroscientific studies examining youth who commit homicide.MethodsHere we use neuroimaging and voxel-based morphometry to examine brain gray matter in incarcerated male adolescents who committed homicide (n = 20) compared with incarcerated offenders who did not commit homicide (n = 135). Two additional control groups were used to understand further the nature of gray matter differences: incarcerated offenders who did not commit homicide matched on important demographic and psychometric variables (n = 20) and healthy participants from the community (n = 21).ResultsCompared with incarcerated adolescents who did not commit homicide (n = 135), incarcerated homicide offenders had reduced gray matter volumes in the medial and lateral temporal lobes, including the hippocampus and posterior insula. Feature selection and support vector machine learning classified offenders into the homicide and non-homicide groups with 81% overall accuracy.ConclusionsOur results indicate that brain structural differences may help identify those at the highest risk for committing serious violent offenses.

New technologies have always been a critical component of military strategy and preparedness. One new technology on the not-too-1 The authors of are members of the Autonomous Robotics thrust group of the Consortium on Emerging Technologies, Military Operations, and National Security (CETMONS), a multiinstitutional organization dedicated to providing the basis for the ethical, rational, and responsible understanding and management of the complex set of issues raised by emerging technologies and their use in military operations, as well as their broader implications for national security.

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Standards play a particularly critical role in the information and communications technology (ICT) industry: they facilitate important interoperability goals. Standards development processes in the ICT industry are extraordinarily complex, and many aspects of these processes are not well understood. Inspired by discussions at a workshop that included leading practitioners, academics, and policymakers specializing in standards, the authors identify factors that explain both the growing importance and the growing complexity of standards in the ICT industry. The authors provide a framework for understanding how standards development efforts are structured, with a particular focus on the more informal specification development groups known as Consortia. The authors also explore two particular challenges in standard setting: the development of intellectual property policies that adequately balance different stake-holder interests, and the potential for ethical conflict issues.