Neurophilosophical perspectives of neuroimaging in forensic psychiatry—giving way to a paradigm shift?

Abstract

Forensic psychiatry is concerned with the relationship between psychiatric abnormalities and legal violations and crimes. Due to the lack of available biological criteria, evaluation and therapy in forensic psychiatry have so far been restricted to psychosocial and mental criteria of offenders' personalities. Recent advances in neurosciences allow a closer approach to the neural correlates of personality, moral judgments and decision-making. We propose to discuss the introduction of biological criteria in the field of forensic psychiatry and to establish rules as to what extent such biological criteria will be a better and more reliable choice in judging mentally ill criminals by using all available information that can be obtained by biological means. Psychosocial and subjective criteria in forensic evaluation will be more and more accomplished by biopsychosocial and objective criteria. The responsibility of having committed a criminal act will no longer be exclusively defined by judging free and voluntary decision-making, but rather by brain-behavior relationships. What is often referred to as psychosocially determined mental processes thus could be complemented by estimating the degree of biopsychosocially determined neural processes. We conclude that such a process could contribute to a paradigm shift in forensic psychiatry, which will have profound implications for offenders, forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, the law and society in general.

Neuroimage Evidence and the Insanity Defense

“…Despite the non-influence of neuroimagery, however, jurors who were not provided with a neuroimage indicated that they believed neuroimagery would have been the most helpful kind of evidence in their evaluations of the defendant. Fueled by advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI (fMRI), and other imaging technology, neuroscience evidence -particularly neuroimage-based evidence -has started to find its way into trials of criminal cases, offered to help resolve a range of issues, among them competence, capacity to form a mental state necessary to be guilty of a crime, criminal responsibility (insanity), as mitigation evidence in capital murder penalty phase hearings (Appelbaum, 2009;Baskin, Edersheim, & Price, 2007;Erickson, 2010;Fabian, 2010;Fiegenson, 2006;Greely, 2008;Hughes, 2010;Jones Buckholtz, Schall, & Marois, 2009;Mobbs, Lau, Jones, & Frith, 2007;Moriarty, 2008;Sinnott-Armstrong, Roskies, Brown, & Murphy, 2008;Vincent, 2011;Witzel et al, 2008). In anticipating this development in neuropsychiatric expert testimony, numerous commentators -from both the legal and scientific communities -have cautioned about a range of inadequacies in the current state of the art and science, especially if offered in legal settings.…”

Effects of Neuroimaging Evidence on Mock Juror Decision Making

“…Kulynych () argues that neuroscientific findings are not specific enough to inform questions of volitional and cognitive impairment, and that there are no objective criteria by which to quantify the extent of brain damage. Despite these concerns, however, a contingent of commentators have argued recently that increasingly sophisticated neurobiological techniques do allow scientists to address the biological basis of behaviors (Muller et al, ) and that neuroscience is now advanced enough to contribute to forensic psychiatry (Witzel, Walter, Bogerts, & Northoff, ).…”

Antipsychotic polypharmacy in the emergency treatment of highly aggressive schizophrenic prisoners ‐ a retrospective study

“…The importance of promptly and continuously administered antipsychotic substances is beyond any controversy in order to cope adequately with acute schizophrenic symptoms so as to prevent relapse, which is more likely to occur in the absence of neuroleptic treatment (Kane, 1982). Special emphasis should be given to neurobiological alterations of prisoners' brains as well (Witzel, Walter, Bogerts, & Northoff, 2008) as advanced technical diagnostic methods usually are rarely applied to prisoners.…”