Redefining Justice:

Updating Criminal Law to Reflect a New Understanding of the Mind

BY CHERIE FERNANDES The Lawrenceville School (United States)

In the year 2000, 40-year old George Sheppard (a generic name used for narrative purposes) was arrested for possessing child pornography and molesting his 8-year old stepdaughter. He had no previous history of pedophilia, happily married for two years before his sexual impulses abruptly changed. George was fully aware of the immorality of his actions, baffled and appalled by the sudden and sickening changes, but felt unable to control them. He began to visit brothels, accumulated a collection of pornographic material, and, unable to contain his urges, made sexual advancements towards his stepdaughter. When his wife discovered the predatory behavior, he was removed from his home, upon which the behavior only worsened.

While awaiting his day in court, George began to complain of terrible headaches, and a brain scan soon revealed massive tumor in his orbitofrontal cortex, the region of the brain known to control sexual impulses. The tumor was removed, and with it, the pedophilic impulses and lack of self-control. George completed a Sexaholics Anonymous program and was able to return to his family. When deviant sexual impulses returned a year later, another scan revealed that the tumor had as well, and so a second surgery rid George of the tumor and the pedophilic behavior, this time for good. George’s case in particular points to what Stanford neuroscience professor David Eagleman terms “hidden drives and desires [which] lurk undetected behind the neural machinery of socialization”. “When the frontal lobes are compromised,” Eagleman explains, “startling behaviors can emerge.” This disinhibition is also common in patients with frontotemporal dementia, a disease causing the aforementioned lobes to degenerate. The lack of impulse control often causes patients to violate social norms, and commonly landing them in court for the resultant crimes of public nudity, aggression, or shoplifting. The composition of their brains leave them physically incapable of acting differently. l

JOSEPH T. COYLE, M.D.

Joseph T. Coyle is the Eben S. Draper Chair of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1969, he was a research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health with Nobel Laureate, Julius Axelrod. After psychiatric residency at Hopkins, he joined the faculty in 1975. In 1982, he became the director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. From 1991 to 2001, he was chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. His research interests concern the causes of neuropsychiatric disorders. He is the past-president of the Society for Neuroscience (1991), a member of the National Academy of Medicine (1990), a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993), a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2005), and the former editor of JAMA Psychiatry

MARTHA J. FARAH, Ph.D.

Martha J. Farah is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Natural Sciences at the Center for Neuroscience & Society, University of Pennsylvania. She is a cognitive neuroscientist who works on problems at the interface of neuroscience and society. Her recent research has focused on socioeconomic status and brain development. Farah grew up in New York City, was educated at MIT and Harvard, and taught at Carnegie-Mellon University before joining the University of Pennsylvania. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a former Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of honors including the National Academy of Science’s Troland Research Award and the Association for Psychological Science’s lifetime achievement award. She is a founding and current board member of the International Society for Neuroethics.

PIERRE MAGISTRETTI, M.D., Ph.D.

Pierre Magistretti is the dean of the Division of Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and professor emeritus in the Brain Mind Institute, EPFL and Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry–CHUV/UNIL, Switzerland. Magistretti received his M.D. from the University of Geneva and his Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego. Magistretti’s research team has made significant contributions in the field of brain energy metabolism. His group has discovered some of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie the coupling between neuronal activity and energy consumption by the brain. This work has considerable ramifications for the understanding of the origin of the signals detected with the current functional brain imaging techniques used in neurologic and psychiatric research.

HELEN S. MAYBERG, M.D.

Helen S. Mayberg is a neurologist renowned for her study of brain circuits in depression and for her pioneering deep brain stimulation research, which has been heralded as one of the first hypothesis-driven treatment strategies for a major mental illness. She is the founding director of Mount Sinai Health System’s The Nash Family Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics Mayberg received an M.D. from the University of Southern California, trained at the Neurological Institute of New York at Columbia University, and was a post-doctoral fellow in nuclear medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Immediately prior to joining Mount Sinai, Mayberg was Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Radiology and held the inaugural Dorothy C. Fuqua Chair in Psychiatric Neuroimaging and Therapeutics at Emory University School of Medicine. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors. She is on the board of the International Society for Neuroethics and won the society’s Steven E. Hyman for Distinguished Service to Neuroethics (2018).

JOHN H. MORRISON, Ph.D.

John H. Morrison is UC Davis Distinguished Professor, director of the California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC), Professor of Neurology in the School of Medicine, and professor in the Center for Neuroscience at UC Davis. Morrison earned his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and completed postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Dr. Floyd E. Bloom at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Morrison’s research program focuses primarily on the neurobiology of aging and neurodegenerative disorders. His laboratory is particularly interested in age-related synaptic alterations that compromise synaptic health, lead to cognitive decline, and potentially leave the brain vulnerable to Alzheimer’s Disease. Morrison is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.