psydoc8

Old enough to remember attending a David Karp party. Called the “Marquess de fMRI” by Dr. Anon. Featured in Tumblr’s Medicine Spotlight. Neurocriminology, law, policy, bourbon, justice tech, and data science.

[psydoctor8]

Tom Sachs is a sculptor.

[psydoctor8]

[pennlaw-deactivated20190822]

Prof. Stephen Morse recently sat down with the one and only Alan Alda for PBS’s upcoming “Brains on Trial” special, airing this fall.

[psydoctor8]

I find Morse conservative...I like my neurolaws to be applicable to policy and actionable now. Alan Alda all day long though.

[npr]

People who are thinking about killing themselves appear to have distinctive brain activity that can now be measured by a computer.

In these people, words like “death” and “trouble” produce a distinctive “neural signature” not found in others, scientists report in the journal Nature Human Behavior. More than 44,000 people commit suicide in the U.S. each year.

“There really is a difference in the way [suicidal] people think about certain concepts,” says Marcel Just, an author of the paper and the D. O. Hebb professor of cognitive neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University.

That difference allowed a computer program to distinguish people who thought about suicide from people who did not more than 90 percent of the time. It also allowed the computer program to distinguish people who had attempted suicide from people who had only thought about it.

Brain Patterns May Predict People At Risk Of Suicide

Illustration: Gary Waters/Ikon Images/Getty Images

[realcleverscience]

Wow, really incredible. Small sample size, but that probably means it’ll just work better when trained on a larger dataset.

Also means we gotta start thinking about the potential - and dangers - this could pose. One sticky question: Can this be used as evidence in court? What if they run a brainscan and it says, “yeah, this guy has really murderous brain-patterns”? Will police need a warrant to do a brainscan? Or even for just general mental health, do we allow doctors to routinely probe our subconscious in ways we can’t control?

Lot of potential for good, but gotta consider the whole picture.

[psydoctor8]

In terms of court use (which hasn’t approached evidentiary use as do much as mitigating factors in sentencing phases) a scan could be seen as a double edge sword. On one side you have a real structural or functional neurobiological basis for behavior, you had no control over that structural anomaly, so perhaps not as blameworthy. On the other hand, you have a real structural or functional basis for your behavior, how do we fix that? “Lockem up.”

[thealogie]

where do I see myself in five years? hopefully replying to multi-paragraph work emails with: cool! thanks.-Sent From My iPhone

[psydoctor8]

Much like this tumblr did<

[psydoctor8]

[psydoctor8]

Attn Researchers - Open Access SciLaw Data Export

Crime is public record. But it has taken our team over two years to acquire this data, convert it to useful and universal formats, identify clerical errors and duplicates, and then classify the offenses into a broad and specific categories to enable cross jurisdictional analysis. 

We are now opening this up for everyone to have the opportunity to detect and understand the patterns of crime.

Our long term goal is to steer social policy in an evidence-based manner. Legal policy is often driven by intuition and politics more than by data analysis. Large-scale data analysis has the potential to reveal patterns that will assess the efficacy of legislation. Using millions of criminal records from multiple states, we mine patterns of crime and recidivism to help navigate a more effective criminal justice policy. Which policies over the past few decades have effectively reduced crime? Which types of crime respond to which types of policies? Are there “gateway crimes” that lead offenders to commit other crimes in the future? What patterns correlate with re-offense? Which crime types cluster, and which are rarely performed by the same individual? When does sentencing effectively prevent offenders from reoffending?

[psydoctor8]

I've been busy, but I still check in on you guys.

[psydoctor8]

Christmas in June! Thanks @davideagleman (at Tmc Accelerating Innovation Center)

[psydoctor8]

LSD's impact on the brain revealed in groundbreaking images

First modern scans of people high on psychedelic drug has given researchers unprecedented insight into neural basis for its effects

[psydoctor8]

[psydoctor8]

I just Jodie Fostered this.

[vhspositive]

[psydoctor8]

Im never here anymore. 

[psydoctor8]

An App To Detect Head Injuries

A neuroscientist in Houston has developed an iPad app that uses research-backed games to collect data on neurocognitive function.

Hey, it’s what I’m up to these days.

[psydoctor8]

Hello #art studio. Mama's home.

[npr]

Former state and federal prosecutors urging the Supreme Court to invalidate Timothy Foster’s conviction because of “blatant prosecutorial misconduct.” They point to study after study showing that when it comes to getting rid of racial discrimination, the current system doesn’t work.

Supreme Court Takes On Racial Discrimination In Jury Selection

Illustration: Annette Elizabeth Allen/NPR

[psydoctor8]

Things I wanted in this article: actual reasons why peremptory strikes shouldn’t be limited, and a much needed discussion on implicit racial bias in pleas, where there is zero oversight.