6:76. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00076, Kral, A. Sci. Educational Researcher, November 1989, 18 . Dev. (2012). (2013). Child Dev. The CASP offers corrections to McGill and Busse's three critiques and clarifies the Association position that the assessment of students suspected of having a Specific Learning Disability involves a comprehensive evaluation that provides information regarding both environmental factors that include data on instruction and interventions as . Annu. Strength It has a wide range View the full answer Transcribed image text: Annu. A bar chart can be generated by a grade schooler on her smartphone, but a functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI), for example, carries with it the imprimatur of big science, as it requires expensive machines and legions of geeks to generate. Another example of the importance of preventive-measuring of neural activity is the study of how the hearing system is affected differently in contrasting socioeconomic contexts (Skoe et al., 2013). Proc. Rev. Because the brain is such a dynamic organ, one cannot reliably reconstruct from a neuroscan the brain's function at the time of the index event. Many different techniques are classified as psychophysiological. By themselves, the scans cannot answer whether he was impaired, or if impaired, whether the cyst was the cause. Adler thought that the basic psychological element of neurosis was a sense of inferiority and that individuals suffering with the symptoms of this phenomenon spent their lives trying to overcome the feelings without ever being in touch with reality (White, 1917) Compensation for Weaknesses Knowing how things typically work can help shed light on what may happen when there are problems. Dev. Among the most cited factors affecting development are neural plasticity, epigenetics, the influence of environmental toxins, nutrition, stress regulation, poverty modulation of cognitive and emotional processing, cognitive functioning, and health of adults with a history of childhood poverty (Hackman and Farah, 2009; Lipina and Colombo, 2009; Hackman et al., 2010; Bryck and Fisher, 2012; Miller and Chen, 2013). The aim of this assignment is to understand Psychological Perspectives and analyse what each perspective's strengths and weaknesses are. 23, 3952. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01538.x, Skoe, E., Krizman, J., and Kraus, N. (2013). (2005). Fourth, we suggest the development of innovative studies directed at analyzing plasticity of complex cognitive and emotional processes, and their respective windows of opportunities for intervention (Lipina and Colombo, 2009; DAngiulli et al., 2012; Lipina and Posner, 2012). For this reason, the first neurolaw arguments that have gained traction in the U.S. Supreme Court are group-based arguments, for which we can make more confident inferences: Roper v. Simmons,35 which prohibited the death penalty for juveniles as a class; Graham v. Florida,36 which prohibited life without parole for juveniles in nonhomicide offenses; and Miller v. Alabama,37 which prohibited mandatory life without parole sentencing for juveniles. Advances in technology over the past 20 years have given modern neuro-researchers tools of unprecedented power to probe the workings of the most complex machine in the universe (as far as we know). Socioeconomic status and the brain: mechanistic insights from human and animal research. Strengths and Weaknesses of Humanistic Theory. These three types of evidence work well together because they can compensate for each other's relative weaknesses, while combining their strengths. Also, recent behavioral studies have shown that sensitive periods are not necessarily fixed in terms of timing, and suggest that closure of these periods is likely to result from the natural consequence of a given learning process (Michel and Tayler, 2005). The impoverished brain: disparities in maternal education affect the neural response to sound. For example, I have found that neuroimaging findings can be useful in directing relevant follow-up neuropsychological testing and bringing attention to important behavioral details that might otherwise have been missed. In this sense, to generate changes in neurocognitive development, interventions have been introduced recently in the study of attention disorders, dyslexia, dyscalculia, executive functions, and arithmetic performance in samples of children from different SES backgrounds. I have participated in several of these cases in my early career and have seen enough to report that there is trouble afoot. Environmental noise exposure degrades normal listening processes. In addition, there is the problem of time: because people do not walk around wearing scanners, neuroimaging evidence presents information regarding brain structure or function after the fact. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2014.09.031, Holtmaat, A., and Svoboda, K. (2009). Socioeconomic status and the developing brain. Weaknesses of the Biological Perspective The weakness of this approach is that it often fails to account for other influences on behavior. The human element is embedded in the law with words like appreciation, sufficiency, and reasonableness, all of which require human interpretation. It is worth mentioning, however, that effective countermeasures for functional neuroimaging-based tests such as EEG48- and fMRI49-based lie detection are known to exist. Front. Received: 27 December 2013; Accepted: 19 January 2015; Published online: 11 February 2015. human cognition - came to the fore of psychological thought during the mid twentieth century, overlooking the stimulus-response focus of the behaviourist approach. How is it possible that a person can have a brain defect yet not have symptoms? As I have already stated, problems arise when neuroevidence is incorrectly viewed as a confirmatory test, when in fact, it is best suited for use as a hypothesis generator. Despite these important advances, the neuroscientific study of human poverty, particularly child poverty, is a topic that has gained attention in the most recent decades. Studies of arachnoid cysts in medical populations indicate that arachnoid cysts in adults are a frequent finding, and although some are associated with functional impairment, in fact most cases are asymptomatic,34 obviously limiting the predictions one can make about the functional impact of such cysts in individual cases. Thus, neuroscientific evidence generated during the last decade in the study of childhood poverty has helped to identify the early linguistic environment and the regulation of stress as two main aspects to consider in dealing with the conceptual and methodological challenges, and as future directions in the area. This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Psychopathol. Take for example, a neuroscience expert's claim, relying on quantitative electroencephalogram (qEEG) data, that an individual's amygdala is abnormal and overactive. The study of the influences of material and social deprivation on the central nervous system (CNS) has been an issue of interest in neuroscience research since the first half of the twentieth century. Bull. Neurosci. This is not a treatise about theories of knowledge and causation or of neuroscience's challenge to the nature of free will, which have been covered elsewhere.7 Although such philosophical discussions can be fascinating, as noted by others,8 ultimately they distract us from the practical problems that plague neuroscience-based legal claims today. In closing, I emphasize that although neuroscience can inform, it will never be able to answer ultimate legal questions of culpability and desert. Neuroevidence exploits the overwhelmingly positive associations we have with neuroscience, all things smart, high-tech, and beautiful, and thus can be highly persuasive beyond what the facts support.4 This persuasive aspect is the so-called seductive allure of neuroscience (Ref. Some of the widely accepted psychological theories are the behavioral theories, the cognitive theories, humanist theories, biological theories, psychodynamic and the social psychology theories. Hum. However, later research found that the amygdala is activated in other situations as well, when viewing pictures of donuts,13 for example, but only when the subject was hungry, and photographs of seminude women and interesting and novel objects,14 such as a chrome rhinoceros. 48, 932938. Neuroscience as a field is hindered by underpowered study designs that involve sample sizes that are too small. In addition, based on overactivity and the amygdala's known role as the brain's fear center, the defendant likely had overwhelming levels of fear at the time of an alleged offense, thus arguing for diminished culpability. . 7, 343348. Front. Many legal decisions depend on accurate assessment of mental states and mental capacities (such as capacity for rationality or control over one's behaviors), and the hope is that neuroscience can shed light on these matters. In concert with these issues, research programs have addressed the influence of malnutrition (Georgieff, 2007) and exposure to different types of pollutants and drugs (Hubbs-Tait et al., 2005) during pre- and post-natal brain development, with significant implications for the neuroscientific study of childhood poverty. Neuroevidence such as brain scans have several strengths. Psychoanalysis is a method of therapy in which the patient talks about experiences, early childhood, and dreams. (2013). Nat. Subsequent PET scans established glucose hypometabolism in the area of the cyst, as well as surrounding areas.25. You may wonder why there are so many different psychological approaches and whether one approach is correct and another wrong. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2011.09.004, Rueda, M. R., Rothbart, M. K., McCandliss, B. D., Saccamanno, L., and Posner, M. I. Genetic differences between individuals can result in widely divergent recruitment of brain areas for similar tasks. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2010.12.001, DAngiulli, A., Lipina, S. J., and Olesinska, A. Acad. They found that maternal stress in infancy predicted higher methylation levels in both girls and boys, but paternal stressors in preschool predicted differences in methylation at adolescence specifically in girls. However, as discussed above, neuroscience-based claims are limited by problems of reverse inference and group-to-individual inference and thus can rarely go beyond establishing that an impairment is plausible. It is certainly true that many studies have identified the amygdalae (there are two of them, one on each side of the brain) as critical processing centers for the experience of fear. Modern neuropsychological tests are well characterized in terms of specificity, sensitivity, and predictive values. In other words, at this point, in most cases careful behavioral analysis continues to be more reliable than neuroimaging in ascertaining the relevant mental states, capacities, and behaviors that form the actual basis of legal criteria. Neuroscience must also embark on large normative studies to understand the prevalence rates of brain defects and functional impairments in the general population. This analysis is time-consuming and requires methodological innovations for the exploration of molecular pathways, systems and behavioral events, and phenomena simultaneously, and throughout the different stages of development (e.g., Rao et al., 2010). Hum. Disclosures of financial or other potential conflicts of interest: None. Functional MRI and PET do not measure brain activity directly, but rather signals that derive from neurovascular correlates of brain activity. Proc. For instance, Brito and Noble (2014) have proposed early linguistic environment and stress as the candidate mechanisms through which poverty influences structural (i.e., language hemisphere, hippocampus, amygdala and prefrontal cortex) and functional (i.e., language, memory, social-emotional processing, cognitive control, self-regulation) brain development, based on recent findings considering different systems and levels of organization. To answer the inverse question of whether impairment Y is likely to be caused by brain defect X, we must know how many people with impairment have the brain defect, and how many do not (if many people have the impairment but not the brain defect, then another cause is the more likely explanation). The consensus view of modern neuroscience is that the brain accomplishes its tasks by dynamically recruiting networks of interconnected brain modules that combine to process and compute the required solution, a model called distributed processing.19 This model is analogous to the design of computer circuit boards, which contain interconnected specialized chips that combine dynamically in different configurations, depending on the task at hand. The study of how adverse environmental conditions (e.g., socioeconomic status (SES) or poverty) influence brain organization and reorganization during development includes different approaches. Inevitably, however, the curves overlap; some stroke patients will have better impulse control than some healthy controls, and some healthy subjects will have worse impulse control than some stroke patients. First, we propose to increase the focus on the study of variables, factors and mechanisms that mediate the effects of poverty on different cognitive and emotional processes to complement the analysis of impacts. There are several known sources of biovariability that make individual predictions of brain impairment devilishly tricky. At first glance, this assertion seems reasonable. A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth and public safety. A. I encourage readers to view Mr. Weinstein's brain scans, which are widely available on the web and in several journal articles.27 The cyst is impressive, and based on what we know about the function of the frontal lobes, its placement certainly raises the possibility that it impaired his impulse control and rationality. This means the explanations can be scientifically tested, replicated, and peer-reviewed. Psychol. It is likely that environmental stimulation does influence learning. doi: 10.1111/desc.12080, Lipina, S. J., Simonds, J., and Segretin, M. S. (2011). The impact of poverty on the development of brain networks. The aim of this section is to highlight the importance of a comprehensive approach to foster the integration of the conceptual models that have been generated in the studies of brain development and plasticity to help design a new generation of research methods and proposals in the study of childhood poverty from a neuroscientific perspective. Impulse control, like any other complex behavior, depends on the function of many brain areas, some of which can compensate for the other if damaged (the concept of neural redundancy29). Hearing ability depends on different degrees of environmental noise exposure (Zhou and Merzenich, 2012), and acoustic enrichment of the environment may promote recovery of auditory cortical processing (Zhu et al., 2014). Vulnerable Child. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.11.003, Hackman, D. A., Farah, M. J., and Meany, M. J. This means that the understanding of the role of the epigenome on the behavioral modifications driven by early experiences could contribute to our understanding of the relationship between childhood poverty and brain development. 84, 5875. Psychobiol. Behavioral evidence is the gold standard for determining functional impairment. In the basic sciences, optogenetics,53 a technology invented by psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth in 2005,54 continues to reap rich rewards. Cogn. Acad. Findings of brain defects in individuals may raise valid and plausible claims of impairment. Although some scholars have disputed whether this seductive allure exists,6 I have found that the presentation of neuroevidence often causes people to short-circuit critical thinking and accept assertions that they would dismiss in other circumstances. Search. Beautiful, high-resolution images are impressive, but for legal applications, what neuroscience needs is more data, particularly in the form of large, normative survey studies, as mentioned earlier.
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