David Eagleman: The Brain and the Law

Dr. David Eagleman is a author and neuroscientist  at Baylor College where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law. He's also a Guggenheim Fellow and member in the World Economic Forum. He's also an Albuquerque native!

In this video Eagleman delivers a talk to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce on the topic of "The Brain and the Law." Eagleman's talk touches upon an issue very familiar to us from Chapter 4 of Gould's book; that is, the link between the brain and criminal behavior. Like Lombroso, Dallemange, or Ferri what this talk illustrates is that the question of what makes a "ordinary" man suddenly perform criminal acts has never been sufficiently answered, and likely never will be. Obviously technique and knowledge has changed dramatically since Lombroso conducted his research. For example, with Freud came the development of the "unconscious," or Marx who championed the idea that we are strictly products of our class and environment. In this Eagleman draws on recent criminal cases and modern medical knowledge to assert that "when you change your biology, you change your brain." Injury, drug addiction, disease all have the ability to change the way we think and behave, and likely we would all agree on such a statement. But as Eagleman shows, the line of "culpability"–– the line between what you rationally choose to do or what your brain unconsciously does–– is no more defined now than during Lombroso's time. While Lombroso was measuring cranial capacity we're now using MRI's and psychoanalysis to try to answer the same question of what makes a man a criminal.