When he was 20 years old, Rom Houben was involved in a car accident that left him completely paralyzed. The accident didn't place him in a coma, however, and he tried desperately to communicate with those around him, but to no avail. Dr. House may have recognized "locked-in" syndrome in a few minutes, but Houben's doctors spent 23 years believing their patient was a vegetable, leaving Houben to experience nothing outside the hospital soap operas playing out in his room (apparently, his nurses were frequent gossips).

How did this happen? Houben's doctors determined that he was in a coma using the Glasgow Coma Scale, a widely used system that evaluates eye movement and motor responses. The trouble is that while Houben's body was functioning like a coma patient, his cerebral cortex was still chugging along. It took a brain scan to reveal that Houben was still fully conscious, and he is currently able to communicate thanks to a keyboard that responds to the barest tremors he can coax from his right hand.

While one would hope Houben was the unlucky winner of a terrifying medical lottery, situations like his may not be rare. Neurologist Steven Laureys, who performed the revealing brain scan on Houben, says that in 40 percent of supposedly vegetative patients he examined, brain scans revealed some level of consciousness. Both Houben and Laureys are advocating that doctors lean less on the Glasgow Scale and look more toward brain scans.

Brain scan finds man was not in a coma—23 years later [CNET]

In the most recent issue of Neuron, Jack Gallant and Thomas Naselaris of the University of California, Berkeley describe their process for reconstructing images from brain scans. While previous studies have used fMRI technology to identify an image a subject has recently viewed, those studies involve a subject viewing a specific picture from a limited set and then showing them all the pictures in that set to see which one they previously viewed. Gallant and Naselaris' research is focused on reconstructing visual information based solely on readings from the brain.

The researchers have worked on identifying which parts of the brain are associated with certain types of visual information. For example, different regions are active when viewing a face or a crowd of people or a building. They believe as their understanding of these regions grow more sophisticated, they will better be able to pin point from fMRI scans what a subject has seen. Currently, they are able to get a rough idea of what a subject is looking at and then pull a corresponding image from a vast database of images. It's not quite a reconstruction yet, but it is close and will improve with further research.

An article from Wired notes that full visual reconstruction is still decades away, but could have implications for devices that read dreams or machines controlled through thought. However, as fMRI technology is so often used now in court cases (arguably prematurely given the current technology), it seems likely that one of the first applications we could see from this technology will be in justice system.

[Wired]

Medgadet has the story:

Genes appear to influence intelligence by determining how well nerve axons are encased in myelin - the fatty sheath of "insulation" that coats our axons and allows for fast signaling bursts in our brains. The thicker the myelin, the faster the nerve impulses.

[UCLA neurologist Paul Thompson] and his colleagues scanned the brains of 23 sets of identical twins and 23 sets of fraternal twins. Since identical twins share the same genes while fraternal twins share about half their genes, the researchers were able to compare each group to show that myelin integrity was determined genetically in many parts of the brain that are key for intelligence. These include the parietal lobes, which are responsible for spatial reasoning, visual processing and logic, and the corpus callosum, which pulls together information from both sides of the body.

The researchers used a faster version of a type of scanner called a HARDI (high-angular resolution diffusion imaging) - think of an MRI machine on steroids - that takes scans of the brain at a much higher resolution than a standard MRI . . . HARDI tracks how water diffuses through the brain's white matter - a way to measure the quality of its myelin.

"HARDI measures water diffusion," said Thompson, who is also a member of the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro-Imaging. "If the water diffuses rapidly in a specific direction, it tells us that the brain has very fast connections. If it diffuses more broadly, that's an indication of slower signaling, and lower intelligence. So it gives us a picture of one's mental speed," he said.

via Medgadget

In the US, scientific evidence presented during a trial must meet the Daubert standard (or, in some jurisdictions, the Frye standard). To be admissible, an expert’s scientific testimony must be relevant to the case, and the expert must have arrived at his or her conclusions through the scientific method. If the admissibility of the evidence is challenged, a judge will consider the use of empirical testing, whether the expert’s method of drawing conclusions has been subject to peer review, whether the error rate of such conclusions is known so that it may be disclosed during trial, and whether the method and conclusions have been accepted by a significant proportion of the scientific community.

Currently, brain scans can be entered into evidence, but they are generally used by defendants to mitigate culpability. Scans can show that a defendant suffers from brain damage, a tumor, or a neurological defect that impairs their judgment, perception, ability to control their actions, or sense of right and wrong. In the 2005 case Roper v. Simmons, which famously held that it is unconstitutional to execute individuals for crimes they committed as a minor, the Supreme Court admitted fMRI readings into evidence of the biological differences between adolescent and adult brains.

This indicates that the court system does put stock in these tests under certain circumstance. But, for courts to start admitting brain scans as evidence of criminal activity, they would have to pass the Daubert standard. Unfortunately for defendants, some legal scholars have deemed Daubert “near irrelevant,” as certain judges err on the side of including too much evidence, and defendants are unlikely to win Daubert challenges against the prosecution. And this can prove problematic when the evidence is presented to CSI-loving jurors who are more likely than judges to view scientific testimony as infallible.

But even if courts accept the scientific methodology behind this use of brain scans, there are still constitutional issues to consider. The Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution states that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” And courts will have to determine whether the use of brain scans by the prosecution presents an unlawful compulsion of testimony from the defendant.

A defendant’s physical body can be used as evidence against him in certain circumstances. For example, the state can compel a criminal suspect to provide a DNA sample, and can even take blood from an unconscious suspect to determine whether there are drugs or alcohol in the defendant’s system and later enter the results into evidence. But unlike brain scans, these are not communicative acts and they do not reveal the content of the mind.

The closest analogy we have to brain scan lie detectors is the polygraph. Like brain scans, polygraphs purport to offer a glimpse into a suspect’s mind. Although the Supreme Court has never ruled on the introduction of a defendant’s polygraph by a prosecutor, it alluded to the problem of polygraphs in Schmerber v. California. The case, which upheld the admissibility of a blood test taken without a defendant’s consent, distinguished taking this type of evidence from measuring physiological responses”

Some tests seemingly directed to obtain "physical evidence," for example, lie detector tests measuring changes in body function during interrogation, may actually be directed to eliciting responses which are essentially testimonial. To compel a person to submit to testing in which an effort will be made to determine his guilt or innocence on the basis of physiological responses, whether willed or not, is to evoke the spirit and history of the Fifth Amendment. Such situations call to mind the principle that the protection of the privilege "is as broad as the mischief against which it seeks to guard." Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U. S. 547, 142 U. S. 562.

However, polygraphs have been successfully introduced by prosecutors during sentencing proceedings. In the 2006 case United States v. Johnson, the 2nd Circuit upheld the introduction of Jeffrey Johnson’s polygraph results, whose introduction he had stipulated to prior to taking the test, stating that it did not violate his Fifth Amendment rights. And even if brain scan evidence is never successfully introduced in court, it could still be used the same way polygraphs are today: to coerce suspects who fail the tests into making a confession.

Complex brain imaging is making waves in court [SF Gate]

Prosecution offices in India have set up labs to examine suspects who submit to the test. When areas of the brain associated with memory, such as those dealing with smell and sound, light up during the description of a crime, prosecutors see that as evidence of the subject's commission of the crime:

Ms. Sharma, 24, agreed to take a BEOS test in Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra. (Suspects may be tested only with their consent, but forensic investigators say many agree because they assume it will spare them an aggressive police interrogation.)

After placing 32 electrodes on Ms. Sharma's head, investigators said, they read aloud their version of events, speaking in the first person (“I bought arsenic”; “I met Udit at McDonald's”), along with neutral statements like “The sky is blue,” which help the software distinguish memories from normal cognition.

For an hour, Ms. Sharma said nothing. But the relevant nooks of her brain where memories are thought to be stored buzzed when the crime was recounted, according to Mr. Joseph, the state investigator. The judge endorsed Mr. Joseph's assertion that the scans were proof of “experiential knowledge” of having committed the murder, rather than just having heard about it.

Previously, Indian courts had accepted BEOS results only as corroborating evidence, not proof in itself of criminal activity. Citing the seriousness of the outcome (Sharma received a life sentence), many neuroscientists and bioethicists in the US have stated that the technology, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, has entered the legal system far too soon. But even if these supposed mind-reading technologies never meet the evidentiary standards of courts outside of India, other possible public and private uses exist:

No Lie MRI, a company in California, promises on its Web site to use the scans to help with developing interpersonal trust and military intelligence, among other tasks. In August, a committee of the National Research Council in Washington predicted that, with greater research, brain scans could eventually aid “the acquisition of intelligence from captured unlawful combatants” and “the screening of terrorism suspects at checkpoints.”

Image from Bioedge.

India's Novel Use of Brain Scans in Courts Is Debated [NY Times]