The contribution of neurosciences and of neuroimaging techniques to the forensic psychiatry. The finding of jurisprudence

Abstract

The progress of neurosciences – and neuroimaging techniques – is consenting the same search a big application in forensic scope. The functional magnetic resonance imaging, the positron emission tomography, the Voxel-Based Morphometry, etc. would permit a direct study of the morphology and of the brain activities in a “normality” condition and during the exposition to a emotional stimulation. Parts of brain - like amygdala, frontal lobe, etc. – regulate directly the aggressiveness, the capacity of self-control and wisdom in the person; and sophisticated techniques of neuroimaging consent a study increasingly thorough of these. The sentences of jurisprudence, in recent years, are absorbing these innovative instances that come from science and from technology. The Supreme Court, in an important judgment of 2005, has considered that “personality disorders” can influence the acting subject’s capacity of understanding and willing. The Trieste’s Court of Assizes of Appeal and the Como’s Court, by two famous sentences, went beyond recognizing to defendants the “partial defect of mind” relying on psychiatric expertise made by the contribution of cognitive neurosciences and behavioral genetics. The contribution of neurosciences to forensic psychiatry is fueling . there are some persons reach to exaggerations – the criminological theories which tend to favor the bio-anthropological aspect in crime’s genesis and to understand criminals like subjects with a little free will. It is a “line of thought” which goes back to “Positive School” and to Lombroso and – in various versions and aspects – has arrived to present day. A concrete approach of the cognitive neurosciences – without radical interpretations – is a good aid for many problems can show in courtrooms.