Science News

If you sing, dance, draw, or act -- and especially if you watch others do so -- you probably have an altruistic streak, according to a new study.

Neuroscience shows that the adolescent brain is still developing. The question is whether that should influence the sentencing of juveniles.

Articles about NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=neuroscience

For the social network to function, each person assigns each other person responsibility for his or her actions. There are rules for traffic that exist and are only understood and adopted when cars interact. It is the same for human interactions. Just as we would not try to understand traffic by studying the mechanics of cars, we should not try to understand brains to understand the idea of responsibility. Responsibility exists at a different level of organization: the social level, not in our determined brains.

Articles about NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?page=1&tag=neuroscience

If this demotion of free will is correct – and that’s a big if – then rights violations aren’t caused by people who decide to violate them. They are instead caused by their brains. This is a depressing idea because it implies that we can’t do much about rights violations, short of clinical or chemical interventions in the brain. It also implies that we can’t hold violators responsible for their actions, since it’s their brains rather than their conscious volition that is the real cause of those actions.

Articles about NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=neuroscience