Our newest blogger, Dr. Kelly McAleer, has an interesting two-part post about the use of fMRI imaging technologies to try and detect psychopathology in criminals:

In my last post, I discussed how Dr. Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist, is using fMRI technology to detect brain abnormalities in people with psychopathy. His participants are prison inmates who score high on the PCL-R, a psychodiagnostic measure used to assess psychopathy. Once he determines that the participant is, in fact, a psychopath based on their PCL-R score, he takes scans of their brains using an fMRI to determine if there are brain differences between psychopathic participants and normal controls. He has found defects in the paralimbic system that he believes relate to psychopathy.

Interestingly, Dr. Kiehl’s research is being used by perpetrators to avoid prison or to reduce sentencing. One such case has plagued the Chicago area for over two decades. Brian Dugan, a 52-year-old man with a 13-year crime spree, including murders, rapes, arson, and burglaries, spanning the 1970s and 80s finally went to trial for his crimes in late 2009. For those interested in death penalty laws, this case has a lot of history, and contributed to the moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois due to the wrongful conviction of three men for one of the murders (Jeanine Nicarico) that Dugan committed.

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