Decision-Making in the Primate Brain

Making decisions is fundamental to everything we do, yet it can be impaired in various disorders and conditions. While research into the neural basis of decision-making has flourished in recent years, many questions remain about how decisions are instantiated in the brain. Here we explored how primates make abstract decisions and decisions in social contexts, as well as one way to non-invasively modulate the brain circuits underlying decision-making. We used rhesus macaques as our model organism. First we probed numerical decision-making, a form of abstract decision-making. We demonstrated that monkeys are able to compare discrete ratios, choosing an array with a greater ratio of positive to negative stimuli, even when this array does not have a greater absolute number of positive stimuli. Monkeys’ performance in this task adhered to Weber’s law, indicating that monkeys—like humans—treat proportions as analog magnitudes. Next we showed that monkeys’ ordinal decisions are influenced by spatial associations; when trained to select the fourth stimulus from the bottom in a vertical array, they subsequently selected the fourth stimulus from the left—and not from the right—in a horizontal array. In other words, they begin enumerating from one side of space and not the other, mirroring the human tendency to associate numbers with space. These and other studies confirmed that monkeys’ numerical decision-making follows similar patterns to that of humans, making them a good model for investigations of the neurobiological basis of numerical decision-making.

We sought to develop a system for exploring the neuronal basis of the cognitive and behavioral effects observed following transcranial magnetic stimulation, a relatively new, non-invasive method of brain stimulation that may be used to treat clinical disorders. We completed a set of pilot studies applying offline low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to the macaque posterior parietal cortex, which has been implicated in numerical processing, while subjects performed a numerical comparison and control color comparison task, and while electrophysiological activity was recorded from the stimulated region of cortex. We found tentative evidence in one paradigm that stimulation did selectively impair performance in the number task, causally implicating the posterior parietal cortex in numerical decisions. In another paradigm, however, we manipulated the subject’s reaching behavior but not her number or color comparison performance. We also found that stimulation produced variable changes in neuronal firing and local field potentials. Together these findings lay the groundwork for detailed investigations into how different parameters of transcranial magnetic stimulation can interact with cortical architecture to produce various cognitive and behavioral changes.

Finally, we explored how monkeys decide how to behave in competitive social interactions. In a zero-sum computer game in which two monkeys played as a shooter or a goalie during a hockey-like “penalty shot” scenario, we found that shooters developed complex movement trajectories so as to conceal their intentions from the goalies. Additionally, we found that neurons in the dorsolateral and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex played a role in generating this “deceptive” behavior. We conclude that these regions of prefrontal cortex form part of a circuit that guides decisions to make an individual less predictable to an opponent.

Chance to put right the flaws in insanity laws

Opinion & Analysis: Chance to put right the flaws in insanity laws

Child care proceedings in non-specialist courts: the experience in Ireland

It is widely accepted that court proceedings concerning child protection are a particularly sensitive type of court proceedings that warrant a different approach to other types of proceedings. Consequently, the use of specialized family or children’s judges or courts is commonplace across Europe and in common law jurisdictions. By contrast, in Ireland, proceedings under the Child Care Act 1991 are heard in the general courts system by judges who mostly do not specialize in child or family law. In principle, the Act itself and the associated case law accept that the vulnerability of the parties and the sensitivity of the issues involved are such that they need to be singled out for a different approach to other court proceedings. However, it is questionable whether this aspiration has been realized in a system where child care proceedings are mostly heard in a general District Court, using the same judges and the same physical facilities used for proceedings such as minor crime and traffic offences. This article draws on the first major qualitative analysis of professional perspectives on child care proceedings in the Irish District Court. It examines evidence from judges, lawyers, social workers, and guardians ad litem and asks whether non-specialist courts are an appropriate venue for proceedings on an issue as complex and sensitive as child protection, or whether the establishment of specialist family courts with dedicated staff and facilities provides a better solution.

Speaking with different voices: the problems with English law and psychiatric injury

Private law courts in the UK have maintained the de minimis threshold as a condition precedent for a successful claim for the infliction of mental harm. This de minimis threshold necessitates the presence of a ‘recognised psychiatric illness’ as opposed to ‘mere emotion’. This standard has also been adopted by the criminal law courts when reading the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 to include non-physical injury. In determining the cut-off point between psychiatric injury and mere emotion, the courts have adopted a generally passive acceptance of expert testimony and the guidelines used by mental health professionals to make diagnoses. Yet these guidelines were developed for use in a clinical setting, not a legal one. This article examines the difficulty inherent in utilising the ‘dimensional’ diagnostic criteria used by mental health professionals to answer ‘categorical’ legal questions. This is of particular concern following publication of the new diagnostic manual, DSM-V in 2013, which will further exacerbate concerns about compatibility. It is argued that a new set of diagnostic guidelines, tailored specifically for use in a legal context, is now a necessity.

Market reforms and privatisation in the English National Health Service

The article examines developments in the marketisation and privatisation of the English National Health Service, primarily since 1997. It explores the use of competition and contracting out in ancillary services and the levering into public services of private finance for capital developments through the Private Finance Initiative. A substantial part of the article examines the repeated restructuring of the health service as a market in clinical services, initially as an internal market but subsequently as a market increasing opened up to private sector involvement. Some of the implications of market processes for NHS staff and for increased privatisation are discussed. The article examines one episode of popular resistance to these developments, namely the movement of opposition to the 2011 health and social care legislative proposals. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these system reforms for the founding principles of the NHS and the sustainability of the service.

Migrant domestic workers, vulnerability and the law: immigration and employment laws in Cyprus and Spain

The intersection of gender, welfare and immigration regimes has been one of the main focus of a rich scholarship on paid domestic work in Europe. This article brings into the discussion the nexus of employment and immigration law regimes to reflect on the role of legal regulation in structuring and reducing the vulnerability of domestic workers. I analyse this nexus by looking at the cases of Cyprus and Spain, two states falling under the cluster of Southern Mediterranean welfare regimes, that share certain characteristics in terms of immigration regimes, but have substantially different employment law regulation models. The first part sketches the debate on the employment law regulation of domestic work. The second part starts by giving an overview of the immigration regimes of Cyprus and Spain in relation to migrant domestic workers and then proceeds to analyse the two countries’ models and substance of employment law regulation in domestic work. The comparison of these two divergent approaches informs the debate on how the legal regulation of domestic work should be best structured. In Spain there have been recent dynamic legislative changes in the employment law regulation of domestic work. The final part of the article traces these changes and reflects on why such processes have not taken place in Cyprus.

The gendered effects of family migration law: contextual interpretation as a possible judicial remedy

At all normative levels, family migration law can disproportionally and negatively affect immigrant women’s rights in this field, producing gendered effects. In some cases, such effects are related to the normative and judicial imposition of unviable family-related models (e.g., the ʻgood mother ̕ the one-breadwinner family, or a rigid distinction between productive and reproductive work). In other cases, they are due to family migration law’s overlooking of the specific needs and difficulties of immigrant women, within their families and in the broader context of their host countries’ social and normative framework.To effectively expose and correct this gender bias, in this article I propose an alternative view of immigrant women’s right to family life, as a cluster of rights and entitlements rather than as a mono-dimensional right. As a theoretical approach, this construction is better equipped to capture the complex experiences of immigrant women in the European legal space, and to shed light on the gendered effects generated not by individual norms but by the interaction of norms that are traditionally assigned to separated legal domains (e.g., immigration law and criminal law). As a judicial strategy, this understanding is capable of prompting a consideration by domestic and supranational courts of immigrant women not as isolated individuals, but as ‘individuals in context’. I shall define this type of approach as ‘contextual interpretation’, understood as the consideration of immigrant women in the broader contexts of their families, their host societies and the normative frameworks applicable to them. Performed in a gendersensitive manner, a contextual judicial interpretation has the potential to neutralize the gendered effects of certain family migration norms. To illustrate these points, I will discuss selected judicial examples offered by the European Court on Human Rights, as well as from domestic jurisdictions of countries with a particularly high incidence of immigrant women (Italy and Spain).

An Incomplete Narrative: Prosecuting Sexual Violence Crimes at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

This article explores the feminist critique that progress in the classification of sexual violence crimes within international criminal law has not been matched by sufficient legal enforcement. It takes the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) as a case study, exploring the various myths, investigative failures and procedural developments that have hindered the ECCC’s effective investigation of sexual violence. The article argues that while there is a need to adopt a nuanced perspective of the many gender inequalities facing women, it remains crucial that sexual violence is adequately investigated and prosecuted, due to the normative value of such prosecutions. It concludes with some suggestions as to how the ECCC can improve accountability for such crimes, but also highlights lessons that future courts can learn from the ECCC’s failures.

Crime and Punishment.

The study of Victorian crime and punishment is a rich area of research that has attracted the interest not only of literary scholars but also of social historians, legal historians, and criminologists. Related scholarship therefore often situates itself at the intersection of traditional disciplinary boundaries, facilitating interdisciplinary conversation. Crime and punishment was a pressing issue for the Victorians and provoked a wealth of responses from contemporaneous commentators in literature, culture, and science. As a new phase of industrialization brought immense wealth for some and abject poverty for others, Victorian urban centers in particular were afflicted by crime. Without an effective system of social welfare in place, social inequality and deprivation drove women, men, and children into petty crime and more serious offenses, resulting in severe punishment ranging from incarceration via penal transportation to hanging. Public executions, not abolished until 1868, attracted huge crowds of spectators, including authors such as Charles Dickens and William Thackeray, who wrote about these experiences. A forerunner of the popular press, street literature conveyed and illustrated these events for a broad audience. Execution broadsides of famous cases, printing the alleged last lamentations of convicts on the scaffold in verse, are estimated to have sold by the million. As the legal system was undergoing reform (comprising changes in legal evidence procedure, divorce law, women’s property rights, and punishment for sexual offenses, for example), sensational trials caused furor and stimulated commentary in literature and the media. Crime and punishment was discussed in a range of literary and popular genres, poetry, and reformist writing. The “Newgate School” of fiction was accused of glamorizing crime, and the popular penny dreadfuls were feared to corrupt public morals. Sensational fiction in the 1860s, which often drew on real-life criminal cases and newspaper reports, depicted the supposedly respectable middle-class family home as a center of transgression. Similarly, detective fiction typically focused on crime in the world of the middle classes. For the student new to the subject of crime and punishment, this area’s interdisciplinary nature can pose an initial challenge.

Las circunstancias de agravación punitiva en el derecho penal colombiano. Una propuesta interpretativa a la luz del principio de non bis in ídem

Este texto pretende desarrollar una propuesta de interpretación restrictiva de la aplicación del sistema de circunstancias de agravación de la responsabilidad en el Derecho penal colombiano, con especial acento en las circunstancias genéricas de agravación punitiva, teniendo como referente interpretativo el principio constitucional de non bis in ídem

Abordagem Criminológica do Casamento de Conveniência

Projeto de Graduação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de licenciado em Criminologia

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 or the Health and Safety (Offences) Act 2008: corporate killing and the law

This thesis examines the regulatory and legislative approach taken in the United Kingdom to deal with deaths arising from work related activities and, in particular, deaths that can be directly attributed to the behaviour of corporations and other organisations. Workplace health and safety has traditionally been seen in the United Kingdom as a regulatory function which can be traced to the very earliest days of the Industrial Revolution. With an emphasis on preventing workplace accidents and ill-health through guidance, advice and support, the health and safety legislation and enforcement regime which had evolved over the best part of two centuries was considered inadequate to effectively punish corporations considered responsible for deaths caused by their activities following a series of disasters in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. To address this apparent inadequacy, the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 was introduced creating the offence of corporate manslaughter and corporate homicide. Based on a gross breach of a relevant duty of care resulting in the death of a person, the Act effectively changed what had previously considered a matter of regulation, an approach that had obvious weaknesses and shortcomings, to one of crime and criminal law. Whether this is the best approach to dealing with deaths caused by an organisation is challenged in this thesis and the apparent distinction between ‘criminal’ and ‘regulatory’ offences is also examined. It was found that an amended Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to include a specific offence of corporate killing, in conjunction with the Health and Safety (Offences) Act 2008 would almost certainly have resulted in a more effective approach to dealing with organisations responsible for causing deaths as consequence of their activities. It was also found that there was no substantive difference between ‘regulatory’ and ‘criminal’ law other than the stigma associated with the latter, and that distinction would almost certainly disappear, at least in the context of worker safety, as a consequence of the penalties available following the introduction of the Health and Safety (Offences) Act 2008.

Civil & criminal procedure of Jewish courts /

Excerpt: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Students' annual. v. 1, 1914.

Modos de intervención criminal punible en crímenes de atrocidad: un análisis jurídico-penal a partir de los aportes de la criminología

790 p.

New testament evidence for ordaining women in the catholic church: evaluating claims in inter insigniores and ordinatio sacerdotalis

This Master's Thesis will re-evaluate the conclusions of the Vatican on the issue of women's ordination, as presented in the documents Inter Insigniores and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, by researching the discoveries of scriptural scholarship on the significance of women in the New Testament ministries. The essential question is, are the two previously mentioned documents authoritative when they exclude women from priesthood on the basis of Scripture? Special emphasis is on the unprejudiced rereading of the status of women in the ministry of Jesus and the early church communities. The research proved that there is no significant evidence in the New Testament to reserve ordained ministries in the Church to men only.