The relevance of neuroscience to forensic psychiatry.

As we move further into the 21st century, few would deny the contributions made by the neurosciences to the modern world. Part of the significant progress in neuroscience is based on its notable success in merging approaches from the biological, the psychomedical and the social sciences, a development often referred to as cognitive and social neuroscience. Applied neuroscientific knowledge is finding widespread application in the medical diagnostic and treatment areas and continues to grow at an unprecedented pace. Furthermore, neuroscientific progress made during the past two decades is invigorating fields of practical endeavor, such as forensic neuropsychiatry, developmental psychiatry, and cultural psychiatry, and is paving the way to new areas of knowledge, such as neuroeconomics. Significant progress in forensic neuropsychiatry also has affected the practice of law, in which an understanding of the complex interplay among mind, brain, and behavior is becoming increasingly desirable and even necessary. Practitioners and scholars of criminal law in particular have taken an interest in neuroscientific developments within psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and other behavioral sciences. With respect to forensic psychiatry, this trend is not surprising, given that many topics of relevance to it, such as the neuropsychiatric basis of violent behavior, moral decision-making, and the nature of empathy, have become the object of intensive study. The success of modern neuroscience also has generated substantial debate about its relevance to the psychiatric-legal field. The debate has led some legal scholars and neuroscientists to argue that the impressive growth in neuroscience should have little or no impact on contemporaneous developments in criminal law, such as assessments involving the nature of criminal responsibility. From this perspective, the use of new neuroscientific approaches to facilitate our understanding of criminal behaviors and psychiatric disorders that have robust neurobiological bases should have limited relevance to assessments of legal responsibility in the foreseeable future. Therefore, to engage in any consideration from a viewpoint other than a legal perspective would be likely to lead us into a never-ending spiral of category errors. Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga highlights this view when he states that: