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As a college student deep into my studies, I have developed a dependency on a warm, slightly sweetened morning cup of coffee. I begin each day (or sometimes each afternoon) with a mug full of the deep brown nectar, with its bold, slow roasted flavor. I suppose I could quit any time I want, right? You know, I could put the cup down and be the same. Maybe I would have a harder time getting started in the morning or be less productive at work. It might be a little more challenging to stay awake on my drive to campus. Maybe I’ll go to bed a little earlier and put off my assignments for another day. On second thought, maybe I’ll stick to my coffee. I don’t think I could do much without it. Original Image from Americannonfiction.com With the knowledge that I am far from being the only one with this compulsion, I want to open the discussion on addiction and responsibility. Getting started on ‘something,’ such as drugs, gambling--some are now suggesting even the Internet--is generally consider...

Last month I blogged a little bit about constitutional protection, lie detection technology, and wildly speculative but totally valid concerns about what happens if someone else could tell what I was thinking. As promised, this month I’m going to follow up with some information about “precrime”: what it is, outside of a science-fiction context, what it could become, and what neuroscientific knowledge contributes to the area. This is a wonderful book ; everyone should go read it. Pre-crime is exactly what it sounds like; it is the science of predicting when crimes are likely to happen and trying to intervene and prevent them. The idea that police officers could prevent crime by predicting it captures the public imagination in a big way, leading to a lot of sensationalism. There were a series of articles starting in 2004 about London’s so-called “Homocide Prevention Unit,” which captured public imagination so much it had a television show based on it. [1] According to more recent reports...

I attended the excellent Neuroscience, Law, and Ethics of Lie Detection Technologies Symposium  in May, and as a consequence, I have spent the last month trying to answer questions I hadn’t even thought to ask before: Who owns the thoughts in my head? Could I be compelled to submit them? Can someone else decide that keeping my ideas to myself is a violation of the law or a threat to my country? If they force me to surrender them, do I lose ownership? So this week, I thought I would share some of the things I learned as I tried to find out answers. You can actually  buy this online . I am considering getting it printed on a hat. Two preliminary points: first, I want specify what I mean when I say “compelled” to undergo a brain scan. It seems, at least it seemed to me while sitting in the audience, that Americans are pretty afraid of having someone else read their minds without their permission, or, worse, being forced to have their minds read. This extends even to a si...