Advances in Neuroscience and Evidentiary Value of Brain Mapping: A Legal Debate

Abstract

The last decade has seen remarkable process in understanding ongoing psychological processes at the neurobiological level, progress that has been driven technologically by the spread of functional neuroimaging devices, especially magnetic resonance imaging, that have become the research tools of a theoretically sophisticated cognitive neuroscience but these processes not yet satisfied the foundational requirements for the admissibility of scientific evidence.

Advances in neuroscience seem likely to cause major changes in our society in the next few decades, for better and for worse. And when society changes, the law must change - whether to guide those social changes or merely to respond to them. This article attempts to provide a rough sketch of the concept of neurological tests, its process, its legal aspects and recent position in India and in some developed countries of the world. This paper has also tried to show the inconsistent relationship between neurological tests and constitutional principles.

Keywords: Brain Mapping, Constitution, Neuroscience, Scientific Evidence