Researchers at Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech, and Yale universities have discovered that brain scans can identify differences between criminal intent and reckless behavior, in a study supported by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. In their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers state that if the findings are replicated in future studies, such scans could lead to better understanding of how criminal categories – such as committing a crime with intent or experiencing mental illness – equate to different levels of criminal culpability.
