DISCOVER: Can Brain Scans Detect Pedophiles?

[LAGC]

What’s the News: A new study suggests that watching brain activity when subjects are shown images of naked children can identify which are pedophiles. But what does this really mean in practical terms?

How the Heck:

24 self-identified pedophiles, from a clinic that offers anonymous treatment, and 32 male controls were shown pictures of naked men, women, and children. Blogger Neuroskeptic, who brought this study to the web’s attention, notes in an aside that getting that past a university ethics board is quite a coup.
Using fMRI, the researchers recorded their brains’ responses and found that by comparing an individual’s brain to the average of the pedophiles and the average of the controls, they could assign them to the correct group more than 90% of the time. Their handling of the statistics avoids the most obvious pitfalls: they used an analyses technique called leave-one-out cross-validation to avoid comparing a given scan to an average that includes it, a common error in neuro studies.
When they plotted how the neural scans lined up along the age and sex axes (see image above), the pedophile and control scans formed two clear, separate clusters.

--snip--

The Future Holds: Realistically, we can’t judge people on their biological red flags—whether it’s brain scans or genetics—without entering a Minority Report-style future. That’s because being attracted to children isn’t a crime. Acting on it is. Generally, a brain scan is not required to find out whether the crime has happened—there are other, more reliable forms of evidence, like porn downloads. Given that, it’s unlikely that you’ll be seeing regular scanning for pedophilic tendencies anytime soon. And for that, we should be grateful.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/10/05/can-brain-scans-detect-pedophiles/

Wow, its looking increasingly like sexual orientation -- even pedophilia -- is a biological trait, not environmental.

We really may be hard-wired to be predisposed to commit certain behaviors.

(Of course, it could turn out that people are hard-wired to be inclined to be murderers too, but that doesn't mean society has to tolerate such behavior, even if it isn't really the perpetrator's fault he/she was born that way.)

Kind of scary where this research may lead, we may get to the point where parents can scan their child's brains in the womb and find out what inclinations the child may have when he/she grows up. Raises all sorts of ethical implications... an interesting time we live in, indeed.

[zazen]

1. but couldn't brain pattern be result of learned behavior?

What would the brain scans be of men who are enculturated to think that child-brides (what we would define as heteropedophilia) are their right?

I wonder what the ages here of the exemplars they were shown. . . I do think gonzo porn is increasingly promoting Lolita porn to increasing numbers of guys who otherwise would never have seen it, guys who would never have gone down a dark alleyway to buy it but who, when seeing it in the context of other gonzo porn, click on the link and get pulled down that path. Still, most Lolita stuff is of pubescent to early teenage girls . . it's not 8-year-olds. Seems there's a very different psychology going on there.

So you might have guys who have a three year history of downloading porn they otherwise would have never sought out might register as heteropedophilia when they wouldn't have had they not become addicted to what the industry peddles, that's if the girl is 13, not 8.

[LAGC]

4. Possibly.

I just think its pretty unlikely that mere exposure to kiddie porn would radically change your sexual orientation that much.

Seems more like those who are into it seek it out, not the other way around.

[LeftishBrit]

2. It should be pointed out that fMRI results do not necessarily mean that something is hardwired into

the brain.

fMRI is a form of *functional* brain imaging, which means that it tells you what the brain is *doing* at a given time, rather than something about the brain's phusical structure. It gives a record of brain activity while doing a particular task. For example, language areas in the brain will be more active when someone is reading or listening to conversation than when they are looking at a picture or listening to music.

This study basically shows that paedophiles pay more attention to pictures of naked children than do non-paedophiles. This is not a surprising result in itself; though it is interesting that brain scans show it so clearly. This (like other implicit tests) may be able to indicate paedophilic interests in some people who don't admit to them; but it doesn't indicate that people are born with a brain condition that leads to paedophilia. And of course, as the article says, people may be attracted to children without ever acting on this attraction, just as we may sometimes feel like killing someone, without actually attempting to do so.

[LAGC]

3. Good points.

It will be interesting to see what light advances in genetics and our understanding of the genome shed on such issues.

That would probably be more conclusive than fMRI.

[tgearfanatic234]

10. +1. Excellent post.

[Chemisse]

5. I may be missing something, but this seems like a no-brainer

If they reproduced this experiment with people who love watching football games vs those who don't care one way or another, wouldn't they get the same kinds of results: a flurry of brain activity?

[DocMac]

12. Right...and would this put innocent people in jail? nt

[Ian David]

6. Don't need your fancy brain scans.

The ones who show-up for the tests over and over again to look at pictures of naked children are pedophiles.

[Jim__]

7. It seems like the scan uncovered self-identified pedophiles receiving treatment at a specific clinic

How do we know that there were no pedophiles in the control group? Is it because they didn't self-identify as pedophiles? What did the activity in the pedophiles brain indicate? Could it indicate that these patients are walking through a mental activity as a result of the treatment they are undergoing?

[LAGC]

8. Good questions.

They'd probably have to expand this study to find out anything conclusive.

It is kind of hard gathering definitive data when you are relying on the subject's own admissions/denials of what their sexual orientation may or may not be.

It will be interesting to see where this research leads...

[Ready4Change]

9. Self identification can be a problem.

For example, in that graph, there is one self-identified heterosexual who I'd say is in denial. (white circle, lower right quadrant.)

But, especially in an early study, you gotta take what you can get. Perhaps it will justify a more in depth study.

[Jim__]

11. I agree that this is an important study.

I think that neuroscience is making tremendous progress, especially through fMRI, and agree that early studies are crucial and you take what you can get. My concern is that the information that is being discovered by neuroscience is being used to reach unsupported conclusions.

An example of this is the case Roper v Simmons where the Supreme Court declared the death penalty to be unconstitutional for offenders under the age of eighteen. Neuroscientific evidence was presented to the court - I'm not sure who presented this evidence - to argue that the brains of sixteen and seventeen year olds are different from adult brains in ways that gave reason to believe that sixteen and seventeen year old murderers were insufficiently responsible to deserve capital punishment. The Court did not cite any of this evidence in announcing its conclusion. There is a paper in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Brain Overclaim Syndrome and Criminal Responsibility: A Diagnostic Note (it's about a 15 page paper), written by Stephen Morse, a psychologist and a professor of law and psychology, that discusses this issue with respect to how these conclusions from neuroscience impact on criminal justice. Footnote #4 from the paper illustrates the problem of even experts not agreeing on the specificity of this knowledge:

At the conference at which this diagnostic note was first presented, I asked with what
accuracy, based only on the images of myelination, one could accurately distinguish the individual
brains of sixteen and seventeen year olds on the one hand and eighteen and nineteen year olds on the
other. One neuroscientist claimed that the scientist could do this with great accuracy if the scientist
were furnished with the sex and handedness of the subject. This claim would have been quite
believable if the comparison groups were thirteen and fourteen year olds versus twenty-five and
twenty-six year olds, but it seemed doubtful to me because development is continuous and the groups
were so close in age. After the conference, I therefore asked the question of other equally
credentialed and experienced neuroscientists and neuroanatomists. My informants uniformly agreed
that they could not very accurately distinguish sixteen and seventeen year old brains from eighteen
and nineteen year old brains. I do not know who is right. To the best of my knowledge, a study to
determine accuracy of this type has not been performed, but the outcome would be very interesting.

When even the experts are in that much disagreement, I don't believe this knowledge is ready for life and death applications.