Dear All 

The Neurolaw server is migrating to the university’s cloudMQ environment between 9am - 11am Wednesday 15^th August. 

• During this time the database will be unavailable. 
• Following the migration please continue to use database as you normally would.  

This migration is part of a program of works to establish secure, reliable and scalable compute resources to benefit the whole Macquarie University community. 

If you have any questions or encounter any issues, please contact the IT Service Desk on 02 9850 HELP (4357), or email onehelp@mq.edu.au. 

Thanks in large part to the outstanding work of our coder Armin Alimardani we will be publishing 40 new cases in the next few months. Make sure to keep an eye out for news of the publication and commentaries on some of the most interesting cases over the next few months.

NEUROSCIENCE & SOCIETY: Ethics, Law, and Technology
http://neuroethicsconference.org.au
24-25 August 2018
Sydney, NSW, Australia

Advances in brain scanning and intervention technologies are transforming our ability to observe, explain, and influence human thought and behaviour. Potential applications of such technologies (e.g. brain-based pain detection in civil lawsuits, medications to help criminal offenders become less impulsive, prediction of future behaviour through neuroimaging) and their ethical, clinical, legal, and societal implications, fuel important debates in neuroethics. However, many factors beyond the brain – factors targeted by different emerging technologies – also influence human thought and behaviour. Sequencing the human genome and gene-editing technologies like CRISPR Cas-9 offer novel ways to explain and influence human thought and behaviour. Analysis of data about our offline and online lives (e.g. from fitness trackers, how we interact with our smartphone apps, and our social media posts and profiles) also provide striking insights into our psychology. Such intimate information can be used to predict and influence our behaviour, including through bespoke advertising for goods and services that more effectively exploits our psychology and political campaigns that sway election results. Although such methods often border on manipulation, they are both difficult to detect and potentially impossible to resist. The use of such information to guide the design of online environments, artifacts, and smart cities lies at the less nefarious – and potentially even socially useful and morally praiseworthy – end of the spectrum vis à vis the potential applications of such emerging “moral technologies”.

At this year’s Neuroscience & Society conference we will investigate the ethical, clinical, legal, and societal implications of a wide range of moral technologies that target factors beyond, as well as within, the brain, in order to observe, explain, and influence human thought and behaviour. Topics will include, but are not limited to:

• cognitive and moral enhancement
• neurolaw and neuro-evidence
• brain-computer interfaces
• neuro-advertising
• neuromorphic engineering and computing
• mental privacy and surveillance
• social media and behaviour prediction/influence
• implicit bias and priming
• technological influences on human behaviour
• nudging, environment and technology design, and human behaviour
• artificial intelligence and machine learning
• technology and the self
• (neuro)technology and society

We invite abstracts from scholars, scientists, technology designers, policy-makers, practitioners, clinicians and graduate students, interested in presenting talks or posters on any of the above or related topics.

Abstracts of 300 words should be emailed to Cynthia Forlini <cynthia.forlini@sydney.edu.au> in Microsoft Word format by Thursday, 31 May 2018. Submissions will be peer reviewed, and authors of successful submissions will be notified via email by Friday, 15 June 2018.

In addition to keynote presentations (to be announced shortly), contributed talks, and a poster session, the conference program will also include three sessions on the following topics:

• highlights from- and information about enhancements to the Australian Neurolaw Database
• book symposium on Neuro-Interventions and The Law: Regulating Human Mental Capacity
• panel on the topic of remorse

For enquiries about matters other than abstract submission, please email Adrian Carter <adrian.carter@monash.edu.au> or Jeanette Kennett <jeanette.kennett@mq.edu.au>

Neuroscience & Society is supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Integrative Brain Function Neuroethics Program, and the Centre for Agency Values and Ethics at Macquarie University.

Why not add the BBC World Service's  documentary  “Neurolaw and Order,” to your holiday watch list.  It focuses particular attention on neuroscience related to juvenile justice and determinations of responsibility. and features a variety of scholars within the field of law and neuroscience including Larry Steinberg, Adriana Galvan, Nita Farahany, Kent Kiehl, and Joshua Greene