Judge and Jury in the Brain

    [Judge’s voice: Members of the jury, do you have a verdict?]

    When it comes to making decisions about innocence and guilt, the human brain acts as both judge and jury. Now a study published in the journal Neuron shows that, just like in the courtroom, the brain’s judge and jury sit in separate places.

    When someone’s put on trial, two types of decisions have to be made. First, is the person guilty? And second, what punishment, if any, does that person deserve? Scientists at Vanderbilt University got to wondering how the brain actually makes those two different decisions. So they used functional MRI to monitor the brain activity of subjects as they read about various crimes, and decided how severely the perpetrators should be punished, or whether they should be punished at all.

    What the researchers found is that a brain region involved in analytical thought was most active when the subject was deciding whether the perpetrator was actually guilty. But a different area, one more in tune with emotion, weighed in on how to make the punishment fit the crime. The study was funded by the MacArthur Foundation Project on Law and Neuroscience, and it suggests that when it comes to crime and punishment, we may be impartial but we’re not without passion.

    大腦如何裁決和判罰

    [法官的聲音：陪審團的成員們，你們有了裁決結果沒有?]

    當涉及到對無罪或者有罪下決定的時候，人的大腦同時擔負法官和陪審團的角色。目前一項發表在《神經細胞》（Neuron）雜志上的研究表明，就像法院一樣，大腦的“法官”和“陪審團”也位于不同的地方。

    當一個人受審的時候，需要下兩種決定。首先，這個人有罪嗎？其次，如果有罪的話，這個人該受到什么樣的懲罰？來自范德比特大學（Vanderbilt University）的科學家想知道人的大腦是如何做這兩種不同的決定的。在受測試人員（法官和陪審團的成員）宣讀各種罪行、決定犯罪者應該受到何種懲罰，或者他們是否應該受到懲罰的時候，科學家們用功能性核磁共振成像（MRI：Magnetic Resonance Imaging）來監測受測試人員的大腦活動。

    研究者們發現，當受測試者決定犯罪者是否真正有罪的時候，大腦涉及分析思維的區域處于最活躍的狀態。但是，當決定如何量刑的時候，大腦的另一個與情感緊密相關的區域這時候起作用。該項研究得到麥克阿瑟基金法律與神經科學項目的（MacArthur Foundation Project on Law and Neuroscience）資助，研究表明當涉及到罪與罰的時候，我們可能是公正的，但是我們并非沒有情感。
 
    Vocabulary:

    Jury：陪審團 
    Verdict：裁決 
    Innocence：無罪 
    Guilt：有罪 
    On trial：受審 
    Punishment：懲罰 
    Perpetrator：犯罪者 
    Analytical：分析的 
    Weigh in: 參與；衡量 
    Impartial：公正的；不偏不倚的 
    Passion：激情；感情