Bunge: So, for example, a child who
commits a crime at the age of sixteen - is that a child who should be treated
as an adult and put in prison for life? Or is it a child who still has a
potential for remediation and still should be considered a child in the eyes of
the law?
Narrator: Psychologist Silvia Bunge of
the University of California, Berkeley
has recently discovered that an adolescent's pre-frontal cortex - the area of
the brain involved in decision making - is not as developed as an adult's.
Bunge is part of the new Law and Neuroscience Project, which has neurobiologists
working to incorporate neurology data into the legal system.
Bunge: So, maybe this research on the
developing brain can help us eventually modify laws to take into consideration
the fact that the brain is still changing quite a bit throughout our early
twenties.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
