Papers by Kim Taylor-Thompson
Columbia University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2024
SAGE Publications, Inc. eBooks, May 15, 2012
Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience
Race is a social construct that contributes to group membership and heightens emotional arousal i... more Race is a social construct that contributes to group membership and heightens emotional arousal in intergroup contexts. Little is known about how emotional arousal, specifically uncertain threat, influences behavior and brain processes in response to race information. We investigated the effects of experimentally manipulated uncertain threat on impulsive actions to Black versus White faces in a community sample (n = 106) of Black and White adults. While undergoing fMRI, participants performed an emotional go/no-go task under three conditions of uncertainty: 1) anticipation of an uncertain threat (i.e., unpredictable loud aversive sound); 2) anticipation of an uncertain reward (i.e., unpredictable receipt of money); and 3) no anticipation of an uncertain event. Representational similarity analysis was used to examine the neural representations of race information across functional brain networks between conditions of uncertainty. Participants—regardless of their own race—showed great...
NYU Press eBooks, May 10, 2022
Developmental psychobiology, Apr 1, 2018
Developmental scientists have examined the independent effects of peer presence, social cues, and... more Developmental scientists have examined the independent effects of peer presence, social cues, and rewards on adolescent decision-making and cognitive control. Yet, these contextual factors often co-occur in real world social situations. The current study examined the combined effects of all three factors on cognitive control, and its underlying neural circuitry, using a task to better capture adolescents' real world social interactions. A sample of 176 participants ages 13-25, was scanned while performing an adapted go/no-go task alone or in the presence of a virtual peer. The task included brief positive social cues and sustained periods of positive arousal. Adolescents showed diminished cognitive control to positive social cues when anticipating a reward in the presence of peers relative to when alone, a pattern not observed in older participants. This behavioral pattern was paralleled by enhanced orbitofrontal activation. The results demonstrate the synergistic impact of soci...
Developmental cognitive neuroscience, Apr 1, 2017
Developmental differences regarding decision making are often reported in the absence of emotiona... more Developmental differences regarding decision making are often reported in the absence of emotional stimuli and without context, failing to explain why some individuals are more likely to have a greater inclination toward risk. The current study (N=212; 10-25y) examined the influence of emotional context on underlying functional brain connectivity over development and its impact on risk preference. Using functional imaging data in a neutral brain-state we first identify the "brain age" of a given individual then validate it with an independent measure of cortical thickness. We then show, on average, that "brain age" across the group during the teen years has the propensity to look younger in emotional contexts. Further, we show this phenotype (i.e. a younger brain age in emotional contexts) relates to a group mean difference in risk perception - a pattern exemplified greatest in young-adults (ages 18-21). The results are suggestive of a specified functional brain ...
Psychological science, Jan 24, 2016
An individual is typically considered an adult at age 18, although the age of adulthood varies fo... more An individual is typically considered an adult at age 18, although the age of adulthood varies for different legal and social policies. A key question is how cognitive capacities relevant to these policies change with development. The current study used an emotional go/no-go paradigm and functional neuroimaging to assess cognitive control under sustained states of negative and positive arousal in a community sample of one hundred ten 13- to 25-year-olds from New York City and Los Angeles. The results showed diminished cognitive performance under brief and prolonged negative emotional arousal in 18- to 21-year-olds relative to adults over 21. This reduction in performance was paralleled by decreased activity in fronto-parietal circuitry, implicated in cognitive control, and increased sustained activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, involved in emotional processes. The findings suggest a developmental shift in cognitive capacity in emotional situations that coincides with dyn...
Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 2014
The President has charged the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (the "Co... more The President has charged the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (the "Commission") to "identify proactively a set of core ethical standards" in the neuroscience domain. 1 In doing so, the Commission is to consider the potential implications of new neuroscience discoveries, as well as a series of questions that may be raised by those findings and their applications, such as those "relating to ... the appropriate use of neuroscience in the criminal-justice system." 2 By notice published in the Federal Register on January 31, 2014, the Commission has invited comment on these issues. 3 The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience (the "Research Network") responds here, specifically, to issues at the intersection of law and criminal justice. The Research Network is an interdisciplinary collaborative initiative supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and headquartered at Vanderbilt University since 2010. The Research Network addresses a focused set of closely-related problems at the intersection of neuroscience and criminal justice, such as: 1) investigating law-relevant mental states of, and decision-making processes in, defendants, witnesses, jurors, and judges; 2) investigating in adolescents the relationship between
Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2003
Taking It to the Streets Homelessness, Health, and Health Care in the United States Jim, a Korean... more Taking It to the Streets Homelessness, Health, and Health Care in the United States Jim, a Korean War veteran in his seventies, lives in a '79 Cadillac. Unable to afford housing, his hygiene is quite poor; access to water is limited to restaurant bathrooms. Jim has severe dental problems, but can't receive assistance from the Veterans Affairs health system because of the labyrinthine rules designed to reduce demand at these inadequately funded facilities.* His health is likely to be severely compromised if he spends the winter months on his cracked leather seat. Angel is a former day care worker in her fifties who sleeps on downtown streets. She has been assaulted and robbed each week for the past month, but there is no emergency shelter available in her town. With no income, the safety of stable housing is similarly unavailable; meanwhile, her contusions hardly have time to heal. These vignettes illustrate that homelessness is a health hazard. Homelessness causes health problems: hypothermia or burns from the steam grates that provide warmth; exposure to contagious diseases in crowded emergency shelters-the ground zero for the tuberculosis epidemic of the 1990s; and substance abuse arising from the hopelessness that defines life on the streets. Homelessness exacerbates existing health problems: colds become pneumonia, cuts become infected, and depression becomes psychosis. Finally, homelessness complicates health care: where does a homeless diabetic store insulin and syringes, how can a homeless person with AIDS take the life-saving cocktail of 50 pills, some with food and some with fluids, when no food or fluids are available? The relation between homelessness and health is clear and compelling. Thus, thousands of committed health care providers are drawn to the 155 federally supported Health Care for the Homeless projects in every state and in Puerto Rico. Each year these projects provide health-related services to 500,000 individuals living on the streets, in abandoned cars, and on the riverbanks of our communities. Health Care for the Homeless services, which generally include outreach, primary medical care, addiction treatment, mental health services, and case management, are frequently the only health services accessible to these individuals.
Courts are daily confronted with admissibility issues – such as in cases involving neuroscientifi... more Courts are daily confronted with admissibility issues – such as in cases involving neuroscientific testimony – that sometimes involve both the existence of a general phenomenon (i.e., “G”) and the question of whether a particular case represents a specific instance of that general phenomenon (i.e., “i”). Unfortunately, courts have yet to carefully consider the implications of “G2i” for their admissibility decisions. In some areas, courts limit an expert’s testimony to the general phenomenon. They insist that whether the case at hand is an instance of that phenomenon is exclusively a jury question, and thus not an appropriate subject of expert opinion. In other cases, in contrast, courts hold that expert evidence must be provided on both the group-data issue (i.e., that the phenomenon exists) and what is called the “diagnostic” issue (i.e., that this case is an instance of that phenomenon). Consequently, the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience has prepared t...
In recent years, scholars have raised critical questions about the role of public defenders. 1 So... more In recent years, scholars have raised critical questions about the role of public defenders. 1 Some have critiqued the ways that defender offices function,' and even openly questioned their continuing need. 3 Still others have examined the visions of defender offices, suggesting that more coherence in their missions might ultimately serve their clients better in the future. 4 But for all their variety, most have presumed that the compelling issues occur in the direct representation of clients. In limiting their sphere of analysis, though, they have ignored fundamental questions about an individual who centrally affects the offices' external policies and internal operations: the chief defender. This is not at all surprising. In the last two decades, chief defenders have been locked into a narrow managerial role. Instead of actively par-* Professor of Clinical Law, New York University School of Law. A.B., Brown University; J.D., Yale Law School. I appreciate the comments and suggestions that I received from John Donahue, Randy Hertz, Jerry L6pez. I am also grateful to Greg Chen and Robin Walker for their research assistance. Special thanks to Anthony Thompson whose community work as a public defender reoriented my thinking about the role of public defenders.
Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2021
The race of an individual is a salient physical feature that is rapidly processed by the brain an... more The race of an individual is a salient physical feature that is rapidly processed by the brain and can bias our perceptions of others. How the race of others explicitly impacts our actions toward them during intergroup contexts is not well understood. In the current study, we examined how task-irrelevant race information influences cognitive control in a go/no-go task in a community sample of Black (n = 54) and White (n = 51) participants. We examined the neural correlates of behavioral effects using functional magnetic resonance imaging and explored the influence of implicit racial attitudes on brain-behavior associations. Both Black and White participants showed more cognitive control failures, as indexed by dprime, to Black versus White faces, despite the irrelevance of race to the task demands. This behavioral pattern was paralleled by greater activity to Black faces in the fusiform face area, implicated in processing face and in-group information, and lateral orbitofrontal cort...
Fordham Law Review, 2003
, terrorist attacks left more than human casualties in their wake. The U.S. system of justice suf... more , terrorist attacks left more than human casualties in their wake. The U.S. system of justice suffered unexpected and devastating blows at the insistence of a Justice Department intent on crushing a new threat. The Bush Administration's declaration of a war against terror became the rallying cry-and ready excuse-for unusual measures that struck at the heart of constitutional guarantees.' Justice Department officials sought an unprecedented expansion of police powers ostensibly to aid their efforts. They quickly moved to hold an American citizen incommunicado indefinitely without charges, branded him an "enemy combatant," 3 and thereby denied him access to counsel. One reason that the Justice Department could so easily thwart constitutional guarantees is that it accurately predicted the dearth of public outcry. The nation simply sat mute. The evangelistic strain of patriotism that had pervaded both the nation and public dialogue stifled critics of the Department's policies who feared being denounced as unpatriotic.' But the scant protests may have uncovered an even more disturbing truth: the American public fails to grasp the seriousness of any denial of the right to counsel because that right has been so poorly developed and articulated. In that truth lies a warning-a warning that predates September 11, 2001. The seeds of the public's lack of clarity about the meaning of the right to counsel took hold in 1963 when the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright. 5 The Court seized the chance to establish the right to counsel for defendants charged with felonies, but then squandered the opportunity to explain the precise
Nevada Law Journal, 2006
14 See MARY E. ODEM, DELINQUENT DAUGHTERS 2, 96 (1995) (discussing nineteenth century reform effo... more 14 See MARY E. ODEM, DELINQUENT DAUGHTERS 2, 96 (1995) (discussing nineteenth century reform efforts and twentieth century efforts to monitor and regulate sexual misconduct among young women and girls).
The justice system in the United States has long recognized that juvenile offenders are not the s... more The justice system in the United States has long recognized that juvenile offenders are not the same as adults, and has tried to incorporate those differences into law and policy. But only in recent decades have behavioral scientists and neuroscientists, along with policymakers, looked rigorously at developmental differences, seeking answers to two overarching questions: Are young offenders, purely by virtue of their immaturity, different from older individuals who commit crimes? And, if they are, how should justice policy take this into account? A growing body of research on adolescent development now confirms that teenagers are indeed inherently different from adults, not only in their behaviors, but also (and of course relatedly) in the ways their brains function. These findings have influenced a series of Supreme Court decisions relating to the treatment of adolescents, and have led legislators and other policymakers across the country to adopt a range of developmentally informe...
Some studies have reported the ability to detect lies, with a high degree of accuracy, by analyzi... more Some studies have reported the ability to detect lies, with a high degree of accuracy, by analyzing brain data acquired using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). But is this new technology ready for its day in court? This consensus knowledge brief from the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience takes a closer look at the potential and pitfalls of fMRI lie detection techniques, providing insight into the areas of the brain involved in lying, the impact of memory on deception, how countermeasures may foil our efforts to detect lies, and factors that can create cause for concern about experimental validity.
Uploads
Papers by Kim Taylor-Thompson