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We get a version of the same message fairly regularly. A student finds Mind on Trial, reads a few posts, and then asks some variation of the same question: how do I actually learn this? Where do I start? Is there a way to go through this with other people? We built the answer. Starting today, Mind on Trial is releasing a free, structured 8-week Introduction to Neurolaw curriculum for high school students, school clubs, independent learners, and educators who want to bring thi

Today, on International Youth Day, Mind on Trial is announcing something we have been building toward since the beginning. This fall, we will host the first Neurolaw Youth Summit, a free virtual event open to students worldwide. Here is what it is: students submit a real legal case where brain science should have mattered but didn't, or did. Our editorial team selects the strongest submissions. Selected students present their case analysis live using the Neuro-Legal Case Anal

If you have been reading Mind on Trial and thinking you have something to add, you probably do. Mind on Trial publishes student writing at the intersection of neuroscience, behavior, and law. That is a wide space. It includes case analyses, science explainers, policy arguments, personal essays, and research breakdowns. If your thinking touches any part of that space, we want to hear from you. Here is what we are looking for: Case analyses. Pick a real case where brain science

In 1988, the United States government passed a law making it illegal for most private employers to use polygraph tests in hiring decisions. The reason was not bureaucratic overcaution. It was that the scientific evidence for polygraph reliability was, and remains, deeply insufficient. Decades later, the same technology is still being used in criminal investigations, national security screenings, and sex offender monitoring programs, while courts in most jurisdictions refuse t

Some court decisions settle a question. Others change the entire framework through which the question is asked. Roper v. Simmons is the second kind. Before Roper, the United States was one of a small number of countries in the world that executed people for crimes committed as children. After Roper, it was not. What happened in between is one of the most important stories in the history of neurolaw. Before the ruling For most of American legal history, the age of a defendant

Every week, Mind on Trial examines cases through three lenses: the forensic evidence, the neuroscience, and the legal outcome. But before we tell you what the law decided, we want to know what you would decide. Read the facts below. No outcome. No verdict. Just the case. Then tell us in the comments: what would you decide? The facts On March 30, 1981, a 25-year-old man named John Hinckley Jr. walked up to the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C. and fired six shots at P

In 2013, a judge in Wisconsin sentenced a man named Eric Loomis to six years in prison. The judge cited many factors. One of them was a number generated by a computer program that Loomis had never seen, could not examine, and had no legal right to challenge. The company that built the program called its methodology a trade secret. The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the sentence. [1] This is not an isolated incident. It is standard practice in courts across the United States.

There is a part of your brain sitting right behind your forehead that is responsible for nearly everything we associate with being a functional human being. It helps you make decisions. It stops you from saying things you will regret. It weighs consequences before you act on an impulse. It is the reason you do not quit your job every time your boss frustrates you, the reason you can sit through a boring meeting without screaming, and the reason you can plan for a future that

Most people picture a psychopath the same way. Cold. Emotionless. Entirely cut off from the human experience. A person who feels nothing. A person who is, in some fundamental way, not quite human. This is one of the most widespread myths about the brain. And like most myths about the brain, it is not just wrong, it is wrong in ways that matter in court. The myth The popular version of psychopathy, shaped largely by film and television, goes something like this: psychopaths ar

Most people trust their memories. Not just a little. Completely. When someone says "I know what I saw," they mean it. They are not lying. They are not exaggerating. They genuinely believe that what they remember is what happened. That belief is one of the most dangerous ideas in a courtroom. The myth Memory, most people assume, works like a video camera. You experience something. Your brain records it. When you need to recall it, you press play and watch the footage back. The

Most people know that apps collect their location data, their search history, and their purchase habits. Far fewer people know that companies are now collecting something far more intimate: the electrical activity of their brains. Consumer neurotechnology, including EEG headsets, brain-computer interfaces, meditation wearables, and focus-tracking devices, is a growing industry. As of early 2026, four states have classified brain data as sensitive personal information, with at

In 1957, a man named Lawrence Robinson was stopped by Los Angeles police officers who observed needle marks on his arm. He was not caught using drugs. He was not in possession of drugs. He was arrested for being a drug addict, which was a criminal offense under California law at the time. He was convicted and sentenced to ninety days in jail. Five years later, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that convicting a person simply for the status of being addicted to drug

Written By: Addie Zhang The Robot Epidemic, a generation of children pushed to excel in academics and learning, yet failing to develop intrinsic motivation and personal identity. In an era of increasing pressure in preparing for college admissions, children at an early age are told to set aside their own hopes and opinions for a “greater good” that they themselves cannot recognize. Now, this mentality has raised young adults who struggle to find empathy and autonomy, losing p

In 2005, a neuroscientist named James Fallon was studying brain scans of convicted serial killers when he noticed something unusual about one of the scans in his dataset. The pattern of activity was consistent with the others he had been analyzing: reduced function in the orbital cortex and other regions associated with empathy, moral reasoning, and impulse control. The kind of scan, in his own words, that he associated with psychopathy. The scan belonged to him. Fallon had i

In the spring of 1989, a woman was brutally attacked while jogging in Central Park. Within days, five teenagers had been arrested. Within weeks, four of them had confessed on video. The confessions were detailed. They were emotional. They were played for the jury. They were also entirely false. The Central Park Five, as they came to be known, spent between six and thirteen years in prison before DNA evidence identified the actual perpetrator, a convicted rapist named Matias R

In 1848, a railroad foreman named Phineas Gage survived an accident that should have killed him. An iron rod was driven through the front of his skull at high speed, passing completely through his brain and landing several feet away. He was conscious within minutes. He walked to the doctor himself. Gage recovered physically. He lived for another twelve years. But the people who knew him said he was never the same person again. Before the accident, he had been described as eff

Imagine a room approximately the size of a parking space. You are in it for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day. There is a slot in the door for food. There is no meaningful human contact. There is nothing to do. This continues not for a day, not for a week, but for months or years at a time. This is solitary confinement. It is currently used in prisons and jails across the United States, and on any given day, an estimated eighty thousand people are being held in some form

On the morning of March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot President Ronald Reagan outside a Washington hotel. Reagan survived. Hinckley was arrested at the scene. Two years later, a jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. The public was outraged. Congress changed the law within months. Several states abolished the insanity defense entirely. What almost no one stopped to ask was whether the jury got it right. That question sits at the center of one of the oldest and mo

In 1984, a woman named Jennifer Thompson was raped in her apartment in North Carolina. During the attack, she made a decision. She studied her attacker's face with as much focus as she could manage, memorizing every detail, because she was determined to identify him if she survived. She did survive. She picked Ronald Cotton out of a photo lineup. She identified him again in a live lineup. She testified against him at trial with total certainty. She told the jury she was one h

In 2013, a man named Eric Loomis stood before a judge in Wisconsin and was sentenced to six years in prison. The judge cited many factors. One of them was a score — a number generated by a computer program called COMPAS, which had assessed Loomis as high risk for reoffending. Loomis had never seen the algorithm. He had no way to challenge it. He did not know what questions it asked, how it weighed the answers, or why it reached the conclusion it did. The company that built it