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.

    大脑如何裁决和判罚

    [法官的声音：陪审团的成员们，你们有了裁决结果没有?]

    当涉及到对无罪或者有罪下决定的时候，人的大脑同时担负法官和陪审团的角色。目前一项发表在《神经细胞》（Neuron）杂志上的研究表明，就像法院一样，大脑的“法官”和“陪审团”也位于不同的地方。

    当一个人受审的时候，需要下两种决定。首先，这个人有罪吗？其次，如果有罪的话，这个人该受到什么样的惩罚？来自范德比特大学（Vanderbilt University）的科学家想知道人的大脑是如何做这两种不同的决定的。在受测试人员（法官和陪审团的成员）宣读各种罪行、决定犯罪者应该受到何种惩罚，或者他们是否应该受到惩罚的时候，科学家们用功能性核磁共振成像（MRI：Magnetic Resonance Imaging）来监测受测试人员的大脑活动。

    研究者们发现，当受测试者决定犯罪者是否真正有罪的时候，大脑涉及分析思维的区域处于最活跃的状态。但是，当决定如何量刑的时候，大脑的另一个与情感紧密相关的区域这时候起作用。该项研究得到麦克阿瑟基金法律与神经科学项目的（MacArthur Foundation Project on Law and Neuroscience）资助，研究表明当涉及到罪与罚的时候，我们可能是公正的，但是我们并非没有情感。
 
    Vocabulary:

    Jury：陪审团 
    Verdict：裁决 
    Innocence：无罪 
    Guilt：有罪 
    On trial：受审 
    Punishment：惩罚 
    Perpetrator：犯罪者 
    Analytical：分析的 
    Weigh in: 参与；衡量 
    Impartial：公正的；不偏不倚的 
    Passion：激情；感情