Welcome to another episode of Research @ OU Law School. Today we have a talk with Sjors Lighart who is a PhD student and Tilburg University. He studies the human rights implication of brain scanning and brain reading technologies. With current technologies it is possible to "read" someones brain in a way that can be used in criminal justice. For example, a person can be shown images of objects and the brain scan will detect whether they recognize that object. If that object was involved in a crime it could corroborate or disqualify a persons testimony. Also, like DNA evidence, this evidence can be obtained without the person's consent or cooperation through a warrant. Are the several inches between our ears still private?

If you want to find out more about Sjors and his research, you can visit his profile https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/staff/s-l-t-j-ligthart. If you want to find out more about the exciting research into neuroscience and the law, you can visit the Law School's Law and Neuroscience research cluster's web page http://law-school.open.ac.uk/research/clusters/law-and-neuroscience.

Finally, don't forget to visit our blog, 50 Years of Law where we celebrate the 50 years of the Open University. http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/50YearsOfLaw/

My name is Marjan Ajevski and I am the research fellow at the Law School, you can contact me at: marjan.ajevski[@]open[.]ac[.]uk