Research line: Moral behavior and neurolaw

How morality and ethics can influence individuals’ decisions? Moral decision-making requires individuals to make decisions considering the possible positive or harmful effect on others. In particular, neuroscience aims at investigating the neurophysiological correlates associated with the process of moral decision, which is mainly driven by intuition and moral reasoning. Neuroscience has also been applied to law, in fact legal reasoning, from the decision of United Chambers of Supreme Court, through the legal assistance activity carried out by a lawyer, to the purchase of an object on Amazon by a common citizen (which integrates a contractual constraint), contains in itself assessments of opportunity and moral evaluation, problem solving, decision making and, in general, a cognitive activation very wide ranging. Thanks to the multidisciplinary vocation of neuroscience, in particular focused at the cognitive field in legal practice, the aim of the research in cognitive neuroscience applied to law is to help to bridge the lack of in-depth analysis in the decision-making processes that the main players of the law, such as judges and lawyers, are informed.
And all this, taking into account the ethical and social issues that occur above all in the comparative analysis of neuroscience-law interaction, given the unequivocal implications that arise from the qualification of a subject in the light of his ability to be responsible for a conduct relevant to the rules governing human actions and behaviors.

Keywords: Cognitive neuroscience; Moral behavior; Legal Reasoning; Decision-making; Neurolaw