Neuroimaging and Responsibility Assessments

Could neuroimaging evidence help us to assess the degree of a person’s responsibility for a crime which we know that they committed? This essay defends an affirmative answer to this question. A range of standard objections to this high-tech approach to assessing people’s responsibility is considered and then set aside, but I also bring to light and then reject a novel objection—an objection which is only encountered when functional (rather than structural) neuroimaging is used to assess people’s responsibility

Germline RBBP6 mutations in familial myeloproliferative neoplasm

Letter to the Edito

Germline RBBP6 mutations in familial myeloproliferative neoplasms

We have identified germline RBBP6 mutations in ∼5% of familial MPN cases (3/67) and in ∼0.6% of sporadic cases (3/490) where family history is unknown. The low penetrance present in MPN pedigrees suggests that the disease is triggered by some stochastic factors, perhaps the acquisition of somatic mutations. In addition, common germline predisposition factors, such as JAK2 GGCC haplotype and TERT rs2736100 SNP, seem to have an additive effect on the MPN risk in RBBP6 mutation carriers