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What if some of the justice system's most common assumptions about behavior, memory, addiction, and decision-making are wrong?

In collaboration with the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior, this four-part webinar series hosted by NLADA explores the growing body of neuroscience and behavioral science research that is reshaping our understanding of human behavior and its implications for legal advocacy, client-centered practice, and justice system responses. From adolescent brain development and substance use disorders to trauma, memory, aging, and cognitive decline, each session examines how scientific advances challenge conventional thinking and offer new approaches to understanding the people we serve.

Trauma and memory are among the most misunderstood issues in the legal system. From criminal trials to asylum hearings, misconceptions about trauma and memory undermine the fairness and effectiveness of the legal system. This session will discuss how trauma impacts both brain structure and function, altering key regions involved in judgment, emotion regulation, impulse control, and memory. Drawing on recent advances in neuroscience and epigenetics, it examines how adverse childhood experiences, post-traumatic stress disorder, and intergenerational trauma affect behavior and decision-making in legally relevant contexts. Additionally, this session will discuss current scientific understandings of memory—including how the formation, storage and retrieval of memories may be influenced or distorted by other cortical processes or by illness, injury, or traumatic experiences—with significant implications on false confessions and eyewitness testimony. Equipped with current scientific understandings of trauma and memory, this session aims to prepare attendees to pursue more fair, effective, and humane legal responses.

Instructor: Judith Edersheim, JD, MD - Co-Director, MGH Center for Law, Brain & Behavior; Assistant Professor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School