A brain scan that can tell how mature someone is could one day be used to decide whether a child should be prosecuted for a crime.An MRI scan can show how old someone is after just five minutes because of the difference in structure between an adults and a child’s brain. Now scientists say that, in the future, defence lawyers could use these scans to argue that their defendant’s brain was not mature enough for them to truly understand what they have done. Jay Giedd, at the National Institute of mental Health in Bethseda, Marlyand, told New Scientist: ‘The findings are going to make a splash.’ But critics claim that by the age of 10 most children should already know the difference between right and wrong. According to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, the maturity of a person’s brain is directly linked to their behaviour. The amount of grey matter is at its highest in childhood before decreasing as adults grow older. The connections between the different parts of the brain, known as white matter, increase as people grow older and allow different parts of the brain to communicate with each other. According to a report in Science magazine, the computer software is able to predict with 92 per cent accuracy whether a brain belongs to an adult or a child. (Daily Mail)
