Brain, mind and behaviour. Some medico-legal aspects.

The advent of new imaging techniques is broadening our understanding of the major psychiatric illnesses. The increased knowledge of brain function will have consequences for the expert medical witness who has to give evidence in court. Both the insanity defence and the defence of automatism depend on disorders of the mind. Psychiatry is now able in many cases to produce evidence that these are consequent upon disorders of the brain. In presenting evidence in court there is an apparent conflict between 'brain words' and 'mind words'.