For over 20 years The Gruter Institute has been assembling biologists, legal scholars, primatologists, economists, anthropologists, and more recently neuroscientists, to discuss how human legal behavior is both facilitated and constrained by our biological nature. One principle consistently guiding the Institute is that "if law is fundamentally aimed at affecting human behavior, then it makes sense for the law to understand human behavior."

While last year's theme was sensory systems and the law with an emphasis on the neurobiology of decision making, this year's meeting at Squaw Valley, explored the intersection of Law, Human Behavior and the Brain. Here are a few highlights from the first day:

Owen Jones began the meeting with an ambitious list of questions that legal scholars should be asking behavioral scientists. Among them was this one: "What proof do we have that evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience will be important 20 years out?" Hopefully, my talk on our emerging neurosociety and the important role that biochips and brain imaging will play in driving future societal change put this question to bed.

After lunch legal scholar J.B. Ruhl explored how complex adaptive systems research could inform legal research and policy. J.B. was particularly interested in the policy implications of neurotechnology, an area I am sure we will be hearing more from him in time.

Peter Huang gave a very forward thinking talk titled "Effective Regulation of Affective Investing: Regulating Emotional Investing in Bipolar Securities Markets." Peter's knowledge of neurofinance and the potential policy implications was extremely impressive.

In the last talk of the first day, the ever insightful neuroeconomist Kevin McCabe provided an overview of his latest neuroeconomic research. Let's just say that Kevin understands intelligent experimental design is critical to getting anything out of an fMRI.

More manana.