# The gut is guilty! Will legalomics transform forensic and legal psychology?

## TL;DR

This paper explores how gut microbes may influence behavior and how this could impact forensic and legal psychology through new legalomics approaches.

## Contribution

The paper introduces legalomics as a novel framework integrating microbiome and omics evidence into forensic and legal psychology.

## Key findings

- Gut microbiota can influence brain states through neural, immune, endocrine, and metabolic pathways.
- Auto-brewery syndrome is presented as a legal precedent for microbiome-mediated impairment.
- Legalomics could enhance forensic and legal psychology by incorporating microbial evidence within ethical frameworks.

## Abstract

Multiple lines of converging research are supporting the idea that gut microbes play an outsized role in human cognition and behavior. Here in this perspective article, we argue that emergent gut-brain-microbiota research, and associated advances in multi-omics technologies, are destined to be of high-level relevance to forensic and legal psychology. After summarizing neural, immune, endocrine, and metabolic channels by which gut ecosystems can modulate behavior-relevant brain states, and discussing causal inferences from microbiota-transfer and adjacent human evidence, we present auto-brewery syndrome as a bounded legal precedent for microbiome-mediated impairment. The available evidence allows for a visualized future in which legalomics—the disciplined use of microbiome and omics evidence in prevention, treatment, competency, mitigation, risk assessments, reintegration care, correctional health, and professional wellness—is in the prevue of forensic and legal psychology. Framed by neurorights, we offer a series of ideas for future directions, with possible ways to strengthen research within ethical frameworks. Using auto-brewery syndrome as an example, we argue that the legalome offers forensic and legal psychology a way to calibrate, rather than replace, biopsychosocial judgement. Microbial signatures and legalomics—reliably obtained and narrowly construed—might one day help us judge more justly.