Neuroethics: What is it and what comes next?

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Neuroethics What is it and what comes next?

• Françoise Baylis, PhD Professor
• Canada Research Chair in Bioethics and Philosophy

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Neuroethics What is it?

• the study of the ethical, legal and social
  questions that arise when scientific findings
  about the brain are carried into medical
  practice, legal interpretations and health and
  social policy.
• Marcus D. (2002) Neuroethics Mapping the field
  conference proceedings, May 13-14 2002, San
  Francisco, California. New York The Dana Press.

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Neuroethics What is it?

• Neuroethics encompasses a wide array of ethical
  issues emerging from different branches of
  clinical neuroscience (neurology, psychiatry,
  psychopharmacology) and basic neuroscience
  (cognitive neuroscience, affective neuroscience).
• These include ethical problems raised by advances
  in functional neuroimaging, brain implants and
  brain-machine interfaces and psychopharmacology
  as well as by our growing understanding of the
  neural bases of behavior, personality,
  consciousness, and states of spiritual
  transcendence.
• http//neuroethics.upenn.edu/

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Neuroethics What is it?

• Neuroethics is more than just bioethics for the
  brain. It is the examination of how we want to
  deal with the social issues of disease,
  normality, mortality, lifestyle, and the
  philosophy of living informed by our
  understanding of underlying brain mechanisms" "It
  isor should bean effort to come up with a
  brain-based philosophy of life.
• Gazzaniga, M. S. (2005). The Ethical Brain. The
  Dana Press.

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Basic and clinical neuroscience
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling
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Basic and clinical neuroscience
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Cognition
• Memory
• Perception
• Creativity
• Attention
• Empathy
• Motor control
• Self-control

• Cognition
• Memory
• Perception
• Creativity
• Attention
• Empathy
• Motor control
• Self-control

• Cognition
• Memory
• Perception
• Creativity
• Attention
• Empathy
• Motor control
• Self-control

• Cognition
• Memory
• Perception
• Creativity
• Attention
• Empathy
• Motor control
• Self-control

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Basic and clinical neuroscience
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Cognition
• Memory
• Perception
• Creativity
• Attention
• Empathy
• Motor control
• Self-control

• Cognition
• Memory
• Perception
• Creativity
• Attention
• Empathy
• Motor control
• Self-control

• Cognition
• Memory
• Perception
• Creativity
• Attention
• Empathy
• Motor control
• Self-control

• Cognition
• Memory
• Perception
• Creativity
• Attention
• Empathy
• Motor control
• Self-control

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Basic and clinical neuroscience
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Healthy minds and brains (consciousness/cognitio
  n)
• Pathological mental functioning
• Mood
• Coma (brain activity but no consciousness)
• Vegetative State
• Minimally Conscious State (apparent fixation)
• Locked-in

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Basic and clinical neuroscience
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Alleviate suffering, disability, risk of suicide
• Reduce/eliminate motor disorders
• Enable communication
• Facilitate independent living outside psychiatric
  institution

• Healthy
• Pathological
• Mood
• Coma
• Vegetative
• Minimally Conscious
• Locked-in

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Basic and clinical neuroscience
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Improve performance
• Provide a competitive advantage

• Healthy
• Pathological
• Mood
• Coma
• Vegetative
• Minimally Conscious
• Locked-in

• Suffering
• Motor disorders
• Communication
• Independence

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Basic and clinical neuroscience
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Performance
• Competition

• Limits on
• freedom
• Freedom to re-invent the self
• Volitional cognition
• Transformative cognition

• Healthy
• Pathological
• Mood
• Coma
• Vegetative
• Minimally Conscious
• Locked-in

• Suffering
• Motor disorders
• Communication
• Independence

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Systems, goals, interests
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Health care
• Law
• Education
• Insurance
• Workplace
• Military
• Marketing

• Healthy
• Fit to stand trial
• Attentiveness
• Eligibility criteria
• Capabilities

• Better than well
• Excel in school and at work

• Non-medical screening and surveillance
• Tranhumanism
• Military Industrial Complex
• Neuromarketing

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Pain and suffering
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Reduce pain and suffering to range of normal

• Eliminate experience of pain and suffering
• Inflict pain and suffering

• Increase tolerance for pain and suffering beyond
  range of normal

• When does nociceptive activity begin?
• What is pain the perception of?
• Do fetuses experience pain?
• What are the limits on tolerance for pain?

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Psychopharmaceuticals
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• ADHD
• Parkinsons
• Deep depression

• Attentiveness
• Memory
• Wakefulness
• Creativity
• New self

• Truth serum
• Induced coma
• Mind expansion

• Brain chemistry
• Effects of recreational/ prescription drugs
• Safety and efficacy of dosages

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Brain imagingUnderstanding our desires and
vulnerabilities
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• fMRI and other noninvasive techniques for
  tracing neural activity (measuring psychological
  states and traits) to evaluate and predict
  complex human behavior
• How are brain structures involved in higher
  functions (e.g., social attitudes, human
  cooperation and competition, emotion, and
  religious experience)?

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Brain imagingUnderstanding our desires and
vulnerabilities
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Privacy -- Employers, marketers, and the
  government may want information about an
  individuals abilities, personality, truthfulness
  and other mental states. How can/will the privacy
  of ones thoughts be assured?
• Free will How will neuroimaging change our
  notions of responsibility?

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Brain imagingUnderstanding our desires and
vulnerabilities
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Neuromarketing brain imaging to measure limbic
  system response to a product to assess product
  preferences
• Brain Fingerprinting brain-based lie detection
• Brainotyping neuroimaging to learn about mental
  health vulnerabilities and predilection for
  violent crime
• The ethics of neuroimaging and the neuroimaging
  of ethics (ie, ethical reasoning and behavior)

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Brain ImagingUnderstanding ethics
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• What can neuroimaging tell us about the nature of
  morality?
• Can neuroimaging decide between competing ethical
  theories?
• How will neuroimaging change our notions of
  responsibility?
• Prediction and privacy in the neurodiagnostics

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Psychopharmaceuticals enhancing cognition
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Chemical manipulation to improve brain
  functioning in healthy individuals (improving
  memory, attention, problem-solving through the
  use of pharmacological agents)
• Methylphenidate (Ritalin) and modafinil
  (Provigil) are available through the Internet
  used to improve cognitive performance (e.g.,
  study aid)

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Psychopharmaceuticals enhancing cognition
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• WHY?
• To counter the effects of jet lag, shift work,
  monotonous activities, sleep deprivation, old
  age, etc.
• To increase productivity and safety in the
  workplace.
• To compensate for disadvantaged educational
  background.
• To gain a competitive advantage.

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Psychoharmaceuticals enhancing cognition
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Safety -- What might be the long-term health
  consequences? How will (should) these be weighed
  against immediate tangible benefits?
• Access What if cognitive enhancement is only
  available to the wealthy? The chemical haves
  and have-nots
• Coercion -- What if cognitive enhancement is
  forced on individuals unwilling to consent (e.g.,
  to improve competence to stand trial to give
  children the edge at school)? What if
  pharmacological enhancement becomes the norm
  (social pressure) and is thus required for
  success?

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Psychopharmaceuticals enhancing cognition
Understanding Normalizing
Enhancing Controlling

• Identity How might the drugs alter character
  and undermine authenticity, or, alternatively
  enhance sense of self?
• Free will How might this degrade personal
  responsibility for poor performance or antisocial
  behaviour (e.g., as when self-control comes from
  a pill)?

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Neuroethics What comes next?

• What are the challenges and implications of
  volitional cognition where our brains choose
  how our brains are to work?
• What of transformative cognition where the
  marketplace, social forces, competition, and
  their embedded values choose how our brains are
  to work?

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Neuroethics What comes next?

• Constructing cognition
• New self
• New species
• New world
• Utopia
• Dystopia