Natasha Mitchell, host of the ever interesting All in the Mind series from ABC Radio, gave a talk this past July at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas entitled, “You are not your brain scan!“. From the liner notes on the Slow TV website:
“The study of the brain has attracted extraordinary public interest in recent years, partly driven by major scientific breakthroughs in understanding the brain’s workings. To rely on brain scans, however, risks simplifying the science and equating our brain scans with destiny, much like the early years of genetics and reporting on genetics. In this very entertaining and insightful talk at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, Natasha Mitchell of ABC Radio (All in the Mind) introduces a healthy note of sense and caution to the discourse about what we can learn from studying brain scans.”
Unless you have been living in a cave somewhere (and maybe even if you have), you will have noticed that images of brain scans have suffused popular culture of late. Natasha takes us through the pitfalls of believing that the brain scans tell us what we so desperately want to know, and along the way gives a pretty good overview of The Neuro Meme, as well as the ways that not only the public but scientists have become seduced by the power of the image of the living brain. [One of my favorite lines: "It's become a game of pin the thought on the neuron." ] Natasha’s main point is that scientists might be making claims beyond what is technically or conceptually reasonable, and I, for one, stand up and enthusiastically applaud her for taking the imagers to task over the veracity of their claims. One need not even invoke the infamous dead fish fMRI to know that there has been a bit of hyperbole out there.
[Postscript: I would have liked Natasha's presentation on its merits alone, but the fact that she pokes fun at the growth of neuro-everything, but then applauds neuroethics as one new subfield that is on the money, biased me even more. I wonder if that is one of those brain things...]
Last week, the Core celebrated an early Valentine’s Day by breaking open a box of chocolates and engaging in a lively journal club discussion on Love. The paper, a seminal piece by Aron et. al (Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated With Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love), set the stage for a rich exchange on topics ranging from the neurobiology of love and sex, to the rise of folk neuroscience and potential applications of a “love potion”.
The conversation opened with an anecdote from my experience as a research assistant at Stanford, where I worked in conjunction with Art Aron on a exploration of romantic love and analgesia (Younger et. al, in submission).
The story went something like this:
When I began working on the ‘love project,’ I was a nineteen year-old who, like most people of my age and generation, believed that romantic love was nothing short of supernatural. Raised on a steady diet of Disney Princess stories and bubblegum pop, my first exposure to the neurobiology of love was shocking and uncomfortable.
The body of scientific literature seemed to taunt me from the pages of PubMed. ‘Of course there is no cupid shooting arrows! Unless ‘cupid’ is a cute way of saying, “dopamine-richareas associated with mammalian reward and motivation systems” (Aron et. al). Love happens in your brain!’ Not only that, the literature snickered, love is not special to your brain; it happens in everyone’s brains via roughly the same mechanism.
It was like finding out that ‘Santa’ is just your mom in a red bathrobe.
Although I was certainly disillusioned, my discomfort ran deeper than the discovery of a tangible truth behind love’s mystery. Below are some of the questions that plagued me during my initial investigation, as well as a some of the journal club musings in response. (more…)
The Dominican Republic is a much desired travel location for wealthy sun-seekers. Located on the island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic shares the island with another country to the west, Haiti.
Haiti is one of the world’s poorest nations, with escalating rates of HIV/AIDS, tuberculous, water-borne illnesses, economic deprivation, and extremely high rates of illiteracy. On January 12th, 2010 Haiti was struck by a massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, infrastructure destroyed, countless numbers became homeless and displaced, sick, injured, and are without food and water. Many are dying as I write this post. Haiti is in the midst of a severe humanitarian crisis.
Although Haiti was in desperate need of aid and world-wide support well before the earthquake struck, the quake’s occurrence has prompted an outpouring of donations to humanitarian aid organizations and other relief efforts. There are many courageous individuals currently on the ground in Haiti working tirelessly to help those in great need.
Given this escalating crisis, Bert Archer, writing for The Globe and Mail posed a provocative question in an article over the weekend: “One cruise this week docks for sunny fun in the Dominican Republic. Another stops in Haiti. It’s the same island. So why does one seem worse?” (more…)
I have just returned from attending the two day Sharp Brains Summit. Well, returned is not really the right word as the conference was held entirely online. So attending this conference involved sitting in my office and turning on my computer. The conference was both an information session on the emerging field of brain fitness software and, to be truthful, a marketing opportunity for the companies that are developing these programs. Several observations from the conference are of relevance to the ongoing discussion about the the neuroethics of cognitive enhancement.
First of all, I was pleasantly surprised at the breadth of cognitive domains that are being targeted by brain fitness software. Working memory, attention, and even emotional regulation are all fair game for this burgeoning field (improving driving skills, which ultimately makes everyone on the road safer, was highlighted). Secondly, I was impressed with the science. It became clear as the presentations went on that some companies were offering software that was backed up by solid, peer-reviewed research. They were able to state unequivocally that their software was able to demonstrate improvements as measured by good science. Equally obvious was the fact that other company offerings were not (or at least not obviously) backed by solid science, and to me their pitch less compelling. It seems that in this field, good science will be a marketing strength and this is a boon to the consumer as it is an antidote to hucksterism. (more…)
Edge is an organization that “promotes inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.” Every year, they ask their brain trust to address one big question, and this year it is this: How is the internet changing the way that you think? Regular readers will recognize that we have occasionally touched on this topic before, most recently when we reviewed some issues related to the effects of multitasking on the brain. But the respondents at Edge came up with a host of interesting comments, and I recommend reading the entire set of them if you have the time. Below the fold, I have exerpted a few of the comments that I found most relevant to issues in neuroethics.
From my perspective, I think that the two major effects of the internet as we use it today is that it decreases the need for wetware memory and degrades our ability to pay attention. The memory issue is good – I don’t have to remember as much as I used to because a tremendous amount of information is available at a moment’s notice. But flip side of the internet in general and hyperlinking in particular is that they are unbelievably distracting, and Nicholas Carr famously described his experiences in this regard in his article in the Atlantic entitled, “Is Google Making us Stupid?“. I tend to think quite a bit about the effects of normal aging on memory, and one of the things that we have learned in the last few years is that as we age, it is not so much our ability to remember things as to avoid being distracted by irrelevant stimuli which impedes our ability to perform cognitive tasks. The data is not yet convincing, but I suspect that this loss of cognitive control is substantially further degraded by regular internet use. The impact that this may have on the aging of today’s young brains, developing so critically in an environment which promotes distractibility, is unknown.
Well, that’s my two cents worth. If you see other comments on the Edge site that you like – or don’t like – by all means let us know. And, of course, if you have an opinion on the subject, feel free to comment. (more…)
Co-crystal structure of a representative methoxyphenyl allosteric modulator (D159153) bound to PDE4D
The prospect that drugs might be able to enhance one or more modalities of cognition has garnered a great deal of attention in the past few years, nowhere more so than among neuroethicists. Much of the discussion revolves around existing drugs such as methylphenidate, but the truth is that the effects they produce are measurable but modest, and in my view the current situation is not as dire as some might suggest. That might not be the case in the future, especially once ‘real’ pharmacological cognitive enhancers are developed. To date, the results have been disappointing. [Warning: the rest of this post is weighted more towards science than neuroethics.]
The development of ampakines by Cortex Pharmaceuticals looked promising at first, with preliminary results suggesting that these compounds might improve at least some aspects of memory in humans, but then the drugs failed to reach their end point in Phase II clinical trials. A great deal of excitement emerged from the idea that one might be able to enhance the activity of the transcription factor CREB, primarily by inhibiting the enzyme phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) which is responsible for breakdown of cAMP. If successful, the increase in CREB activity was hypothesized to enhance long-term memory. The prominent players in PDE4 development for cognitive enhancement to date have been Memory Pharmaceuticals and Helicon Pharmaceuticals; both companies developed drugs which advanced to Phase II testing for age-associated memory impairment, but neither drug met the requisite endpoint at moderate doses, and at higher doses ran into troublesome side effects such as nausea which have begun to be seen as a general problem with PDE4 inhibitors.
But a good idea does not lay fallow long, and a new report in Nature Biotechnology from Alex Burgin and colleagues at deCODE biostructures opens up a new era in the pursuit of PDE4 inhibitors for cognitive enhancement. The paper is a tour de force of structural biology and medicinal chemistry. Essentially, Burgin et al. noticed that all previous attempts to develop PDE4 inhibitors were based on developing competitive inhibitors. Reasoning that these compounds may have been more hammer than scalpel, they used insights from their crystallography work to design allosteric modulators which might allow better titration of the cAMP signal and presumably allow fine tuning of CREB activity. Using this strategy they ultimately came up with 140 compounds that satisfied their criteria; the most promising of these were then demonstrated to the desired effects upon long-term memory and have many of the characteristics one might wish for in a bona fide cognitive enhancer. (more…)
Curtis Bell, Senior Scientist Emeritus at Oregon Health and Science University, has recently circulated a document which he is promoting as a “Pledge by Neuroscientists to Refuse to Participate in the Application of Neuroscience to Violations of Basic Human Rights or International Law.” The full pledge is reproduced below, and can be accessed here. While individuals may wish to sign the pledge, what we view as most important is to develop a conversation regarding the merits of what Curtis has suggested. Specifically, while many responsible neuroscientists may agree with the overall sentiment, they may not agree with all aspects of the pledge as written. Whether you agree or not, this issue merits feedback from members of the neuroscience community in general and the neuroethics community in particular. (more…)
"In Sit You" downloaded from http://www.blogto.com/artists/upload/2009/01/20081123-in-sit-you.jpg
As part of the 2010 Winter Olympics, Canadian curators and artists are being celebrated through the Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition. Every two weeks a new exhibit goes live. The 7th exhibit was called Corporatization – A Persistent L’il System and was curated by Milena Placentile. The pieces explore “the impact of corporations on the world, including on shared public and personal life” (Curatorial Statement). One piece that struck me was “In Sit You” by Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins (see left), which reflects on the “pervasiveness of corporate advertising in public spaces” (About this Exhibit). The park bench echoes the hues of the billboard. I see it as a playful description of a potentially sinister interaction: the insidious influence of disembodied entities (e.g., corporations) in our public and private lives.
Ironically, a corporation is incorporeal. In the context of law, one cannot imagine physically assaulting a corporation like one could a person, yet a corporation has some protection under the law like an actual person. A corporation has its own “rights, privileges and responsibilities distinct from its members” and is considered a “legal person”. Instead of concentrating on a physical body, corporations protect their intellectual property. Is it possible that a corporation acts less like a whole person and more like a disembodied brain – a brain in a vat? (more…)
An introduction to philosophy, the trolley-problem, neuroethics & the law, and a few additional tidbits, all brought to you in five minutes courtesy of Massimo Pigliucci.
Much is made at neuroethics conferences and in scientific journals of the broad societal implications lurking in the discoveries of neuroscience — implications for our understanding of those eternal big questions of autonomy, responsibility, identity, and just about any other topic of passionate dinner conversation.
As a few moments pause reveals, though, none of the big answers neuroethicists come up with will have those broad implications we hear about if they don’t make it to the eyes and ears of the people they’re supposed to affect — the public. And therein lies one of the less talked about issues in neuroethics: How does one communicate the neuroscientific view of the soul or of free will to a public unschooled to the ways of the BOLD response or the action potential?
In January’s issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15 science journalists, media specialists and neuroethicists — including Core director Judy Illes and intern Kevin Sauvé — lay out a proposal to improve the communication of neuroscience research by cultivating a band of media-savvy scientists to engage the public in “neurotalk.” (more…)
National Core for Neuroethics
Carole Federico
Daniel Buchman
Peter B. Reiner
Gidon Felsen
Yemi Banjo
Elana Brief
Roland Nadler
eborgelt
Andrea Javor
Chaz Firestone
Sara Parke
