Neuroethics & Law Blog

The Brain and the Waist

At a poster session at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in DC, University of Cincinatti researchers, according to this press release, presented evidence that "that eating or drinking sweets may decrease the production of the stress-related hormone glucocorticoid—which has been linked to obesity and decreased immune response."  The research, based on a rodent study, found that the ones that ate more sweets had lower glucocorticoid levels than those that did not.  Not surprisingly, though, they also gained more weight.

This New Scientist article nicely summarizes recent research questioning whether being overweight is as bad as had previously been thought.  And this MindHacks post describes some recent research on how the brain develops a "body image" and how those perceptions can be "tricked" experimentally.

Harvard Center on Law & Bioethics

The NYT has the story here.  An excerpt:

It will be fully operational by fall 2006 and will have five full-time faculty members. It will also draw faculty members from other departments and schools at Harvard, including the philosophy department and School of Medicine, keeping in line with its broad focus. . . .

A number of other law schools have opened centers for health care law, including Stanford, St. Louis University, the University of Houston and Seton Hall University. The University of Minnesota offers a joint degree in law and the biological sciences, and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University offers courses on the law and science. Drexel University in Philadelphia is focusing its new law school, slated to open next year, solely on technology and health issues.

Psychosurgery

MindHacks has this informative post and set of links on modern-day psychosurgery, including this debate from the British Journal of Psychiatry.  The introduction to the debate notes the difficulty of conducting ethical, controlled trials in this area, and I suppose I can imagine the difficulties.  Whether they're insurmountable, I can't say.  Here's most of the introduction:

The persistence of psychosurgery within the therapeutic armamentarium of psychiatry is something of an anachronism in the current era of evidence-based medicine. Robust evidence for efficacy does not exist and, indeed, can never realistically be gathered because of the extreme ethical difficulties of carrying out randomised controlled trials in this area. Yet there are undoubtedly patients who remain resistant to all conventional forms of treatment. Should they be denied what is possibly their last hope of recovery? Although the evidence is not water-tight, modern neurosurgery is safer than ever before and appears to offer clinically meaningful symptom relief for ‘untreatable’ patients with chronic severe depression or obsessive–compulsive disorder (Matthews & Eljamel, 2003). The debate this month poses the question, ‘Should neurosurgery for mental disorder be allowed to die out?’ . . . .

Economic Inefficiency in Response to Mental Illness

Amanda C. Pustilnik (Covington & Burling) has posted "Prisons of the Mind: Social Value and Economic Inefficiency in the Criminal Justice Response to Mental Illness" to SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The United States spends approximately six billion dollars annually to incarcerate non-lawbreaking and nonviolent mentally ill adults and children, in return for no increase in pubic safety. Using a New Chicago School law and economics analysis, this Article examines the social meanings of mental illness to question why the costs of channeling the mentally ill into the criminal system not only are countenanced but embraced by voters and lawmakers. Analyzing legislation, statements by lawmakers and jurors, and historical sources, the Article contends that certain social value is created through the incarceration of this marginalized group - that is, that there is a taste for the (often instrumental) punishment of this population that incarceration satisfies, but that therapeutic alternatives would not. This punitive taste arises out of the dominant social meaning of mental illness: that it is a culpable failure of responsibility. The satisfaction of this contestable taste, rather than any public safety gain, is the benefit produced by the public order response to this group. The willingness to pay for this taste keeps entrenched this otherwise apparently inefficient regime. Thus, to change this regime, either the specific social meaning that maintains it must be put into contest, or an alternative way of satisfying the same set of preferences must be offered. Reformers who seek to improve the conditions of this group, or liberate economic value, or both, must work to supplant what may be termed the moral/punitive paradigm of mental illness with a medical/therapeutic paradigm. In tandem, proposed policies relating to this - or any - disfavored group must be framed in ways that do not conflict with the views and values of the majority whose support must be achieved.

Self-Medication and Generation Rx

A couple of neuroethics-related blogs (see here and here) have posted recently on an article in the NYT on twenty- and thirty-somethings who illegally obtain psychoactive drugs to self-medicate:

For a sizable group of people in their 20's and 30's, deciding on their own what drugs to take - in particular, stimulants, antidepressants and other psychiatric medications - is becoming the norm. Confident of their abilities and often skeptical of psychiatrists' expertise, they choose to rely on their own research and each other's experience in treating problems like depression, fatigue, anxiety or a lack of concentration. A medical degree, in their view, is useful, but not essential, and certainly not sufficient. . . .

The behavior, drug abuse prevention experts say, is notably different from the use of drugs like marijuana or cocaine, or even the abuse of prescription painkillers, which is also on the rise. The goal for many young adults is not to get high but to feel better - less depressed, less stressed out, more focused, better rested. It is just that the easiest route to that end often seems to be medication for which they do not have a prescription. . . .

Antidepressants are now prescribed to as many as half of the college students seen at student health centers, according to a recent report in The New England Journal of Medicine, and increasing numbers of students fake the symptoms of depression or attention disorder to get prescriptions that they believe will give them an edge. Another study, published recently in The Journal of American College Health, found that 14 percent of students at a Midwestern liberal arts college reported borrowing or buying prescription stimulants from each other, and that 44 percent knew of someone who had.

The article is related to a recently-published book, "Generation Rx". Here's an excerpt from Michiko Kakutani's review of the book in the NYT from September 2005:

In his hilarious stand-up routine, Chris Rock talks about the ubiquitous television drug commercials that "keep naming symptoms till they get one that" the viewer's got. Sometimes, he says, the ads don't even tell you what the pill does: "You see a lady on a horse or a man in a tub, and they just keep naming symptoms: 'Are you depressed?' 'Are you lonely?' 'Do your teeth hurt?' " He adds that one commercial he saw went, "Do you go to bed at night and wake up in the morning?"

"They got that one!" he says. "I got that. I'm sick. I need that pill!"

Mr. Rock's observations are almost too close to the actual truth to be considered satire, as Greg Critser's provocative new book, "Generation RX," makes clear. . . .

"The total number of annual prescriptions in the United States now stands at about three billion," he writes. "The cost per year? About $180 billion, headed to an estimated $414 billion by 2011." He adds that spending on all forms of drugs to treat childhood and adolescent behavioral disorders rose by 77 percent between 2000 and 2003, "with 65 percent of all children on such drugs taking at least one antidepressant." On college campuses, the portion of students who went to health centers and "who were already taking psych meds went from 7 percent in 1992 to 18 percent in 2000." There is little in "Generation RX" that hasn't been reported before - in the flurry of articles about the pharmaceutical business, which appeared in the wake of the Vioxx recall last fall, or in the slew of recent books by experts like Marcia Angell ("The Truth About the Drug Companies"), Jerry Avorn ("Powerful Medicines") and John Abramson ("Overdosed America").

New False Memory Book

From Cornell's website:

A new book, "The Science of False Memory" (Oxford University Press, 2005) by two Cornell University professors, Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna, brings together and makes accessible to the general reader the decade or so of intensive research on false memory.

"False memories are a hot topic in psychological research and a major issue for society," says Daniel L. Schacter, professor of psychology at Harvard University. "'The Science of False Memory' provides a compelling scholarly analysis that ranges from laboratory studies to cases in the courtroom. Written by two leaders in the field, this book is must reading for memory researchers, psychologists and anyone else interested in understanding why people sometimes remember events that never happened." Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California adds, "This is the definitive work on false memories … everything you might want to know about them and more."

"In the past few years, there's been a broad-based outpouring of research on the circumstances in which normal people are possessed of positive, confident memories of things that never happened to them," says Reyna, professor of human development at Cornell. "The flood of new data has stimulated comparable advances in our theoretical understanding of these false-memory phenomena, though this fact is not yet widely appreciated."

Potential Treatment for Learning Disabilities

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article here about the serendipitous discovery that lovastatin "a widely used cholesterol-lowering drug, reverses common learning disabilities in mice, offering the first hope for a treatment of the problem in humans."  While the studied focused on a "genetic defect called neurofibromatosis 1, the most common genetic cause of learning disabilities," the article states that "[t]he treatment also may be useful in a much larger group of people because the underlying molecular disorders in other types of learning disabilities may be similar, Silva said. As much as 5 percent of the population is learning disabled, and lovastatin may be useful in treating many of them, he said."  There's no discussion of whether the drug might also improve learning in the non-learning-disabled.  (Thanks BrainWaves; Zack's summary is here).

Action Potential Blog

The editors of Nature Neuroscience have started a blog entitled Action Potential.  Welcome! According to its inaugural post, it will:

offer some sort of simple, easy, low-threshold feedback and dialogue mechanism for our audience. "Action Potential" is going to be it. We'll be posting links to new NN papers as they go online, so you have a chance to comment on them easily. We'll try to stir up discussion about our editorials. We'll offer links to material published elsewhere that we find interesting. We'll blog about exciting findings in neuroscience, science politics, developments in science publishing, etc, etc.

Enhancing Attractiveness

New Scientist reports on a study here that found a correlation between a woman's estrogen level and her perceived attractiveness. The report also raises the possibility that one may be able to augment her attractiveness hormonally during adolescence. This is related to a big question in neuroethics about the circumstances under which one ought to, ought not, or is permitted to enhance the body beyond its natural state. Here's an excerpt:

Miriam Law Smith and colleagues photographed 59 women, aged between 18 and 25, every week for six weeks. On each occasion, they provided a urine sample for hormone analysis and gave information on where they were in their menstrual cycle. None of the women wore make-up, nor were they taking the contraceptive pill.

The researchers then selected the photograph of each woman that had been taken at the time of her highest urine-oestrogen level. As expected, this correlated to the point of ovulation in the women’s menstrual cycles. These photographs were rated by 14 men and 15 women, also aged 18 to 25, for attractiveness, health and femininity.

The group also rated two composite face images. One composite was an amalgamation of the 10 women with the lowest peak-oestrogen levels, while the other image was a combination of the 10 women with the highest levels (see image).

"There was a very strong and direct correlation between the level of each woman's oestrogen and how attractive, healthy and feminine they were found to be, showing that fertility is related to attractiveness," Law Smith told New Scientist. The faces considered most healthy and feminine were also deemed the most attractive.

Here's the researcher's take on (or perhaps avoidance of) the ethical issue:

So should 13-year-old girls be given doses of oestrogen in the hope that they will grow into more beautiful women? "Absolutely not," Law Smith says. "It certainly may make them more attractive, but who knows what other effects the hormone may have?"

More on Lie Detection and the Stomach

Here's the NYT on the pilot study that used electrogastrograms in lie detection.

Gastroethics?

Here's an AP story on some preliminary research at the University of Texas that used electrical impulses in the stomach for purposes of lie detection.  A blurb:

A group of scientists are turning to people's stomachs to find out if they are telling the truth. A new study by the University of Texas measured electrical impulses in the stomachs of 16 volunteers that were only associated with the act of lying.

"The heart rate went up for both lying and truth, but the gastric electric activity only changed with lying," said Pankaj Pasricha, a researcher with the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

Denno's "Criminal Law in a Post-Freudian World"

Deborah W. Denno (Law, Fordham) has posted Criminal Law in a Post-Freudian World (University of Illinois Law Review, pp. 601-774, 2005) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Freudian psychoanalytic theory has greatly influenced the modern definition of criminal culpability. Indeed, much of the language of key criminal statutes, cases, and psychiatric testimony is framed by psychoanalytic concepts. This impact is particularly evident in the Model Penal Code’s mens rea provisions and defenses, which were developed in the 1950s and 1960s, a time of Freudian reign in the United States. For contemporary criminal law, however, this degree of psychoanalytic presence is troublesome. Freudian theory is difficult to apply to group conflicts and legal situations, and the theory emphasizes unconscious (rather than conscious) thoughts. The rising new science of consciousness and conscious will provides continuity with Freudian theory. Yet, in contrast to Freudian principles, this new science offers criminal law a means of enlightening existing mens rea doctrine with advanced discoveries that more easily comport with human behavior and evidentiary standards. The results of this author's unprecedented statewide study of criminal jury instructions also suggest that courts are wrong to distort or reduce the significance of mens rea in the ways juries interpret criminal cases. This article concludes that current consciousness research provides a sound vehicle for criminal law doctrine to return the law's focus to the defendant's mental state, thereby retaining the moral insights, but not the muddle, that Freudian theory originally contributed.

(via Legal Theory Blog).

Franklin's "Endowed Professorships for Women"

MindHacks has posted a number of interesting sites geared for mind/brain students here.  Among them is a list of the 100 most influential cognitive science articles of the 20th Century, according to these faculty members of the Center for Cognitive Science at U. of Minnesota.  No full-text links, I'm afraid. 

They do, however, have a link to full-text classic works in the history of psychology.  Here's an excerpt from "Endowed Professorships For Women" by Christine Ladd Franklin, over 100 years ago (1904):

It is a comparatively new thing for women to have either the possibility or the desire to carry their studies so far as to meet the present requirements for the college professor. It is hard for us to realize -- so familiar a feature of modern life has the college girl become -- that it is only about forty years since it has been possible for women to obtain a college education, in anything like the proper sense of the term; and it is a still shorter time since such a rara avis as the doctor of philosophy first came into existence among women. But the world is moving rapidly in these days, as regards the affairs of the more modest sex, and it is now no inconsiderable number of women who have absolved the requirements of the highest rank of scholarship. At the same time there has been a great change in the demands of the colleges as regards the preparation required of their young professors. For many years, in the history of education in this country, nothing more than a diploma from some reputable college was essential to the obtaining of the position of assistant or instructor in an institution of corresponding rank, but that state of thing is now very nearly superseded, and the young person who wishes to enter upon the professorial career must have had something far more brilliant than this in the way of preparation. He must either have taken the degree of doctor of [p. 54] philosophy, or, if he has not actually obtained the degree, he must have carried out a course of study somewhat equivalent to what is required for that; to be a plain college graduate is no longer a sufficient foundation for the honors of the professor's life. Thus the existence of women who have secured for themselves the highest possible degree of training, coincides with the advent of greater stringency in the requirements for college appointments.

It is true that the same thing holds for men: where doctors of philosophy were once the exception, they are now the rule, and he who wishes to become a college professor is quite prepared to give three years to study after he has obtained his college diploma. Rut here the resemblance ends: the exacting positions are filled to too large an extent by the highly trained of one sex only; the women have not as yet been given a representation in proportion to their attainments. It is this discrepancy that we are anxious to see removed. . . .

And later:

The editors of reviews and the publishers of books do not ask, with reference to a given manuscript, "Is the author of it a woman?" but simply, "Is what she has to offer a thing of value?" All we ask is that the college positions (at least in the co-educational colleges) should be filled in this same dispassionate way, by doctors of philosophy without regard to their sex, or with very little regard to their sex -- with the understanding, say, that whenever the woman applicant for a position is distinctly superior to the man, she shall have the position. That this is not already the case is a residuum of prejudice on the part of the unfair sex which is certainly not destined to survive much longer.