Neuroethics & Law Blog

AJOB Neuroscience on Neuroethics (Connors)

The first neuroethics-related issue of the American Journal of Bioethics - Neuroscience (which Adam Kolber alerted us to back in June) is up and running. As a teaser, the journal is providing free access to Antonio Damasio's editorial, Neuroscience and Ethics: Intersections, a discussion of neuroscientific research on moral behavior.  Here's a snippet:

The ethical questions we ask and the just guidelines we hope to formulate depend on the boundaries of what constitutes ethical behavior, and the setting of those boundaries, may come to be influenced by new knowledge regarding how the brain operates in health and disease.

Several articles may be of particular interest to Neuroethics and Law Blog readers, including a piece on neuroscience and personal responsibility by Stephen Morse.  Morse's article on "Brain Overclaim Syndrome" (also previously referenced here) is a personal favorite.

You can check out the table of contents for the issue at the American Journal of Bioethics website (subscription required for article access).

"Brain Imaging and the Law" at BU

On Saturday, the American Journal of Law & Medicine will be hosting a symposium on "Brain Imaging and the Law" at Boston University School of Law.  I'm pleased to be one of the speakers (along with recent guest blogger Stacey Tovino).  Here's a link to more information and an email address you can write to if you'd like to attend.  As always, I encourage Neuroethics & Law Blog readers in attendance to introduce themselves.

Welcome "The Situationist"

I have added "The Situationist" to our blogroll.  The new blog is part of the Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School.  Welcome!

On Crime Deterrence...

Reuters reports that South Korean mobsters are more satisfied with their line of work than South Korean police officers are satisfied with their own:

According to the survey conducted among 109 jailed mobsters by the Korean Institute of Criminal Justice, 79.3 percent of gangsters said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their life in organized crime.

About 65 percent of police said they enjoyed their profession, according to a separate survey.

This is wacky news, since it doesn't sound like they even used the same survey instrument.  The lesson from this is obvious, however: as punishment for their crimes, mobsters should be required to serve as police officers.

On the limits of neuroscience and the value of "magical thinking" (Connors)

Author Deepak Chopra has some interesting comments on a recent New York Times article on the psychology and neuroscience of "magical thinking," - seemingly superstitious and non-rational beliefs such as faith in omens, good luck charms, or fated serendipity.  The Times article calls in a variety of anthropologists and neuroscientists to explain why such thinking prevails "even" in modern societies.  As someone enmeshed in brain and genetics science, I found Chopra's respose to be a refreshing reminder of alternative approaches to identity and self:

By clear implication, magical thinking is a holdover, a nuisance soon to be eradicated once we get our wires straight. The reason this conjecture caught my eye is that around the same time an evolutionary biologist at Harvard told an interviewer that brain research would soon unlock the key to all of human behavior. In both cases, a mechanistic explanation is deemed sufficient to explain us to ourselves. Instead of relying on even a shred of subjectivity, however brilliant the observer might be, all inquiries lead to hard wiring, genetic imprints, and ultimately a string of chemicals.

This whole world view continues to expand confidently, but one can't help wondering. At some point the line between hard and soft wiring must be drawn, and it's enormously over-simple to keep favoring the hard side of the equation because the soft side won't fit easily into laboratory experiments. Behaviorists need to be reminded that Jesus, Socrates, St. Paul and Augustine, Isaac Newton, and Shakespeare all exhibited some form of magical thinking. Writing them off categorically as evolutionary puppets of biology is more than foolish. It discards an enormous part of life's meaning. Do you worship God? Take a pill. But what if I worship art and music? Is there a pill for that?

The bald fact is that human beings aren't machines, and as detailed as MRIs and genome maps may get one day, they will never explain the meaning of existence. They will only reduce it to mechanisms that apply to tissues and cells, not to the whole person... To call our craving for beauty, love, spiritual significance, and self-worth an evolutionary trait or the result of a genetic imprint is extremely foolish.

You can find Chopra's full comments in the Huffington Post or on his blog entry.

Diagnostic Neuroimaging? (Connors)

Last week, Dr. Charles Marmar appeared in front of a House Defense Appropriations subcommittee to recommend that the armed forces invest in functional "brain screening" for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Marmar asserts that neuroimaging might be a time-efficient and "objective" alternative to lengthy clinical PTSD screenings.  I'm surprised the story isn't receiving much coverage outside of the military press; to my mind this is the first time we've seen a member of the scientific community aggressively pushing functional neuroimaging as a viable method for individual diagnosis of psychological illness. 

Rather than argue over whether a 15-minute survey can determine if service members suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, researchers are trying to find biological ways to make the diagnosis.

“We’re looking for an objective, independent, biological marker,” said Dr. Charles Marmar, who directs the PTSD facility for the San Francisco Office of Veterans Affairs, told the House defense appropriations subcommittee Friday.

The best bet so far is using brain imaging to look for areas of the brain with unusual activity, he said...

A physical test could change the stigma of mental health issues. If a brain image could show PTSD, the illness is no longer invisible: The test could make the diagnosis objective because it would not depend on a service member explaining why he’s sick.

Marmar said if the service members don’t get help immediately, they could face bleak futures.

I doubt that the majority of the neuroimaging community would accept Marmar's assertions that neuroimaging can provide reliable and valid diagnostic data at this stage of the game - and I'm sure the readers of this blog will have their own opinions on this, too.  Comments, anyone?

You can check out the Marine Times' copy of the circulated article here.

Singer on Ashley's "Pillow Angel" Treatment

Peter Singer has an op-ed in today's NYT supporting the decision of Ashley's parents to have their daughter undergo treatment "with hormones so she will remain below normal height and weight, ... have her uterus removed and . . . have surgery on her breasts so they will not develop."  Ashley's parents argue that, given Ashley's condition, the treatment is in her best interest.  (See earlier post here.)  Here's a key portion of Singer's argument, which appears at the end of the article:

Finally, there is the issue of treating Ashley with dignity. A Los Angeles Times report on Ashley’s treatment began: “This is about Ashley’s dignity. Everybody examining her case seems to agree at least about that.” Her parents write in their blog that Ashley will have more dignity in a body that is healthier and more suited to her state of development, while their critics see her treatment as a violation of her dignity.

But we should reject the premise of this debate. As a parent and grandparent, I find 3-month-old babies adorable, but not dignified. Nor do I believe that getting bigger and older, while remaining at the same mental level, would do anything to change that.

Here’s where things get philosophically interesting. We are always ready to find dignity in human beings, including those whose mental age will never exceed that of an infant, but we don’t attribute dignity to dogs or cats, though they clearly operate at a more advanced mental level than human infants. Just making that comparison provokes outrage in some quarters. But why should dignity always go together with species membership, no matter what the characteristics of the individual may be?

What matters in Ashley’s life is that she should not suffer, and that she should be able to enjoy whatever she is capable of enjoying. Beyond that, she is precious not so much for what she is, but because her parents and siblings love her and care about her. Lofty talk about human dignity should not stand in the way of children like her getting the treatment that is best both for them and their families.

You may also be interested in this article on the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis to select for embryos that have what are typically deemed genetic defects. 

Follow-up on Ram Sexual Orientation

Following up on an earlier post, the New York Times reveals a bit more of the story about (ostensibly?) controversial research into ram sexual orientation.  The work was (mis?)construed by some as an entree into research into changing human sexual orientation.  The most interesting part of the article comes at the end:

Dr. Roselli said that merely mentioning possible human implications of basic research was wildly different from intending to carry the work over to humans.

Mentioning human implications, he said, is “in the nature of the way we write our grants” and talk to reporters. Scientists who do basic research find themselves in a bind, he said, adding, “We have been forced to draw connections in a way that we can justify our research.”

As for whether the deaths of the sheep are justified, he said, “why would you pick on a guy who’s killing maybe 18 sheep a year, when there’s maybe four million killed for food and clothing in this country?”

Paul Root Wolpe, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the university’s Center for Bioethics, said that although he supported Dr. Roselli’s research, “I’m not sure I would let him off the hook quite as easily as he wants to be let off the hook.”

By discussing the human implications of the research, even in a somewhat careful way, Dr. Roselli “opened the door” to the reaction, Dr. Wolpe said, and “he has to take responsibility for the public response.”

If the mechanisms underlying sexual orientation can be discovered and manipulated, Dr. Wolpe continued, then the argument that sexual orientation is based in biology and is immutable “evaporates.”

The prospect of parents’ eventually being able to choose not to have children who would become gay is a real concern for the future, Dr. Wolpe said. But he added, “This concern is best addressed by trying to change public perceptions of homosexuality rather than stop basic science on sexuality.”

Listing of Cognitive Biases

Wikipedia has a great list of cognitive biases and heuristics with brief descriptions and links to more information.  Thanks to GoFP for the pointer!

"Pillow Angel" Treatment

You've probably already heard the story about the 9 y.o. girl who was surgically altered to seem younger than her biological age.  Here's a snippet by Arthur Caplan writing at MSNBC:

Ashley, a 9-year-old girl in Washington state, will never grow up. She has no breast buds or milk glands. She has no uterus. She will not grow taller than 4-1/2 feet. What is startling about her plight is that Ashley was made this way by doctors at Children's Hospital in Seattle.

Following a request from her parents, doctors there surgically removed her uterus and newly-forming breasts and began treating her with high doses of estrogen to ensure that Ashley would forever remain a child. Why would Ashley's parents and doctors decide to have their daughter, like Peter Pan, never grow up? And why would doctors agree to use their surgical skills and drugs to stunt a child's normal development?

Ashley's doctors wrote an article answering those questions last fall. They noted that Ashley, whose last name has not been made public, is far from normal. She has a rare brain condition known as static encephalopathy. She cannot walk, talk, move or swallow food. It is not clear whether her damaged brain can recognize her parents or her siblings. The doctors said that Ashley's parents came to them deeply concerned about how they would be able to manage their daughter as she grew older, bigger and heavier. The solution they seized upon, unprecedented in the history of medicine, was to use hormones and surgery to keep Ashley forever a child.

Bucking the trend to some degree, Alice Dreger writes sympathetically about the position of Ashley's parents over at the Bioethics Forum.

Sexual Orientation Research

A snippet from the AJOB Editor's Blog:

Scientists in Oregon are experimenting with changing the orientation of gay rams, and the response has been fierce. It seems biological experiments on sexual orientation are, perhaps with those on race, one of the few remaining areas of scientific ideological taboo.

Researchers argued that sexual orientation is an aspect of human sexuality that is a valid area of scientific interest. Opponents argued that the research is homophobic, and Martina Navratilova faxed letters to the presidents of both Oregon universities involved, charging . . .

The full post is here and note the recent update that raises questions about the accuracy and timing of media reports on the subject.

Mikhail on Universal Moral Grammar

Apropos my last post welcoming x-philes to the Neuroethics & Law Blog, here's an interesting paper that has been posted to SSRN by John Mikhail (Law/Phil., Georgetown), entitled Universal Moral Grammar: Theory, Evidence, and the Future, forthcoming in Trends in Cognitive Science.  The abstract is below, and you can download the full paper here:

Scientists from various disciplines have begun to focus attention on the psychology and biology of human morality. One research program which has gained attention and has been profiled in Science, Nature, The New York Times, and other publications is universal moral grammar (UMG). UMG seeks to describe the nature and origin of moral knowledge by using concepts and models similar to those used in Chomsky's program in linguistics. This approach is thought to provide a fruitful perspective from which to investigate human moral competence from computational, ontogenetic, behavioral, physiological, and phylogenetic perspectives.

In this forthcoming Opinion article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, I outline a framework for UMG and describe some of the evidence supporting it, including recent findings in developmental psychology, legal anthropology, comparative criminal law, and cognitive neuroscience. I also propose a novel computational analysis of trolley problem intuitions which draws on a diverse set of ideas and traditions, including lexical semantics, common law theory, the philosophy of action, and David Marr's three-level approach to cognitive science. Finally, I distinguish UMG from the dual-process model of moral judgment advocated by researchers such as Joshua Greene, Jonathan Haidt, and Cass Sunstein. Unlike Greene, I argue that the critical issue in the theory of moral cognition is not whether moral intuitions are linked to emotions - clearly they are - but how to characterize the appraisal system those intuitions presuppose, and in particular whether that system incorporates elements of a sophisticated jurisprudence.

Chomsky transformed linguistics and cognitive science by showing that ordinary language is susceptible to precise formal analysis and by rooting principles of grammar in the human bioprogram. UMG holds out the prospect of doing the same for aspects of ordinary human moral cognition. Initial efforts to explain trolley problem intuitions within this framework suggest that individuals are intuitive lawyers capable of drawing intelligent distinctions between superficially similar cases, although their basis of doing so is often obscure. Hence future research on moral grammar should begin from this premise, moving beyond the limited example of trolley problems and other doctrinally marginal “dilemmas” to the core concepts of universal fields like torts, contracts, and criminal law, which investigate the rules and representations implicit in common moral intuitions with unparalleled care and sophistication. Chomsky emphasized that rigorous formulation in linguistics is not merely a pointless technical exercise but an important diagnostic and heuristic tool, because only by pushing a precise but inadequate formulation to an unacceptable conclusion can we gain a better understanding of the relevant data and of the inadequacy of our existing attempts to explain them. Likewise, Marr warned against making inferences about cognitive systems from neurophysiological findings without “a clear idea about what information needs to be represented and what processes need to be implemented.” Cognitive scientists who take these ideas seriously and who seek to understand human moral cognition must devote more attention to developing computational theories of moral competence. Legal theory will play an important part in this process.

Welcome X-Philes!

My thanks to Thomas Nadelhoffer for his kind mention of the Neuroethics & Law Blog over at Experimental Philosophy.  We welcome contributions from the X-phi community here.