Neuroethics & Law Blog

2012 Health Law Scholars Workshop (SLU/ASLME)

Sent to me via email; contact the organizers for further information:

2012 Health Law Scholars Workshop

The Health Law Scholars Workshop is a collegial forum in which faculty new to health law and bioethics scholarship present works-in-progress and receive in-depth advice from experienced scholars and teachers in the field of health law and bioethics. Each author’s work-in-progress accepted for the Health Law Scholars Workshop will be read in advance by several faculty members in relevant fields. During the Workshop weekend, each author presents his or her paper to the full group. After extensive oral feedback from the readers, the floor is opened for a sustained exchange between the presenter and full group.

Those interested in presenting a health law or bioethics work-in-progress at the Health Law Scholars Workshop should submit a 500-word abstract of the proposed paper together with a résumé to Cheryl Cooper at Saint Louis University School of Law by April 23, 2012. Because a blind selection process is used, please do not include the author’s name or institutional affiliation on the abstract. Questions about the submission process should be directed to Prof. Sidney D. Watson at watsons@slu.edu or 314 977-2751.

SEND SUBMISSIONS TO:

Cheryl Cooper, Program Coordinator
Center for Health Law Studies
Saint Louis University School of Law
3700 Lindell Boulevard
St. Louis, MO 63108

Phone:    314.977.3067
Fax:        314.977.3332
Email:     ccoope22@slu.edu

View the full 2012 Health Law Scholars Workshop Brochure here.

"Low Self-Control as a Source of Crime: A Meta-Study"

Recently Posted to SSRN:

.

"Low Self-Control as a Source of Crime: A Meta-Study"  
MPI Collective Goods Preprint, No. 2012/4

.

CHRISTOPH ENGEL, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, University of Bonn - Faculty of Law & Economics, University of Osnabrueck - Faculty of Law

Self-control theory is one of the best studied criminological paradigms. Since Gottfredson and Hirschi published their General Theory in 1990 the theory has been tested on more than a million subjects. This meta-study systematizes the evidence, reporting 717 results from 102 different publications that cover 966,364 original data points. The paper develops a methodology that makes it possible to standardize findings although the original papers have used widely varying statistical procedures, and have generated findings of very different precision. Overall, the theory is overwhelmingly supported, but the effect is relatively small, and is sensitive to adding a host of moderating variables.

Thierer on Technopanic

Recently Posted to SSRN:

.

"Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle" 
George Mason University Mercatus Center Working Paper No. 12-09

.

ADAM D. THIERER, George Mason University - Mercatus Center 

Fear is an extremely powerful motivating force, especially in public policy debates where it is used in an attempt to sway opinion or bolster the case for action. Often, this action involves preemptive regulation based on false assumptions and evidence. Such fears are frequently on display in the Internet policy arena and take the form of full-blown “technopanic,” or real-world manifestations of this illogical fear. While it’s true that cyberspace has its fair share of troublemakers, there is no evidence that the Internet is leading to greater problems for society. 

This paper considers the structure of fear appeal arguments in technology policy debates and then outlines how those arguments can be deconstructed and refuted in both cultural and economic contexts. Several examples of fear appeal arguments are offered with a particular focus on online child safety, digital privacy, and cybersecurity. The  various  factors  contributing  to  “fear  cycles”  in these policy areas are documented. 

To the extent that these concerns are valid, they are best addressed by ongoing societal learning, experimentation, resiliency, and coping strategies rather than by regulation. If steps must be taken to address these concerns, education and empowerment-based solutions represent superior approaches to dealing with them compared to a precautionary principle approach, which would limit beneficial learning opportunities and retard technological progress.

Brain Matters 3: Values at the Crossroads of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Psychology

The Third Brain Matters Conference will be held on October 24-25, 2012 in Cleveland, Ohio. From the website: "Continuing the tradition of Brain Matters conferences held in 2009 and 2011, this conference is designed to support and stimulate the emerging field of neuroethics. A primary theme will be ethical dilemmas posed by conditions without an identifiable biological correlate in both research and clinical settings."

The organizers are currently accepting abstract submissions which may address a wide variety of topics related to neuroethics, including topics unrelated to the conference theme. The deadline is May 15, 2012. See here for further information about the conference and abstract submissions.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article: Want to Understand Free Will? Don't Look to Neuroscience, The Chronicle of Higher Education In The Popular Press: A Little Device That’s Trying to Read Your Thoughts, New York Times Consciousness Does Not Reside Here, Scientific American Just One More Game...Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games’, New York Times Psychostimulants in preschoolers: Panacea or Pandora's Box?, The Neuroethics Blog The complex motivations for self-harm, Mind Hacks Medicare Boosting Coverage For Mental Health Issues, National Public Radio Shots Blog Neuroscientists Battle Furiously Over Jennifer Aniston, National Public Radio Google Begins Testing Its Augmented-Reality Glasses, New York Times Bits Blog Inside The Ailing Brain, Mind Hacks Why "Uncanny Valley" Human Look-Alikes Put Us on Edge, Scientific American Gene clue to post-traumatic stress disorder risk, BBC News This Is Your Brain on the Department of Defense, Mother Jones To Map Or Not To Map The Brain? That's Tonight's Question, National Public Radio Mind Games: Sometimes a White Coat Isn't Just a White Coat, New York Times Can computers have true artificial intelligence?, BBC News Neuroscience, Prediction, and Free Will: Or, Ripping off The Adjustment Bureau, The Neuroethics Blog Why Republicans and Democrats Can't Feel Each Other's Pain, Time Healthland A data-driven war on crime, Nature News From the Academic Literature: Rethinking ‘Rational Imitation’ in 14-Month-Old Infants: A Perceptual Distraction Approach, PLoS One Autism gene variant causes hyperserotonemia, serotonin receptor hypersensitivity, social impairment and repetitive behavior, PNAS Aging impairs intermediate-term behavioral memory by disrupting the dorsal paired medial neuron memory trace, PNAS Correlated neural variability in persistent state networks, PNAS Neuroscience: The symphony of choice, Nature Fast-food and commercial baked goods consumption and the risk of depression, Public Health Nutrition The Computational Power of Interactive Recurrent Neural Networks, Neural Computation Returning from Oblivion: Imaging the Neural Core of Consciousness, The Journal of Neuroscience Role of Projections from Ventral Medial Prefrontal Cortex to Nucleus Accumbens Shell in Context-Induced Reinstatement of Heroin Seeking, The Journal of Neuroscience Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase 2 Signaling in the Hippocampal Dentate Gyrus Mediates the Antidepressant Effects of Testosterone, Biological Psychiatry

Subscribe to our mailing list The Program in Ethics and Brain Sciences (PEBS) is a collaborative effort of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the  Johns Hopkins Brain Sciences Institute . The goal of PEBS is to ensure that research in brain science proceeds with an informed understanding of ethical issues, and that philosophical and empirical analyses of the advances in brain research proceed with an informed understanding of the science.

Altering the Factual Content of Memories

Over the last decade, researchers have had some success identifying drugs to dampen the emotional intensity of traumatic memories. Ongoing studies are looking at whether these drugs, like propranolol (already approved by the FDA to treat high blood pressure), may help treat or prevent PTSD. In an article I wrote a few years ago, I discussed the legal and ethical issues not only of drugs that alter the emotional content of memories but also more hypothetical drugs that alter the factual content of memories.

Faster than one likely would have predicted, drugs that alter the factual content of memories are becoming less hypothetical, so to speak, at least in rats. Using a drug called ZIP that started making big headlines within the last couple of years, the memories of rats can be entirely erased. If, for example, rats are taught to avoid a certain food, researchers can inject ZIP into their brains to make them forget the aversion. Until recently at least, ZIP hasn't been used to erase a particular memory or class of memories. If you taught rats to avoid two kinds of food, you couldn't erase the aversion to just one of them. A new study in which ZIP was injected directly into a rat's spinal cord at least reinforces the possibility of more targeted interventions.

While we still have a very long way to go, we may someday identify methods of erasing particular memories in humans. Such drugs may help treat people suffering from posttraumatic stress. They may also help treat drug addiction (interestingly, one study used ZIP to make cocaine-addicated rodents forget the location where they were regularly given cocaine). These drugs may also help treat chronic pain, since chronic pain may result in part from certain associations between a person's current condition and prior states of acute pain.

I recently wrote a two-page comment in the journal Nature discussing some of the issues raised by memory-dampening drugs. While such drugs may someday require thoughtful regulation, I argue that research into memory-dampening drugs should proceed despite what I consider excessive handwringing by some bioethicists. The comment is now available here on SSRN.

(Originally posted at Prawfsblawg.)