Neuroethics & Law Blog

New Neuroscience & Society Programs at Harvard and Stanford

In case you missed the announcements, see here and here.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): In Defense of Brain Imaging, National Geographic  In The Popular Press: I Had Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, New York Times Well Blog Should you read more because a neuroscientist said so?, The Neuroethics Blog Cool at 13, Adrift at 23, New York Times Well Blog What's eating Luis Suarez: the psychology of biting, New Scientist Near-death experiences are overwhelmingly peaceful, New Scientist  Controlling body movement with light: Neuroscientists inhibit muscle contractions by shining light on spinal cord neurons, Science Daily Chimps like listening to music with a different beat, Science Daily Drinking alcohol or using drugs during pregnancy could become a crime, Practical Ethics Wolves Might Use Their Eyes to Talk to Each Other, Wired Science  Antidepressant suicide warnings 'may have backfired', BBC News How Connecticut's Change In Autism Coverage Could Make Waves, National Public Radio To Treat PTSD, Veterans Have A Vast Array Of Ineffective Solutions, National Public Radio  We speak as we feel, we feel as we speak, Science Daily Mothers are more altruistic than fathers but only if they are acting alone, Science Daily New Technology Helps Brain Signals Move Paralyzed Hand, TIME New Neurons In the Brain Keep Anxiety at Bay, Scientific American Brainomics: Hacking the Brain (and Autism) with Gene Machines, Scientific American Alzheimer’s Could Be a Form of Down Syndrome, Scientific American   From the Academic Literature: Neuroethics in a “Psy” World, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics Mapping glucose-mediated gut-to-brain signalling pathways in humans, NeuroImage Ischemic Stroke Injury Is Mediated by Aberrant Cdk5, Journal of Neuroscience  The genetics of music accomplishment: Evidence for gene–environment correlation and interaction, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Metaphorical Sentences Are More Emotionally Engaging than Their Literal Counterparts, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): Considering How Neuroscience Could Influence Moral Decisions, Bioethics.gov In The Popular Press: In Defense of Brain Imaging, National Geographic  Predicting Alzheimer's Disease: Potential Ethical, Legal, and Social Consequences, The Neuroethics Blog As Robotics Advances, Worries of Killer Robots Rise, New York Times The Upshot What to Do When Crawdad Grows Anxious, New York Times Science  Human brain's ultimate barrier to open for first time, New Scientist  The girl who couldn't stop laughing, Science Daily Storm Over the Brain, The New York Review of Books Two Tales of Marshmallows and their Implications for Free Will, Practical Ethics The Future of Computer Intelligence Is Everything but Artificial, Wired Science  The Neuroscience of the Future, The Neurocritic New documentary finds woman who talked to dolphins, BBC  How Trauma Affects The Brain Of A Learner, National Public Radio  Anxious children have bigger 'fear centers' in the brain, Science Daily Your Brain's Got Rhythm, And Syncs When You Think, National Public Radio Shots Blog Researcher Spotlight: Dr Molly Crockett, Wellcome Trust Brain imaging shows enhanced executive brain function in people with musical training, Science Daily Hippocampal activity during music listening exposes the memory-boosting power of music, Science Daily  Boys and Girls Are Impacted By Caffeine Differently, Time NIH scientists take totally tubular journey through brain cells, NIH Microwave Helmet Could Diagnose Strokes As Patients Ride To Hospital, National Public Radio Collaborating Chimps Make for a Sweet Deal, Scientific American From the Academic Literature: The medicalization of love, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics Reduced self-referential neural response during intergroup competition predicts competitor harm, NeuroImage Child with temporal lobe hamartoma: A to Z images and a case report, eCancer Increases in functional connectivity between prefrontal cortex and striatum during category learning, Neuron Sparse and distributed coding of episodic memory in neurons of the human hippocampus, PNAS Dissociable contribution of prefrontal and striatal dopaminergic genes to learning in economic games, PNAS

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.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): 'Free choice' in primates altered through brain stimulation, Science Daily In The Popular Press: Rats Regret Making Bad Decisions, Study Finds, Time A computer just passed the Turing test — but no, robots aren't about to take over, Vox Considering How Neuroscience Could Influence Moral Decisions, Bioethics.gov Does 'free will' stem from brain noise?, Science Daily Rethinking the Colorful Kindergarten Classroom, New York Times Well Blog More And More, Young Women Are Being Diagnosed With ADHD, National Public Radio Shots Blog Myth vs. Fact: Violence and Mental Health, ProPublica Sleep's memory role discovered, BBC News "What (If Anything) Is Wrong with Human Enhancement? What (If Anything) Is Right with It?", Neuroethics & Law Blog Music Lessons Combat Poverty's Effect on the Brain, Scientific American Tracking Conscious Perception in Real-Time With fMRI?, Neuroskeptic  Nostalgia: Why it is good for you, Mind Hacks Forgiving can literally make you forget, Discover Magazine Seriously, Science? Thanks to new technology, sex toys are becoming tools for connection - but will sexbots reverse that trend?, Aeon Magazine Should Tweens Be Prosecuted As Adults?, National Public Radio How Big a Deal Is Passing the Turing Test?, Gizmodo From the Academic Literature: Neuroscience and Criminal Justice: Introduction, The Journal of Ethics Sleep promotes branch-specific formation of dendritic spines after learning, Science  Processing of nociceptive input from posterior to anterior insula in humans, Human Brain Mapping Cognitive declines after deep brain stimulation are likely attributable to more than caudate penetration and lead location, Brain

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.

"What (If Anything) Is Wrong with Human Enhancement? What (If Anything) Is Right with It?"

Recently published in SSRN (and forthcoming in 49 Tulsa Law Review (2014)):

 

"What (If Anything) Is Wrong with Human Enhancement? What (If Anything) Is Right with It?"

 

I. GLENN COHEN, Harvard Law School

Should human enhancement be prohibited? Subsidized? Mandated? Taxed? 

This article is part of a symposium honoring one of my wonderful mentors: Einer Elhauge. It focuses on human enhancement. With advances in reproductive technologies, genetic screening, and concomitant calls for regulation of these things in America the time for discussing these issues has never been better.

Part I offers a reconstructive taxonomy as to different kinds of enhancements, including incorporating one distinction (as to absolute and positional goods and positive and negative externalities) that has been the focus of Elhauge’s own thinking. That said, one leitmotif of this Part is that “enhancement” as a category may not be particularly useful, especially if we accept there are not morally relevant differences in the biological vs. non-biological and treatment vs. enhancement distinctions, such that something like tutoring falls into the category of “enhancement.” 

Part II offers a taxonomy of legal/regulatory interventions. 

Part III attempts to sketch and interrogate the major arguments offered against human enhancement, including by mapping these arguments onto the taxonomies developed in Parts I and II and showing to which kinds of enhancements they apply and what kinds of legal/regulatory interventions can accommodate some of the concerns they raise. 

Finally, Part IV focuses on a question that has received surprisingly scant attention: why enhancement is sought. I will argue that one key reason offered for enhancement, to improve the life of the enhanced in the case of enhancement through reproduction, cannot be sustained for reasons that mirror points I have made elsewhere on the opposite issue, the justification for preventing parents from reproducing in ways that “harm” their offspring.

"Dualism and Doctrine"

Recently published in SSRN (and forthcoming in 90 Indiana Law Journal (2015)):

 

"Dualism and Doctrine"

 

DOV FOX, University of San Diego: School of Law

ALEX STEIN, Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law 

What kinds of harm among those that tortfeasors inflict are worthy of compensation? Which forms of self-incriminating evidence are privileged against government compulsion? What sorts of facts constitute a criminal defendant’s intent? Existing doctrine pins the answer to all of these questions on whether the injury, facts, or evidence at stake are "mental" or "physical." The assumption that operations of the mind are meaningfully distinct from those of the body animates fundamental rules in our law.

A tort victim cannot recover for mental harm on its own because the law presumes that he is able to unfeel any suffering arising from his mind, by contrast to his bodily injuries over which he exercises no control. The Fifth Amendment forbids the government from forcing a suspect to reveal self-incriminating thoughts as a purportedly more egregious form of compulsion than is compelling no less incriminating evidence that comes from his body. Criminal law treats intentionality as a function of a defendant’s thoughts altogether separate from the bodily movements that they drive into action. 

This Essay critically examines the entrenchment of mind-body dualism in the Supreme Court doctrines of harm, compulsion, and intentionality. It uses novel insights from neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry to expose dualism as empirically flawed and conceptually bankrupt. We demonstrate how the fiction of dualism distorts the law and why the most plausible reasons for dualism’s persistence cannot save it. We introduce an integrationist model of human action and experience that spells out the conditions under which to uproot dualism’s pernicious influence within our legal system.

"The Role of Framing and Metaphor in the Therapy versus Enhancement Argument"

Recently posted in SSRN (and published in Beyond Therapy v. Enhancement. Multidisciplinary analyses of a heated debate, Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2013, pp. 35-68):

 

"The Role of Framing and Metaphor in the Therapy versus Enhancement Argument"

 

BERT-JAAP KOOPS, Tilburg University - Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT)

Framing and metaphors play an important role in defining social problems, and as they carry with them implicit natural ‘solutions’, they can have a significant impact on public policy. This paper analyses how frames and metaphors feature in the academic human enhancement literature, in particular in relation to the therapy/enhancement distinction. A case study analysis of 25 academic papers on the use of psychopharmaceuticals for non-therapeutic purposes highlights the implicit associations and assumptions about human enhancement in the academic debate. 

Four frames, with different sets of metaphors, can be distinguished: different territory (in which therapy and enhancement are different fields, separated by a thin or fuzzy boundary), the slippery slope (associated with concerns of, for instance, medicalisation), function creep (in which medicine moves beyond its intended purposes to serve other purposes), and individual choice (where the medical necessity of therapy contrasts with ‘lifestyle’ choices of enhancement). A discussion of these frames demonstrates how the metaphors may influence the direction of policy recommendations for problems raised by human enhancement, and why participants in the academic debate sometimes talk at cross-purposes. 

The paper concludes that the therapy/enhancement distinction serves as a proxy to articulate various normative positions about what constitutes well-being and who is responsible for people’s well-being. Technological developments force us to continuously ask ourselves to what extent medicine is mainly about curing illness or also, more generally, about improving well-being. By uncovering the ways in which the therapy/enhancement argument is being framed in the literature, it becomes easier to see where authors position themselves along the spectrum of possible responses to this fundamental question.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): The Divide Over Involuntary Mental Health Treatment, National Public Radio In The Popular Press: 'Free choice' in primates altered through brain stimulation, Science Daily Flashes of light show how memories are made, Nature News Can you supercharge your brain?, Mosiac Science  NIH Embraces Bold, 12-Yr Scientific Vision for BRAIN Initiative, NIH Bursts Of Light Create Memories, Then Take Them Away, National Public Radio Shots Sorry, pregnancy doesn't actually improve your sense of smell, Discover Magazine: Seriously, Science?   How to erase a memory –- and restore it: Researchers reactivate memories in rats, Science Daily Can software suffer? The complicated ethics of brain emulation, Science Daily Anatomy Of A Dance Hit: Why We Love To Boogie With Pharrell, National Public Radio How Your Brain Responds to Pain, Gizmodo Shining a light on memory, National Institutes of Health Memories of Meth Can Be Deleted, Scientific American Men 'feel more pain after major ops', BBC News Science Graphic of the Week: Incredible 3-D Map Shows 300,000 Molecules in a Single Synapse, Wired Here’s What Happens To The Mind After 5 Years of Captivity, Time Using Google Glass to help individuals with autism better understand social cues, SCOPE Brain Imaging and Neurofeedback: Has Fiction Become Reality?, The Neuroethics Blog Alzheimer's disease: The forgetting gene, Nature News Feature Phone App Might Predict Manic Episodes In Bipolar Disorder, National Public Radio Shots Blog From the Academic Literature: Revisiting Vulnerability in Deep Brain Stimulation for Psychiatric Disorders, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics Neuroethics in a “Psy” World: The Case of Argentina, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics Rapid Hebbian axonal remodeling mediated by visual stimulation, Science   Odor Valence Linearly Modulates Attractiveness, but Not Age Assessment, of Invariant Facial Features in a Memory-Based Rating Task, PLoS One Ethics of brain emulations, Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence  Closed-loop control of spinal cord stimulation to restore hand function after paralysis, Frontiers in Neuroscience

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.

"Law and Neuroscience"

Recently posted to SSRN (and recently published in 33 THE JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE 17624 (2013))

"Law and Neuroscience"

OWEN D. JONES, Vanderbilt University - Law School & Dept. of Biological Sciences
RENE MAROIS, Vanderbilt University - Department of Psychology
MARTHA J. FARAH, University of Pennsylvania
HENRY T. GREELY, Stanford Law School

Law and neuroscience seem strange bedfellows. But the engagement of law with neuroscientific evidence was inevitable. For one thing, the effectiveness of legal systems in regulating behavior and meting out justice often depends on weighing evidence about how and why a person behaved as he or she did. And these are things that neuroscience can sometimes illuminate. For another, lawyers are ethically bound to champion their clients’ interests. So they remain alert for new, relevant, or potentially persuasive information, such as neuroscience may at times offer, that could help to explain or contextualize behavior of their clients. In light of this, and in the wake of remarkable growth in and visibility of neuroscientific research, a distinct field of Law & Neuroscience (sometimes called “neurolaw”) has emerged in barely a decade. 

Whether this engagement is ultimately more for better or for worse (there will be both) will depend in large measure on the effectiveness of transdisciplinary partnerships between neuroscientists and legal scholars. How can they best help the legal system to understand both the promise and the perils of using neuroscientific evidence in legal proceedings? And how can they help legal decision-makers draw only legally and scientifically sound inferences about the relationships between particular neuroscientific evidence and particular behaviors? 

In this article, we highlight some efforts to establish and expand such partnerships. We identify some of the key reasons why neuroscience may be useful to law, providing examples along the way. In doing so, we hope to further stimulate interdisciplinary communication and collaborative research in this area.

"Neuroscientists in Court"

Recently posted to SSRN (and published in 14 Nature Reviews Neuroscience 730 (2013)):

"Neuroscientists in Court"

OWEN D. JONES, Vanderbilt University - Law School & Dept. of Biological Sciences
ANTHONY D. WAGNER, Stanford University - Psychology
DAVID L. FAIGMAN, University of California Hastings College of the Law
MARCUS E. RAICHLE, Washington University School of Medicine

Neuroscientific evidence is increasingly being offered in court cases. Consequently, the legal system needs neuroscientists to act as expert witnesses who can explain the limitations and interpretations of neuroscientific findings so that judges and jurors can make informed and appropriate inferences. The growing role of neuroscientists in court means that neuroscientists should be aware of important differences between the scientific and legal fields, and, especially, how scientific facts can be easily misunderstood by non-scientists,including judges and jurors.

This article describes similarities, as well as key differences, of legal and scientific cultures. And it explains six key principles about neuroscience that those in law need to know.