Neuroethics & Law Blog

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): New Antidepressant: Rapid Agent Restores Pleasure-Seeking Ahead of Other Antidepressant Action, ScienceDaily Upcoming Event: International Neuroethics Society Annual Meeting Washington, D.C. November 13-14, 2014 In The Popular Press: Your Brain’s Response to Vile Images Says a Lot About Your Politics, Quartz An Easy Consciousness Test? Science What is Uniquely Human? A Report from The Social Brain Conference, The Neuroethics Blog This Brain Decoder Can Read the Words of Your Inner Monologue, Gizmodo Parasite-Schizophrenia Connection: One-Fifth of Schizophrenia Cases May Involve the Parasite T. Gondii, Science Daily Computer with Human-Like Learning Will Program Itself, NewScientist This Is Your Brain on Drugs, New York Times Scientists Implicate More Than 100 Genes In Causing Autism, NPR Shots Blog Curiosity: It Helps Us Learn, But Why?, NPR Ed Blog This is What Brain Cell Conversations Look Like, NewScientist Interesting Study on Deception, Neuroethics & Law Blog This Is Your Brain on Magic Mushrooms, Discover To Improve a Memory, Consider Chocolate, New York Times The Science of Charismatic Voices: How One Man Was Viewed as Authoritarian, then Benevolent, Science Daily Projecting a Robot's Intentions: New Spin on Virtual Reality Helps Engineers Read Robots' Minds, Science Daily EEG Test to Help Understand, Treat Schizophrenia, Science Daily Announcing… PLoS Neuroskeptic!, Discover Wearable Tech to Hack Your Brain, CNN Tech In the Academic Literature: Fairness Violations Elicit Greater Punishment on Behalf of Another than for Oneself, Nature Communications Prior Meditation Practice Modulates Performance and Strategy Use in Convergent- and Divergent-Thinking Problems, Mindfulness Relative Valuation of Pain in Human Orbitofrontal Cortex, The Journal of Neuroscience Big Data from Small Data: Data-Sharing in the 'Long Tail' of Neuroscience, Nature Neuroscience                Putting Big Data to Good Use in Neuroscience, Nature Neuroscience Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors of Political Ideology, Current Biology Distributed Neural Representations of Logical Arguments in School-Age Children, Human Brain Mapping

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 Does It Mean to be a Mechanism? Stephen Morse, Non-Reductivism, and Mental Causation"

Recently published in SSRN (and forthcoming in Criminal Law and Philosophy):

 

"What Does It Mean to be a Mechanism? Stephen Morse, Non-Reductivism, and Mental Causation"

 

KATRINA SIFFERD, Elmhurst College

Stephen Morse seems to have adopted a controversial position regarding the mind-body relationship: John Searle’s non-reductivism, which claims that conscious mental states are causal yet not reducible to their underlying brain states. Searle’s position has been roundly criticized, with some arguing the theory taken as a whole is incoherent. In this paper I review these criticisms and add my own, concluding that Searle’s position is indeed contradictory, both internally and with regard to Morse's other views. Thus I argue that Morse ought to abandon Searle’s non-reductive theory. Instead, I claim Morse ought to adopt a non-eliminative reductive account that can more easily support his realism about folk psychological states, and the existence of causally effective mental states in a purely physical world.

"Binding Future Selves"

Recently published in SSRN (and recently published in 75 Louisiana Law Review No. 1 (2014)):

 

"Binding Future Selves"

 

KAIPONANEA T. MATSUMURA, Arizona State University 

Courts traditionally treat a person entering an agreement as the same person at the time of enforcement notwithstanding the passage of time or an intervening change of mind. For certain agreements between intimates, however, courts have adopted the novel view that the enforcement of a person's earlier commitment would improperly constrain that person's will rather than serve as an expression of it. These cases rest on the assumption that an intervening change has created meaningful — and legally significant — differences between the later self (at the time of enforcement) and the earlier self (at the time of commitment), and that the later self deserves protection from the earlier self's choices. 

This "different selves" rationale has arisen primarily in the context of agreements pertaining to matters like embryo disposition, surrogacy, and parentage. Courts and commentators appear to believe that the centrality of these types of choices to personhood justifies exceptions to general contract principles. But even assuming choices of this sort differ from choices embodied in "normal" contracts, the different selves rationale does not provide a principled basis for resolving a dispute between the selves; it does not explain why a choice central to personhood made at an earlier time is less central to that person than a choice made at a later time.

This Article contributes to the existing literature on several fronts. It reveals the increasing adoption by courts of the different selves rationale, which, until recently, was thought to be merely theoretical. It also exposes the ungrounded assumptions on which the rationale rests: that it applies only to a certain set of choices, that it can identify the proper choices to protect, and that it can actually protect those choices. Finally, this Article uses the different selves rationale as an occasion to examine the role of personal identity in contract law. Theories of personal identity emphasize the importance of self-continuity and future-regarding action, both of which are disserved by an approach that prizes a person's preference at the time of dispute rather than her earlier commitment.

Interesting Study on Deception

When given an opportunity to question people about cheating, we may not be so bad after all at assessing credibility. See the research ("Expertise in Deception Detection Involves Actively Prompting Diagnostic Information Rather Than Passive Behavioral Observation") summarized here.

Abstract

In a proof-of-concept study, an expert obtained 100% deception-detection accuracy over 33 interviews. Tapes of the interactions were shown to N = 136 students who obtained 79.1% accuracy (Mdn = 83.3%, mode = 100%). The findings were replicated in a second experiment with 5 different experts who collectively conducted 89 interviews. The new experts were 97.8% accurate in cheating detection and 95.5% accurate at detecting who cheated. A sample of N = 34 students watched a random sample of 36 expert interviews and obtained 93.6% accuracy. The data suggest that experts can accurately distinguish truths from lies when they are allowed to actively question a potential liar, and nonexperts can obtain high accuracy when viewing expertly questioned senders.

(hat tip: MindHacks)

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): Q&A: Robots and the Law, Science Upcoming Event: International Neuroethics Society Annual Meeting Washington, D.C. November 13-14, 2014 In The Popular Press: New Algorithms Search for Signs of Consciousness in Brain Injury Patients, Wired Burden of Proof: Does Neuroscience Have the Upper Hand?, The Neuroethics Blog Inherited Memories: Too Good to Be True?, Discover Neuroskeptic Why Your Brain Makes You Reach for Junk Food, Science Daily ADHD is Different for Women, Quartz Parkinson's Drugs Can Be A Gateway To Sin, NPR Shots Blog Halting Schizophrenia Before It Starts, NPR Shots Blog Power Makes People Deliberate Less Over Emails, Discover Neuroskeptic Gamblers Get Less Of a Buzz From Pleasure, Study Finds, TIME Scientists Restore Hearing in Noise-Deafened Mice, Pointing Way to New Therapies, ScienceDaily New Antidepressant: Rapid Agent Restores Pleasure-Seeking Ahead of Other Antidepressant Action, ScienceDaily Brain Activity Provides Evidence for Internal 'Calorie Counter', ScienceDaily Fairness is in the Brain, Scientists Say, ScienceDaily These are the Pervasive Brain Myths that Teachers Around the World Believe, Quartz In the Academic Literature: To Learn is to Myelinate, Science To Simulate or Not to Simulate: What Are the Questions?, Neuron The Mona Lisa Effect: Neural Correlates of Centered and Off-Centered Gaze, Human Brain Mapping Vascular Hippocampal Plasticity After Aerobic Exercise in Older Adults, Molecular Psychiatry                Nutritional Omega-3 Modulates Neuronal Morphology in the Prefrontal Cortex Along with Depression-Related Behaviour through Corticosterone Secretion, Translational Psychiatry Single-Cell Responses to Face Adaptation in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe, Neuron Deep-Brain Stimulation — Entering the Era of Human Neural-Network Modulation, New England Journal of Medicine

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.

"Why Behavioral Economics Isn't Better, and How it Could Be"

Recently published in SSRN (and forthcoming in Research Handbook on Behavioral Law and Economics (J. Teitelbaum & K. Zeiler eds, (2015)):

 

"Why Behavioral Economics Isn't Better, and How it Could Be"

 

OWEN D. JONES, Vanderbilt University

What’s holding Behavioral Economics back? And what can be done about it? 

The fields of Behavioral Economics and Behavioral Law and Economics have each supplied important and useful insights. But the state of knowledge has changed rapidly across the decades since Tversky and Kahneman first highlighted how people sometimes systematically depart from predictions of the standard expected utility model in neoclassical economics. 

Those changes now render it uncomfortably obvious that Behavioral Economics, and those who rely on it, are falling behind with respect to new developments in other disciplines that also bear directly on the very same mysteries of human decision-making. 

This chapter identifies four problems for Behavioral Economics. It explores their causes. It then suggests and illustrates ways around them, including a path for integrating multi-disciplinary insights. It provides concrete recommendations that can help to move these important schools of thought forward, in light of developments in other fields.

Stanford's Center for Law and the Biosciences Fellowship

Quoting from here:

Stanford Law School invites applications for the 2015-2016 Fellowship Program at the Center for Law and the Biosciences.

The Goal:

This fellowship is intended for people who want an academic or policy career working on legal and social issues arising from advances in the biosciences, with a particular emphasis on neuroscience, genetics, or stem cell research. (Eight of our former fellows are now teaching at universities in the United States, Asia, and Europe.)

The Center:

The Center for Law and the Biosciences, directed by Professor Hank Greely, examines bioscience discoveries in the context of the law, weighing their impact on society and the law’s role in shaping that impact. The Center is part of the Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology.

Located at the heart of the world’s biotechnology industry and inside a preeminent research university, the Center brings together academics, lawyers, scientists, policy-makers, and students. Through conferences, workshops, lectures, and academic courses, the Center promotes research and public discourse on the ethical, legal, scientific, economic, and social implications of accelerated technological change in the life sciences. For more information, visit our website at clb.stanford.edu.

The Fellowship:

The Center for Law and the Biosciences Fellowship is a residential fellowship that provides an opportunity to conduct research in the dynamic environment of Stanford Law School. We prefer two-year fellowships to help the fellow complete a significant body of independent scholarship, but we are willing to consider one-year terms. We expect fellows to dedicate most of their time to pursuing their proposed research projects, while dedicating about one-sixth of their time to organizing and implementing other Center activities, including our annual conference, our monthly speaker series, our biweekly journal club, and our other activities, as well as writing for our blog. Fellows are encouraged to attend weekly faculty lunch seminars and participate in activities with the other fellows at Stanford Law School to learn more about their legal scholarship and academic life. For the 2015-2016 fellowship, we will provide fellows with work space, a competitive stipend, and a generous benefits package. Applicants should have a JD or other doctoral level degree (MD, PhD) in a relevant area. A law degree is a substantial advantage, but is not a requirement.

The Application Process:

Applicants should submit a CV with contact information for three references, a writing sample, and a research proposal (2000 words or less) to the Stanford Career website: https://stanfordcareers.stanford.edu/job-search?jobId=64701

Application Deadline: November 30, 2014 at 5:00 PM Pacific time. We will choose fellows based on demonstrated academic merit and potential, and on the intellectual strength of their research proposals. Decisions will be made on or around December 12, 2014.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): 5 Myths About the Human Brain Debunked, Vox In The Popular Press: How Scientists are Studying Consciousness — With Mirrors, Electrodes, and Anesthesia, Vox Let Science Decide the Voting Age, NewScientist In Interrogations, Teenagers Are Too Young to Know Better, New York Times Well Blog The Pain Test, Vox Emodiversity: A Mix of Emotions Is Healthiest?, Discover Breakthrough Replicates Human Brain Cells for Use in Alzheimer’s Research, New York Times 'Love Hormone' Controls Sexual Behaviour in Mice, BBC News Are We Really Conscious?, New York Times Smell Turns Up in Unexpected Places, New York Times In the Academic Literature: Q&A: Robots and the Law, Science Cortical Representations Are Reinstated by the Hippocampus During Memory Retrieval, Neuron Activity-Dependent Feedback Regulates Correlated Ion Channel mRNA Levels in Single Identified Motor Neurons, Current Biology Fiction Feelings in Harry Potter: Haemodynamic Response in the Mid-Cingulate Cortex Correlates with Immersive Reading Experience, NeuroReport Priority Maps Explain the Roles of Value, Attention, and Salience in Goal-Oriented Behavior, The Journal of 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.

"Confronting Cognitive 'Anchoring Effect' and 'Blind Spot' Biases in Federal Sentencing: A Modest Solution for Reforming a Fundamental Flaw"

Recently published in SSRN (and recently published in 104 Journal of Criminal law and Criminology 489 (2014)):

 

"Confronting Cognitive 'Anchoring Effect' and 'Blind Spot' Biases in Federal Sentencing: A Modest Solution for Reforming a Fundamental Flaw"

 

MARK W. BENNETT, U.S. District Court (Northern District of Iowa)

Cognitive "anchoring effect" bias, especially related to numbers, like sentencing guidelines ranges, is widely recognized in cognitive psychology as an extremely robust and powerful heuristic. It is a cognitive shortcut that has a strong tendency to undermine judgments by "anchoring" a judgment to an earlier disclosed number, the anchor. Numerous studies prove anchoring bias produces systematic errors in judgment in wide-ranging circumstances, including judgments by experts — doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, psychologists, and auditors — as well as a variety of decisions by foreign and American federal and state judges. The anchoring effect occurs even when the anchor is incomplete, inaccurate, irrelevant, implausible, or even random. Roughly corresponding in time with the developing understanding of the anchoring effect, federal sentencing has undergone a revolution from judges having virtually unlimited discretion, to virtually no discretion, and back to considerable discretion, as the Federal Sentencing Guidelines went from mandatory to advisory in a single monumental U.S. Supreme Court decision, United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). Surprisingly, since judges were granted much greater discretion in Booker, the length and severity of federal sentences, for the most part, has not changed. This remains true despite long-standing, persistent, and widespread dissatisfaction among federal district court judges with the Guidelines and the length of sentences. This Article argues that this is because judges’ sentences are subconsciously anchored by the calculated Guidelines range. This Article offers a simple, modest, and practical solution that requires no change in existing law by the Supreme Court or Congress. It simply requires rearranging the numerical anchoring information in the presentence report and adding additional relevant numerical information to counteract the anchoring effect of the Guidelines. If federal district court judges are educated about the effect of cognitive anchoring and their own bias-based blind spots to it — their improved awareness can only enhance the fairness of sentencing.

"The Brain, Cognitive Enhancement Devices, and European Regulation"

Recenlty published in SSRN:

 

"The Brain, Cognitive Enhancement Devices, and European Regulation"

 

ANDREAS KUERSTEN, Government of the United States of America - National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
ROY HAMILTON, University of Pennsylvania - School of Medicine

Few things excite the imagination like human enhancement. With regards to cognitive enhancement, neuroscience is making steady progress. Devices capable of increasing human cognitive capabilities for brief periods are now sold worldwide. This concerns Maslen et al. – authors of the article, The Regulation of Cognitive Enhancement Devices: Extending the Medical Model – not because of the implications of artificially enhanced humans, but because there are unaddressed possible harms from such equipment. Specifically, cognitive enhancement devices (CED) are entering the European market without special regulations. Their unique ability to influence the brain in potentially deleterious ways is not being accounted for by the law, exposing consumers to risk. In arguing for such regulation, Maslen et al. present risk analyses of certain devices that interact with the brain. They then propose CED-specific additions to existing European medical device regulation. The authors’ assessment, however, while demonstrating legitimate concerns, presents a flawed analysis of CEDs and is ultimately unnecessary.

"Brain Control: Developments in Therapy and Implications for Society"

Recently published with Palgrave Macmillan

"Brain Control: Developments in Therapy and Implications for Society" 

David Linden

With the burden of brain disorders increasing worldwide, there has been a resurgence of interest in techniques to control the brain and thereby improve its function. Yet how realistic are these expectations and what are the ethical implications? This book reviews the main techniques that can enable patients to use their brains for communication and control and doctors to modify brain function. It explains how paralysed patients may be helped through brain reading, how brain stimulation can help to improve Parkinson's disease and certain mental disorders, and how patients can be trained to regulate their own brain activity through neurofeedback. Brain Control situates the application of these techniques within ethical and legal debates on the principles of autonomy and fairness, and suggests ethical standards for their future development.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): Baby Used in Notorious Fear Experiment is Lost No More, New Scientist Health Blog In The Popular Press: Bionic Arm Restores Sense of Feeling, BBC News An Underwear Fetish Brain?, Discover Nobel Prize in Medicine Is Awarded to Three Who Discovered Brain’s ‘Inner GPS’, New York Times Family of ‘Brain-Dead’ California Girl Seeks to Have Her Declared Alive Again, The Guardian Seeing Neurological Patients As Characters, Not Case Studies, NPR I Am Dolphin Proves Your Mother Wrong, Technology Tell UCI Awarded $8 Million for Creation of Brain Cell Database, LA Times Research Shows Dogs Are Much Smarter Than We Think, Vox How Exercise Can Boost Young Brains, New York Times Well Blog 5 Myths About the Human Brain Debunked, Vox Can Neuroscience Discuss Religion?, Neuroethics Blog Cerebellum's Growth Spurt Turned Monkeys into Humans, NewScientist Why Saying is Believing - The Science of Self-Talk, NPR Shots Blog MRI Technique Detects Evidence of Cognitive Decline Before Symptoms Appear, Science Daily Computer Mind Meld Gives Voice to Man After A Stroke, NewScientist In the Academic Literature: Marmosets are Stars of Japan's Ambitious Brain Project, Nature Buttressing Regulation of Cognitive Enhancement Devices with Principles of Harm Reduction, Journal of Law and the Biosciences A Neural Interface Provides Long-Term Stable Natural Touch Perception, Science Translational Medicine States of Curiosity Modulate Hippocampus-Dependent Learning via the Dopaminergic Circuit, Neuron Manipulating Item Proportion and Deception Reveals Crucial Dissociation Between Behavioral, Autonomic, and Neural Indices of Concealed Information, Human Brain Mapping Public Attitudes Toward Cognitive Enchancement, Neuroethics                        Patterns of Brain Activation When Mothers View Their Own Child and Dog: An fMRI Study, PLoS One                                                                                   Differential Associations of Early Callous-Unemotional, Oppositional, and ADHD Behaviors: Multiple Domains Within Early-Starting Conduct Problems?, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry                   Regional Diversity and Developmental Dynamics of the AMPA-Receptor Proteome in the Mammalian Brain, Neuron

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.

"The Council of Psychological Advisers"

Recently published in SSRN (and forthcoming in Annual Review of Psychology):

 

"The Council of Psychological Advisers"

 

CASS R. SUNSTEIN, Harvard Law School

Findings in behavioral science, including psychology, have been influencing policies and reforms in many nations. “Choice architecture” can affect outcomes even if material incentives are not involved. In some contexts, default rules, simplification, and uses of social norms have been found to have even larger effects than significant economic incentives. Psychological research is helping to inform initiatives in areas that include savings, finance, highway safety, consumer protection, energy, climate change, obesity, education, poverty, development, crime, corruption, health, and the environment. No nation has created a Council of Psychological Advisers, but the role of behavioral research is likely to grow in coming years, especially in light of the mounting interest in promoting ease and simplification (“navigability”); in increasing effectiveness, economic growth, and competitiveness; and in low-cost, choice-preserving approaches. (The Appendix is a one-page list of thirty-one such approaches.)

"Behavioral Economics and Tort Law"

Recently published in SSRN (and forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Economics and the Law (Eyal Zamir & Doron Teichman eds.)):

 

"Behavioral Economics and Tort Law"

 

YOED HALBERSBERG, Bar Ilan University & Hebrew University of Jerusalem
EHUD GUTTEL, Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Faculty of Law

The chapter, forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Economics and the Law, discusses the contributions of cognitive psychology and behavioral studies to the research of tort law. These contributions, we show, relate to a wide range of issues in torts: from the basic decision to impose tort liability, through the choice between liability rules, to specific rules and remedies. Accordingly, behavioral studies are of particular significance for the analysis of the tort system.

The literature review focuses on contributions made to three key elements of tort law: the choice between liability regimes; the choice between tort liability and regulation (including the choice between harm-based and risk-based liability); and damages (in particular, punitive damages and damages for pain and suffering).

We also offer two new avenues for future research: vicarious liability and people's perceptions of the variability among large groups of tort victims. Albeit under-researched, we think behavioral economics can offer significant contributions to the study of these areas.

PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

Last Edition's Most Popular Article(s): It's Okay If 'My Brain Made Me Do It': People's Intuitions About Free Will and Neuroscientific Prediction, Cognition In The Popular Press: BRAIN Initiative Bets on Wearable Scanners, Laser-Controlled Cells, NPR Shots Blog Can Animals or Computers Have Metacognition?, Scientific American Mind Baby Used in Notorious Fear Experiment is Lost No More, New Scientist Health Blog More Groups Join Project on the Brain, New York Times The Benefits of 'Binocularity', The New York Times Neuroscientists Use Morphed Images of Hollywood Celebrities to Reveal How Neurons Make Up Your Mind, Science Daily Chimps With Tools: Wild Ape Culture Caught on Camera, BBC News A Doctor Unlocks Mysteries of the Brain by Talking and Watching, NPR Shots Blog Is Your Brain Male or Female?, BBC News How Exercise May Protect Against Depression, New York Times Well Blog How Physical Exercise Protects the Brain from Stress-Induced Depression, Science Daily Neuroethics and the Emory Tibet Science Initiative, Neuroethics Blog Bad News for "Intelligence-Genes", Oxford Practical Ethics Blog Make Tough Tasks Seem Easier By Zapping the Brain, New Scientist Health Predicting Future Course of Psychotic Illness, Science Daily In the Academic Literature: BRAIN Gain: A Mixture of Focus and Innovation is the Way Forward for Big Neuroscience, Nature The Impact of Mind-Body Awareness Training on the Early Learning of a Brain-Computer Interface, Technology Consorting with Big Science, Nature Neuroscience Feelings Without Memory in Alzheimer Disease, Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology Reversal of Cognitive Decline: A Novel Therapeutic Program, Aging Regulation of Alternative VEGF-A mRNA Splicing Is A Therapeutic Target for Analgesia, Neurobiology of Disease                        Deep Brain Stimulation of the Nucleus Accumbens and Its Usefulness in Severe Opioid Addiction, Molecular Psychiatry                                                                                   Will There Ever Be a Drug With No or Negligible Side Effects? Evidence from Neuroscience, Neuroethics                   Promises, Promises for Neuroscience and Law, Current Biology    Stem Cells and Religion, Stem Cells Translational Medicine

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.