Neuroethics

Cases

Outline

Brain Imaging

Diagnostics

Drug Enhancements

Brain Dugan (USA Court Case)

Faced death penalty for murder, rape & kidnapping

Diagnosed as psychopath (38.5/40)

Psychologist scanned his brain and found lower activity in the paralimbic system as in many previously scanned psychopaths

Lawyers invoke the fMRI evidence to argue that Dugan was a 'morally disabled man whose sickness was such that he could not feel right from wrong"

Schoolteacher Case

Sudden paedophilic tendencies - due to neurological symptoms --> tumour in brain

Doctors remove tumour - tendencies disappear

A year later, the tendencies re-appear, and a brain scan demonstrates the tumour grew back

Fundamental Questions

  1. Does biology determine behaviour?
  1. If biology does, to what extent are we still accountable for our actions "Crime wasn't my fault, it was my brain"

Neuroethics is concerned with ethical, legal & social implications of neuroscience research findings, and with the nature of the research itself

Implicit Association Test

Measures implicit associations & biases that people may have e.g. associating black people with bad, white with good

Phelps: White Americans tend to respond faster to black & bad and white & good pairings than vice versa = implicit race bias

Lewis: Measured morals & identified brain areas that correlate --> e.g. area shows increased volume if you have high fairness

We cannot use findings to make predictions about people's personalities from their brain scan

Group correlations are unjustified to make reverse inferences to personality & mindset of individuals

MRI as a Diagnostic Tool

Lockwood: Teen boys (10-16 y/os) with conduct problems: aggression, theft, cruelty to others - tested responses to seeing others in pain & given questionnaire

Lower response in the anterior insula & anterior cingulate cortex when seeing others in pain --> normally activated when seeing others in pain

Anti-social behaviour, lack of empathy, diminished guilt and risk at developing adult psychology

Investigation

  • Brain responses to seeing other's in pain
  • Questionnaire on callous traits

Diagnostic Consequences

  1. For the Individual:
  • Condemning to pathology
  • False positive results
  • Personal responsibility

For Society:

  • Protecting others
  • Every intervention --> reduce criminality
  • Statistic outliers could indicate problem

Nishimoto

Mapped responses of the early visual cortex during movie watching - showed new movies to the participants

Used the neural responses only to reconstruct images from the movies. However, computational reconstruction model is trained a-priori on a variety of movies

Reconstructions only world well if the clips the model is trained on resemble the viewed clip

Owen

A patient in a vegetative state could follow instructions - to imagine playing tennis vs. walking around house

These tasks activated distinct brain systems in the control group

Used this task to ask 'yes/no' questions of patients, with some promising results

Communication & some control

MRI for Lie Detection

The main problem with fMRI based lie detection:

  • In most lab studies, subjects are instructed to explicitly lie or tell the truth
  • Brain activity for truth telling or lying is easily confounded with effects of attention, memory, cognitive load & emotional arousal
  • Psychopathy changes brain responses related to deception
  • Low sensitivity & low specificity of the test

Ritalin

Alters cognitive ability (e.g. attention & memory)

Treatment for ADHD but many children without ADHD are given retaken to improve attention & performance

Problems for individual:

  • Long term risks? Do they outweigh the benefits
  • Evolutionary considerations:
    • Some cognitive 'limitations' might be there for a good reason

Prozac

Problems for society:

  • Enhancements will not be fairly distributed
  • Exacerbation of inequalities due to socio-economic status
  • Coercion in the workplace/school/university?
  • Widespread enhancements will raise our standards of normality --> people who opt out are disadvantaged, in effect a form of indirect coercion

An SSRI to treat depression, OCD, anxiety etc.

When is it just a mood swing or depression? - Influence of pharmaceutical companies

Tolerable side effects

2005, 10% of US population received a prescription for antidepressants (lots of profit for drug companies)

Drug companies want to make money in the long run so they have an interest in:

  • More people being diagnosed with a pathology
  • People taking medication for a long period of time

Socio-Affective Enhancements of Prozac

Knutson: Experiments with non-depressed volunteers - 4 weeks on SSRI OR placebo

  • Subjects taking SSRI had reduced -ve affect/neuroticism and increased affiliative behaviour (shown in puzzle solving task)
  • No change in positive affect

It promotes prosocial and law-abiding behaviour, reduces re-offending in sex offenders

Decrease of aggression in people prone to violence (Berman)

A darker side... Could they be given to people with their knowledge?
Manipulate people, prisoners, people being interrogated, business negotiators, parties in international peace treaties...