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
- Does biology determine behaviour?
- 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
- 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...