What Happens After a Neural Implant Study? Neuroethics Expert Workshop on Post-Trial Obligations
AbstractWhat happens at the end of a clinical trial for an investigational neural implant? It may be surprising to learn how difficult it is to answer this question. While new trials are initiated with increasing regularity, relatively little consensus exists on how best to conduct them, and even less on how to ethically end them. The landscape of recent neural implant trials demonstrates wide variability of what happens to research participants after an neural implant trial ends. Some former research participants continue to receive support for their devices (e.g., battery and component replacements, software updates, etc...
Source: Neuroethics - April 29, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Consciousness Ain ’t All That
AbstractMost philosophers think that phenomenal consciousness underlies, or at any rate makes a large contribution, to moral considerability. This paper argues that many such accounts invoke question-begging arguments. Moreover, they ’re unable to explain apparent differences in moral status across and within different species. In the light of these problems, I argue that we ought to take very seriously a view according to which moral considerability is grounded in functional properties. Phenomenal consciousness may be suffici ent for having a moral value, but it may not be necessary, and it may contribute relatively lit...
Source: Neuroethics - April 24, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Human Brain Organoid Transplantation: Testing the Foundations of Animal Research Ethics
AbstractAlongside in vitro studies, researchers are increasingly exploring the transplantation of human brain organoids (HBOs) into non-human animals to study brain development, disease, and repair. This paper focuses on ethical issues raised by such transplantation studies. In particular, it investigates the possibility that they might yield enhanced brain function in recipient animals (especially non-human primates), thereby fundamentally altering their moral status. I assess the critique, raised by major voices in the bioethics and science communities, according to which such concerns are premature and misleading. I ide...
Source: Neuroethics - April 17, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Stream of Consciousness: Some Propositions and Reflections
AbstractThis short communication explores the idea of “stream of consciousness” and considers some of the ways in which scientific writing relies – even or perhaps especially insofar as it does not signal this fact – on the resources of literary language and literary thinking. Particular attention is given to notions of literal and figurative o r metaphorical language, including “hydrological” and “ontic” metaphor. A crucial figure is simile (the “like”), discussed here in relation to the Thomas Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt’sConsciousness Demystified, and...
Source: Neuroethics - April 11, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
“You shall have the thought”: habeas cogitationem as a New Legal Remedy to Enforce Freedom of Thinking and Neurorights
AbstractDespite its obvious advantages, the disruptive development of neurotechnology can pose risks to fundamental freedoms. In the context of such concerns, proposals have emerged in recent years either to design human rights de novo or to update the existing ones. These new rights in the age of neurotechnology are now widely referred to as “neurorights.” In parallel, there is a considerable amount of ongoing academic work related to updating the right to freedom of thought in order to include the protection of “freedom of thinking” (i.e., freedom of thought itself) and not only its social manifestations. Neurori...
Source: Neuroethics - April 4, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Revisiting Maher ’s One-Factor Theory of Delusion, Again
AbstractChenwei Nie ([22]) argues against a Maherian one-factor approach to explaining delusion. We argue that his objections fail. They are largely based on a mistaken understanding of the approach (as committed to the claim that anomalous experience issufficient for delusion). Where they are not so based, they instead rest on misinterpretation of recent defences of the position, and an underestimation of the resources available to the one-factor theory. (Source: Neuroethics)
Source: Neuroethics - April 3, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Health Aspirations for Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS)
AbstractAdvances in neuroscience have enabled the transition of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) from research and clinical settings to public use. For this primarily home-based context, tDCS has been popularized as a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to improved cognition and wellness. The line between wellness and health is blurry, however, and little is known about how engagement with therapeutic tDCS impacts users ’ interactions with other interventions such as clinical consultations, pharmacotherapy, complementary medicine, and even other neurotechnology. To close this gap, we collected data from the onlin...
Source: Neuroethics - March 28, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
The Psychological Process Underlying Attitudes Toward Human-Animal Chimeric Brain Research: An Empirical Investigation
This study adopted an empirical method to investigate lay people ’s attitudes toward the bioethical issues of human-animal chimeric brains. The results of online surveys showed that (1) people did not entirely reject chimeric brain research, but showed slightly more negative responses than ordinary animal testing; and that (2) their ethical concerns arose in co nnection with the perception that chimerism in the brain would humanize the animal. This means that people’s psychology was consistent with the ethical argument that crossing the human-animal boundary would bring moral confusion to our society. Meanwhile, it was...
Source: Neuroethics - March 26, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Psychedelic Therapy as Form of Life
AbstractIn the historical context of a crisis in biological psychiatry, psychedelic drugs paired with psychotherapy are globally re-emerging in research clinics as a potential transdiagnostic therapy for treating mood disorders, addictions, and other forms of psychological distress. The treatments are poised to soon shift from clinical trials to widespread service delivery in places like Australia, North America, and Europe, which has prompted ethical questions by social scientists and bioethicists. Taking a broader view, we argue that the ethics of psychedelic therapy concerns not simply how psychotherapies are different ...
Source: Neuroethics - March 16, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
The Case Against Organoid Consciousness
AbstractNeural organoids are laboratory-generated entities that replicate certain structural and functional features of the human brain. Most neural organoids are disembodied —completely decoupled from sensory input and motor output. As such, questions about their potential capacity for consciousness are exceptionally difficult to answer. While not disputing the need for caution regarding certain neural organoid types, this paper appeals to two broad constraints on any adequate theory of consciousness—the first involving the dependence of consciousness on embodiment; the second involving the dependence of consciousness...
Source: Neuroethics - March 14, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Ethical Implications of the Impact of Fracking on Brain Health
In this study, we analyzed the prevalence of discourse on brain and mental health, and ethics, in the peer-reviewed and grey literature in the five-year period between 2016 and 2022. A total of 84 articles met inclusion criteria for analysis. Seventy-six percent (76%) mentioned impacts on brain (e.g., neural tube defects, neurological symptoms), and mental health (e.g., negative psychological effects, stress, depression) briefly; 11 reports dedicated substantive discourse to either or both together. References to safety (77%) dominated the ethics context. Discussion of environmental injustices as fracking sites disproporti...
Source: Neuroethics - February 28, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Giving Consent to the Ineffable
AbstractA psychedelic renaissance is currently taking place in mental healthcare. The number of psychedelic-assisted therapy trials is growing steadily, and some countries already grant psychiatrists special permission to use psychedelics in non-research contexts under certain conditions. These clinical advances must be accompanied by ethical inquiry. One pressing ethical question involves whether patients can even give informed consent to psychedelic-assisted therapy: the treatment ’s transformative nature seems to block its assessment, suggesting that patients are unable to understand what undergoing psychedelic-assist...
Source: Neuroethics - February 15, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Safeguarding Users of Consumer Mental Health Apps in Research and Product Improvement Studies: an Interview Study
AbstractMental health-related data generated by app users during the routine use of Consumer Mental Health Apps (CMHAs) are being increasingly leveraged for research and product improvement studies. However, it remains unclear which ethical safeguards and practices should be implemented by researchers and app developers to protect users during these studies, and concerns have been raised over their current implementation in CMHAs. To better understand which ethical safeguards and practices are implemented, why and how, 17 app developers and researchers were interviewed who had been involved in using CMHA data for studies. ...
Source: Neuroethics - January 29, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Rewriting the Script: the Need for Effective Education to Address Racial Disparities in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Uptake in BIPOC Communities
This study focuses on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), a treatment for depression, and the structural and attitudinal barriers that racialized individuals face in accessing it. In January 2023 participants from the Twin Cities, Minnesota engaged in focus groups, coupled with an educational video intervention. Individuals self identified as non-white who had no previous TMS exposure but had tried at least one treatment for their depression. Results revealed that the intervention did not notably change knowledge or stigma about TMS, but attitudes surrounding traveling for treatment changed. Notably, barriers like aff...
Source: Neuroethics - January 27, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Global Versus Local Theories of Consciousness and the Consciousness Assessment Issue in Brain Organoids
AbstractAny attempt at consciousness assessment in organoids requires careful consideration of the theory of consciousness that researchers will rely on when performing this task. In cognitive neuroscience and the clinic, there are tools and theories used to detect and measure consciousness, typically in human beings, but none of them is neither fully consensual nor fit for the biological characteristics of organoids. I discuss the existing attempt relying on the Integrated Information Theory and its models and tools. Then, I revive the distinction between global theories of consciousness and local theories of consciousnes...
Source: Neuroethics - January 27, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
