Pharmacological Cognitive Enhancement: Examining the Ethical Principles Guiding College Students ’ Abstention
ConclusionsStudents abstain from PCE for a multitude of reasons, many of which are guided by ethical principles. These findings may be incorporated into future prevention programming messages. (Source: Neuroethics)
Source: Neuroethics - October 29, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
It ’s Not Just Counting that Counts: a Reply to Gilbert, Viaña, and Ineichen
AbstractGilbert et al. argue that discussions of self-related changes in patients undergoing DBS are overblown. They show that there is little evidence that these changes occur frequently and make recommendations for further research. We point out that their framing of the issue, their methodology, and their recommendations do not attend to other important questions about these changes. (Source: Neuroethics)
Source: Neuroethics - October 27, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
The Ethical and Empirical Status of Dimensional Diagnosis: Implications for Public Mental Health?
AbstractThe field of mental health continues to struggle with the question of how best to structure its diagnostic systems. This issue is of considerable ethical importance, but the implications for public health approaches to mental health have yet to be explored in any detail. In this article I offer a preliminary treatment, drawing out several core issues while sounding a note of caution. A central strand of the debates over diagnosis has been the contrast between categorical and dimensional models, with renewed attention due to recent publication of the DSM-5, launch of the RDoC, and ongoing work on the ICD-11. This di...
Source: Neuroethics - October 25, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Correction to: Deflating the “DBS Causes Personality Changes” Bubble
Owing to an oversight, we noted that the acknowledgement section was missing from the original published version of this paper. (Source: Neuroethics)
Source: Neuroethics - October 24, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Correction to: Deflating the “DBS causes personality changes” bubble
The article Deflating the"DBS causes personality changes" bubble, written by Frederic Gilbert, J. N. M. Via ña and C. Ineichen, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on 19 June 2018 without open access. (Source: Neuroethics)
Source: Neuroethics - October 23, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Enhancing the Nature-of-Activities Account of Enhancement
AbstractMany find it intuitive that those who use enhancements like steroids and Adderall in Olympic weightlifting and education are due less praise than those who perform equally well without using these enhancements. Nonetheless, it is not easy to coherently explain why one might be justifiably due less praise for using these technologies to enhance one ’s performance. Justifications for this intuition which rely on concerns regarding authenticity, cheating, or shifts in who is responsible for the performance face serious problems. Santoni de Sio et al., however, have recently defended a justification for this intuitio...
Source: Neuroethics - October 1, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Information Processing Biases in the Brain: Implications for Decision-Making and Self-Governance
AbstractTo make behavioral choices that are in line with our goals and our moral beliefs, we need to gather and consider information about our current situation. Most information present in our environment is not relevant to the choices we need or would want to make and thus could interfere with our ability to behave in ways that reflect our underlying values. Certain sources of information could even lead us to make choices we later regret, and thus it would be beneficial to be able to ignore that information. Our ability to exert successful self-governance depends on our ability to attend to sources of information that w...
Source: Neuroethics - October 1, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Decision-Making and Self-Governing Systems
AbstractNeuroscience has illuminated the neural basis of decision-making, providing evidence that supports specific models of decision-processes. These models typically are quite mechanical, the realization of abstract mathematical “diffusion to bound” models. While effective decision-making seems to be essential for sophisticated behavior, central to an account of freedom, and a necessary characteristic of self-governing systems, it is not clear how the simple models neuroscience inspires can underlie the notion of self-g overnance. Drawing from both philosophy and neuroscience I explore ways in which the proposed dec...
Source: Neuroethics - October 1, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Debates over Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Mental Health Evaluations at Guant ánamo
AbstractEthical debates over the use of mental health knowledge and practice at the Guant ánamo Bay detention facility have mostly revolved around military clinicians sharing detainee medical information with interrogators, falsifying death certificates in interrogations, and disagreements over whether the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) “enhanced interrogation techniques” vio lated bioethical principles to do no harm. However, debates over the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the mental health evaluations of detainees have received little attention. This paper provides the first known analysis of such...
Source: Neuroethics - October 1, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Updating our Selves: Synthesizing Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Incorporating New Information into our Worldview
We present a plausible philosophical account of this process, whi ch we claim is generally applicable to theories about the nature of autonomy, both internalist and externalist alike. We then evaluate this account by providing a model for how the incorporation of values might occur in the brain; one that is inspired by recent theoretical and empirical advances in our understanding of the neural processes by which our beliefs are updated by new information. Finally, we synthesize these two perspectives and discuss how the neurobiology might inform the philosophical discussion. (Source: Neuroethics)
Source: Neuroethics - October 1, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Understanding Self-Control as a Whole vs. Part Dynamic
AbstractAlthough dual-process or divided-mind models of self-control dominate the literature, they suffer from empirical and conceptual challenges. We propose an alternative approach, suggesting that self-control can be characterized by a fragmented part versus integrated whole dynamic. Whereas responses to events derived from fragmented parts of the mind undermine self-control, responses to events derived from integrated wholes enhance self-control. We review empirical evidence from psychology and related disciplines that support this model. We, moreover, discuss the implications of this work for psychology, neuroscience,...
Source: Neuroethics - October 1, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Bottom Up Ethics - Neuroenhancement in Education and Employment
AbstractNeuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents in the ten countries and the United States. The...
Source: Neuroethics - October 1, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
The Role of Emotion Regulation in Moral Judgment
AbstractMoral judgment has typically been characterized as a conflict between emotion and reason. In recent years, a central concern has been determining which process is the chief contributor to moral behavior. While classic moral theorists claimed that moral evaluations stem from consciously controlled cognitive processes, recent research indicates that affective processes may be driving moral behavior. Here, we propose a new way of thinking about emotion within the context of moral judgment, one in which affect is generated and transformed by both automatic and controlled processes, and moral evaluations are shifted acc...
Source: Neuroethics - October 1, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Free Will, Self-Governance and Neuroscience: An Overview
AbstractGiven dramatic increases in recent decades in the pace of scientific discovery and understanding of the functional organization of the brain, it is increasingly clear that engagement with the neuroscientific literature and research is central to making progress on philosophical questions regarding the nature and scope of human freedom and responsibility. While patterns of brain activity cannot provide the whole story, developing a deeper and more precise understanding of how brain activity is related to human choice and conduct is crucial to the development of realistic, just, and intellectually rigorous models of ...
Source: Neuroethics - October 1, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
More Autonomous or more Fenced-in? Neuroscientific Instruments and Intervention in Criminal Justice
AbstractNeuroscientific research in relation to antisocial behavior has strongly grown in the last decades. This has resulted in a better understanding of biological factors associated with antisocial behavior. Furthermore several neuroscientific instruments and interventions have been developed that have a relatively low threshold for use in the criminal justice system to contribute to prevention or reduction of antisocial and criminal behavior. When considering implementation in the criminal justice system, ethical aspects of the use of neuroscientific instruments and interventions need to be taken into account. With res...
Source: Neuroethics - September 13, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
