Why Do Voles Fall in Love? Interview with Feminist Science Studies Scholar Angela Willey

Dr. Angela Willey

In May I attended a great conference, the 4th biennial conference of the Association for Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies (FEMMSS). At the conference, I heard a wonderful plenary talk by Dr. Angela Willey and her colleagues. Dr. Willey is one of our own - a recent (2010) graduate of Emory’s doctoral program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In her work, she examines the cultural assumptions underpinning contemporary neuroscience research on monogamy and the social implications of this research. At the conference, I asked Dr. Willey if she would agree to be interviewed about her work for the Neuroethics Blog, and she graciously agreed. Before sharing what she said, I am just going to give you a little background about Dr. Willey and about the neuroscience research on monogamy that she analyzes.

About Dr. Willey

Dr. Willey has a B.A. from Fordham University and an M.S. in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She earned her Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Emory University in 2010. As part of her dissertation, she undertook an ethnographic analysis of the research on pair bonding that is taking place at Emory University in the lab of Dr. Larry Young. After graduating from Emory, Dr. Willey completed a teaching postdoc in LGBT Studies at Carleton College. Dr. Willey is currently Assistant Professor of Feminist Science Studies at the Five Colleges, with her home at UMass. She is working on her first book. You can read her published work here and here.

Contemporary Scientific Research on Monogamy: Dr. Larry Young’s Lab

Vole (Image from Howlsthunder)

Here I am just going to give a quick and simplified overview of the work taking place at Dr. Young’s lab. The lab has worked with two species of voles, one of which is “socially monogamous” (they form long-term male-female bonds) while the other is “socially promiscuous” (males and females separate after mating). The lab has offered a causal genetic and neurological explanation for this difference: in male voles, for example, the lab has found a difference between the socially monogamous species and the socially promiscuous species in an area of the genome responsible for regulating the expression of vasopression receptors. According to the theory, this difference in the genome produces a different pattern of vasopression receptors in the brains of the monogamous males compared to the promiscuous males, which, in turn, leads to a differential behavioral response to the release of vasopression that occurs during sexual activity – specifically, the formation of long-term pair bonds in the monogamous males but not in the promiscuous males (Young 2009; Young and Wang 2004; Lim et al 2004)

More recently, researchers in the lab have argued that understanding monogamy in voles can help us to understand what they call “prosocial” behavior in humans (which they identify as cooperation, compassion, bonding and social reciprocity). In turn, according to these researchers, this can help us to understand and develop drug treatments for what Young calls “human disorders characterized by social impairments” such as autism (McGraw and Young 2010; Young 2011).

Even my brief exposure to this research has made me concerned about the associational links being made in this research between prosocial behavior, monogamy, cooperation, mental health, and compassion on the one hand and promiscuity, social impairments, autism, and mental disorder on the other; thus I was excited to hear more from Dr. Willey about her analysis of this research.

Read on for her insights!

Question: In your dissertation, you argue that Young's lab is "naturalizing" coupling. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Well, the most direct answer to this question is that Young says again and again that the lab is using the prairie vole to study attachment, because prairie voles are, like humans, monogamous.  This claim, that because they are monogamous prairie voles are like humans, was the major rationale for a successful initiative to get the vole genome mapped, an effort headed up by Young’s lab.  So this isn’t my argument, their work actually begins from the assumption that humans are monogamous (an assumption that has not gone uncontested scientifically).  By the way, by “monogamy” they mean “social monogamy” (pair bonding, or coupling), not necessarily sexual fidelity, which is how it is often represented in the press.  So if they begin from this premise – the monogamous human – any human behavior not assimilable within the definition of monogamy is pathology of some kind, a “difference” to be explained.

Question: Can you describe some of the problems you see with linking research on monogamy in prairie voles to research on autism in humans?

So this is one of the interesting things for me about becoming more neuro-literate – my critique of this model is not a critique of translational research per se.  That is to say, the idea that animals used for research are too different from humans to be relevant models is a popular critique that is far less compelling to me than it once was.

There are of course (difficult to avoid) issues with the language we use to describe animal behavior.  It’s easy to naturalize a complex, contested, and historically recent institution like marriage, when our cultural investments in it run so deep. 

My critique is of what I’ve called “the imposition of sexuality as an interpretive grid” for bonding behavior.  I’m not convinced that the attachments observed among prairie voles are accurately described as monogamous or even as “pair bonds”.  The will to distinguish bonds of monogamy not only from “promiscuous” behavior, but from, for example, friendship, seems to have its roots in deeply entrenched assumptions about sexuality and human nature.

Oxytocin (Image adapted from SirLyric)

If we were to say something like, “the administration of oxytocin often seems to make voles more likely to want to spend time in closer proximity to a familiar animal than one they just met”, we might extrapolate that administration of oxytocin might – at least sometimes – encourage individuals with low interest in interacting with family members (often parents) to prefer their company (at least physical proximity) to that of strangers.  This articulates a link without relying on the naturalization of monogamy.  

Of course it leaves aside any question about the role of pharmaceutical companies in creating markets, downplaying risks, and so on.  It still leaves intact the frame that encourages us to value lives and ways of being in the world according to norms of “productivity” and nuclear kinship.  Also, intranasal oxytocin may be efficacious for encouraging social behavior, but if high circulating levels of oxytocin could actually cause the brain to produce less of it, as with other hormones, well, this is a problem.

So I guess I see the immediate problem as a risk of both “monogamy” and “autism” going uniterrogated as straightforward categories of analysis.  More broadly, I see manifold problems about funding and other forces that shape our curiosities and our work and, thus, what we know.   

Question: Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like to do observations in Young's lab as a feminist scholar (potentially) critical of their work?

Visiting Young’s lab was a great experience for me.  So, let me give a little background about how I came to the lab in the first place.  I had collected all of this press coverage on a “monogamy gene”, which cited a couple of big papers out of Young’s lab (this is in 2004-2005).  The coverage consisted in large part of predictable re-instantiations of familiar gendered narratives about male infidelity – male monogamy as a question to be explained and female monogamy totally taken for granted as natural.  The press seemed to fixate on speculations about the possibility of treating or exonerating cheating husbands on the basis of genetics.  The heteronormative assumptions embedded in this old evolutionary story about human nature and reproduction – that sexuality is primarily reproductive and that men and women are different sexually because of sperm and eggs – have been challenged for decades by feminist science studies and queer studies scholars, and of course dissenting scientists (some of whom fall into one or both of the former categories).

Clifton Road separates the main Emory campus from

the Emory Hospital and the Yerkes Primate Research Center,

where Young's lab is located (Photo by Daniel Castro)

Initially I was just interested in the popular discourse, but as I became increasingly interested in the scientific claims being represented there, I contacted Young and asked to meet with him.  From our first contact, where I explained that I was trying to understand the lab’s publications (as a non-scientist) and how their claims were represented in the press and taken up in clinical treatment trials, he was friendly and helpful.  I asked lots of questions every time I met with Young or the graduate students who agreed to talk with me.  Everyone greeted my questions in a spirit of intellectual rigor and I think genuine interest in the possibility for radically interdisciplinary communication.  I say radically interdisciplinary because neuroscience and women’s studies are of course both already interdisciplines, but there aren’t a lot of models for talking between them, as you know.  But this was a moment filled with excitement about the possibilities of talking across the parts of campuses so often separated by disciplinary and even architectural constraints (like a busy street, or, as at UMass, a pond).  I gave a power point presentation in the lab on “Monogamy in the Humanities” in order to introduce my research agenda and it generated a lot of really interesting discussion.  

So to answer your question more directly, I think of my experience in the lab as an interesting blurring of lines between study (they taught me about their research and explained a lot of basic concepts in gene-brain-behavior research to me), collaboration (I asked some questions they weren’t already engaging, so we were speaking to each other in our own languages and trying to make some sense to one another), and observation (I have used some of my own observations and conversations we had to help clarify, revise, and deepen my analysis of academic and popular discourses around monogamy and non-monogamy).

As a feminist scholar critical of the ways in which assumptions about human nature find their way into the questions we prioritize and how we frame them, one of the most important things I took from the experience was a sense of the importance of science literacy to feminist work.  We risk reproducing the mystique around scientific knowledge production when we don’t have the tools to ask “what’s actually being measured here and how, how does this model work?”  You can edit for androcentric bias and so on, and reinterpret data with a critical eye, but there’s still so much built into research before the data are generated.  We need critical science literacy.  

Question: Do you see your work as affecting this research program in any way, either by influencing the scientists involved in the research, by changing how other scientists are evaluating the research, and/or by educating the public about the assumptions that are underlying this research?

Oh, this is an interesting question.  I would have to admit that affecting the research or the field was not on my radar initially.  I think this is about the persistence of disciplinary thinking.  I have recently become interested in writing something more “neuro-legible”, as feminist neuroscientist Sari Van Anders has called it, about monogamy.  I collaborated with neuroscientist and women’s studies professor Sara Giordano on a piece called “Why do Voles Fall in Love: Sexual Dimorphism in Monogamy Gene Research”, which seems to have generated some interest in the gendered story of monogamy among students. [Note: the essay is published in the collection Gender and the Science of Difference.]

This has really been one of the most exciting things for me – politically, intellectually – the opportunity that my work on monogamy and on Young’s lab has opened up to meet and advise undergraduate and graduate students thinking at the interstices of science and feminism and/or queer studies.  Young’s lab and labs like it, where themes germane to feminist and queer studies are front and center, attract interesting students who seem to be increasingly curious about if not versed in science studies.  I see possibilities here- if we begin from an understanding that what we know doesn’t just reflect, but also shapes what we are, how do we study sexuality?  Students are struggling with these questions in ways that challenge me in my research and teaching- it’s exciting.

Question: Can you give us a quick preview of where you see your own scholarship headed?

Another photo of Donna Haraway, just because we

love her here at the Neuroethics Blog

(photo by Rusten Hogness)

I’m still ultimately interested in historicizing the couple and in forms of social belonging that exceed the nuclear, privatized family.  My book project uses feminist science studies to try to move beyond a reductive nature/culture debate about coupling.  Many of us across disciplines are trying to think “natureculturally” – to borrow Donna Haraway’s phrasing – about what we are and might be and I see my research as part of that conversation as well.  In addition to the book, I’m working on a project of articulating feminist genealogies for the kind of thinking about materiality, contingency, and embodiment that has emerged in neurofeminisms.

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Gupta, K. (2012). Why Do Voles Fall in Love? Interview with Feminist Science Studies Scholar Angela Willey. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on

-->, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/06/why-do-voles-fall-in-love-interview.html

The [insert adjective] Brain: Implications for Neuroscience in Popular Media

Via amazon.com

The Addicted Brain. The Female Brain. The Male Brain. Chemobrain. Buddha’s Brain. The Winner’s Brain. The Republican Brain. These days, it seems that everybody’s brain is being scanned and their behavior analyzed. In fact, these are all titles of books published in the past decade that communicate the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology research to lay audiences. As a budding neuroscientist, I am excited that science, and neuroscience in particular, has now flooded into popular American culture. Evidence of its expanding domain is everywhere: in magazines (Scientific American’s “MIND”), blogs (Neuroskeptic), radio programs (NPR’s “Radiolab”), podcasts (Nature’s “Neuropod”) and books. For further examination of the reasons for this cultural shift, see the discussion of the phenomenon in the new book “Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media,” by Davi Johnson Thorton, Southwestern University's Assistant Professor of Communication Studies.



I’m hopeful that this increase in neuroscience reporting will precipitate more public support for neuroscience research (as well as for other fields, of course), funding for and enrollment in STEM education, and improvements in scientific literacy among the American public (whose children currently rank 23rd out of 30 in science achievement scores among OECD nations [PISA 2009]); however, after sampling and digesting a smorgasbord of popular neuroscience reporting, my idealism is tempered with concern. While independent book authors and magazine editors have often received formal scientific training, many others lack the expertise required to accurately interpret science. In addition, media pundits are typically affiliated with corporate news agencies or non-profit groups that carry sociopolitical agendas, resulting in consistently biased reporting. With the advent of neuroimaging technologies, scientists are addressing highly evocative questions in neuroscience and psychology, such as the neurological underpinnings of political or sexual orientation, which the popular press is quick to pick up and spin for shock value. I will argue that the media’s frequent misrepresentation of neuroscience research poses serious threats to the public’s accurate understanding of the brain and human behavior, as well as to the neuroscientific community at large. Neuroscientists have an ethical responsibility to the public to promote fair and balanced reporting of their findings. I propose a first-step solution to this growing problem, wherein academic institutions support neuroscientists in developing an independent system of media fact-checking. Within this framework, neuroscientists can comment on the veracity of brain science reporting by the popular press.



Typically, more information is a good thing. In economics, having complete information about a product empowers the consumer to make more informed purchasing decisions and ultimately select the most suitable one. Science follows the same general principle: more data points equal more statistical power, allowing us to draw conclusions and generate theories. Once extensive data are compiled, conclusions reached, and theories refined, scientists are subjected to rigorous peer-review. Experts in each respective field meticulously verify a researcher’s claims and then either accept or reject her findings. Finally, theories are validated by other researchers’ attempts to reproduce the results or collect data that affirm or refute said theory. This empirical process forms the backbone of the modern scientific method. On this foundation, neuroscience can advance its theoretical framework explaining the brain’s structure and function.



In its truest form, journalism adheres to the same process. According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, “journalism’s first obligation is to the truth,” and is in essence a “discipline of verification.” More extensively, the PEJ’s Statement of Shared Purpose calls for:



“A consistent method of testing information—a transparent approach to evidence—precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work…Seeking out multiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment, all signal such standards. The discipline of verification is what separates journalism from other modes of communication, such as propaganda, fiction, or entertainment.”



These principles clearly fall in step with good science. Accuracy (rigorous data collection), transparency (comprehensive detail of materials and methods), objectivism (allowing data to speak for itself), and validation (inviting other experts to comment) form the basis of sound science and sound reporting. While this scientist believes that the scientific community has done well in adhering to these values and policing those who fall short (largely through the process of peer review), many in the journalistic community who report on neuroscience have repeatedly failed to hold themselves accountable to their self-proclaimed empirical ideals.



Neuroscience reporting has the potential to inspire and stimulate dialogue, often managing to do just that. Part of my decision to undertake a PhD in neuroscience hinged upon the intriguing pieces I picked up on through radio and print, such as NPR’s “Radiolab,” or specialty magazines, like Scientific American MIND. Quality neuroscience reporting is typically written or edited by academics (Emory’s own Scott O. Lilienfeld edits SciAm MIND, for example) and is unencumbered by sociopolitical bias. Unfortunately, less informed or politically motivated approaches to neuroscience reporting seriously compromise the public and the research community in several ways.



Recent advances in neuroimaging technologies like fMRI and PET have enabled neuroscientists and psychologists to probe with ever-increasing accuracy the neurobiological underpinnings of human behavior. Often the most interesting research in the public eye is the most evocative. In the scientific literature, topics include the neural correlates of behavioral differences based on political affiliation, sexuality, morality, socioeconomic status, and race. For this reason, some media outlets are quick to pick up on and spin the results of such research to conform to the mores of their organizations and audiences. Poor neuroscience reporting tends to fall into one of two categories, depending on the degree to which the research aligns or misaligns with their ideologies. The “aligners” tend to hyperbolize scientific findings, overgeneralizing the scope and impact of the research, while the “maligners” discredit the findings or simply don’t report them. In extreme cases, maligners spew vitriol, exclaiming that neuroscientists are motivated by “eugenics” or “phrenology.”



A great example of this is the recent outrage expressed by the authors of “Science Left Behind,” Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell, in response to a Huffington Post article entitled “Why Republicans Deny Science,” written by author and podcaster, Chris Mooney. In his article, Mooney cites recent findings from a handful of studies illustrating, among other things, that self-identified “conservatives” exhibit stronger physiological responses to aversive stimuli and have larger amygdala volumes (a part of the brain involved in fear-processing). While Mooney accurately reports the findings and believes that this sort of science “ought to prompt more tolerance and understanding across our political divides,” a seemingly noble cause, he ventures into overgeneralization by claiming that such research may help explain “the conservative denial of science.” Berezow and Campbell angrily counter by claiming that Mooney is a eugenicist who “distorts science in order to fit a preconceived narrative.” Libel among journalists is one thing, but when they target the scientific community, things get personal for this neuroscientist. USA Today’s Jonah Goldberg, in response to Mooney, asserts that this type of “fad” neuroscience research is really “the new science of conservative phrenology.” While Goldberg keenly points out the limitations of such studies, such as sampling bias and their lack of ecological validity, he erroneously implies that no valid conclusions can be drawn from them. Obviously, misreporting and mud slinging do not constitute “excellence in journalism.” If journalists want to engage in such unprofessionalism, can they please just leave neuroscience and the public out of it?

For non-scientists who rely on news media to communicate new science, overgeneralization by the press can mislead people to draw conclusions that may incorrectly or even dangerously influence their thinking and behavior. For instance, by contending that studies in social neuroscience demonstrate how personality traits and behaviors, such as political affiliation, are “hard-wired,” reporters (such as Goldberg) misrepresent science and promote public misconceptions about the brain. It is well accepted that the brain is highly organized in advance of experience, but I challenge you to find a psychologist who will concede that behavior is “hard-wired.” In fact, quite the opposite is true; the brain is plastic, continually reorganizing itself in response to the internal and external milieu. An overwhelming body of research supports the notion that our behavioral outputs are similarly malleable. I take issue with any popular news article, book title, or headline containing the hackneyed phrase, “the [insert adjective] brain,” on similar grounds. The nuance contained within the original research can never be distilled into a single compelling phrase about a group of people. Learning about the plight of another group, also known as "perspective-taking," can increase one’s empathy for and understanding of that group, and this type of research has the power to do just that; however, do pithy headlines and brief reports like these lead people to further stereotype and distance themselves from those who are portrayed as categorically and neurologically different?



Discrediting neuroscientific findings is similarly detrimental and promotes public distrust of neuroscience and the importance of such research in elucidating the neurological mechanisms underlying human thought and experience. Take Roger Scruton's recent article in The Spectator, which introduces terms like "neurobabble" and "neurononsense," in reference to studies that link social behaviors to their neurochemical correlates (think oxytocin and pair-bonding). Scruton voices skepticism about the extent to which neuroscience can uncover the seat of human consciousness. Don't get me wrong: dissenting opinions like these are important scientific debate. I agree with Scruton that the whole of human experience cannot be distilled into a "brain in a box" theory. Nevertheless, debasing cognitive science research as pseudoscientific nonsense fosters public distrust in the pursuit of scientific explanations of human behavior. The public rightly expects neuroscientists to pursue avenues of research with the potential to enhance their understanding of themselves and others, but reading Scruton's commentary may lead a non-scientist to ask himself, "why does the public fund this kind of research if it has no value whatsoever?"



Scientists have a lot to lose here. Most research in this country is publicly funded and relies on governmental support for its advancement. Distrust of the scientific community may lead policymakers and their constituents to further restrict our meager science budget and slash discretionary spending for science education. If we are to prevent ourselves from falling even further behind other nations in science achievement, neuroscientists must step in and advocate on behalf of their own research to assure that it is communicated accurately to the American public. As scientists, we strive to better our understanding of the human condition through our research with the end goal of improving health and well-being. It’s our responsibility to make sure that our findings are presented to the public in meaningful, accurate ways that clearly illustrate the implications of our work for their individual and collective lives. I believe that scientists are falling behind in this area. However, there is hope.



Such hope may exist in the new wave of dedicated neuroscience journalists, some of whom have received formal scientific training in academia and/or industry (consider Jonah Lehrer, for example, who formerly worked in the lab of Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel). This group of reporters can act as unofficial go-betweens, translating neuroscientific findings into widely accessible dialogue unencumbered by sociopolitical bias, just as the PEJ’s Statement of Purpose suggests. The hope also lies with neuroscientists themselves. Nowadays, researchers are burdened by budget constraints that have created more and more competition for grants (less than 20% of NIH grants are funded) and publications in order to secure tenure. Coupled with advising grad students, managing a lab, teaching undergraduate courses, and attending conferences, neuroscientists are extremely busy people. This leaves very little time to engage with the public, although many rock-star neuroscientists still make time to do this public service. Given the present economic and political climate, it is of utmost importance that neuroscientists are accurately portrayed as the beneficent agents of change and discovery that they actually are.



I propose two changes that neuroscientists and their institutions can enact to begin rectifying these problems in neuroscience reporting. The first is on a neuroscientific community-wide level, the second on an institutional level. With respect to the neuroscience community, I believe that an organization could be established to “fact-check” the media’s reporting of research findings. Specialists in a given field could comment openly and publicly on the veracity of journalistic reports, in similar fashion to Politifact.org’s fact-checking of political candidates’ public statements. Alternatively, websites like Scholarpedia.org could be utilized more widely by researchers to make their ideas and findings readily accessible. Recent interest in open-access publishing for academic journals (see commentary in Science Magazine news) may be part of the solution; however, the esoteric language of research science may limit public gains from this strategy. Some neuroscientists directly engage with the public already, and are active on social networking sites like Twitter (see “Neuroscientists Who Tweet”), and I think this is a step in the right direction. On an institutional level, service and community outreach are encouraged for research faculty, and basically required for junior faculty seeking tenure. However, this could be better organized to encompass participation in fact-checking organizations or informational curation sites like Scholarpedia.



In summary, as lay interest in popular neuroscience continues to proliferate, journalists eschewing their obligation for fair and balanced reporting jeopardize both the public and the neuroscientific community. It is imperative that journalists recognize the importance of their position and act in accordance with their self-defined governing principles of ethics, as many already do. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that dissenting opinions are uncalled for. Rather they ought to avoid overgeneralization and discrediting. It is also incumbent upon scientists and the academy to engage the public in accurate, thoughtful, yet accessible dialogue about their research, and to find effective ways of doing so. Failure to do this has profound implications for the future of neuroscience research and science education in this country, and it is our ethical obligation to ensure that neuroscientists are portrayed as the good guys and gals they actually are.






Want to cite this post?


Kohn, J. (2012). The [insert adjective] Brain: Implications for Neuroscience in Popular Media. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/06/insert-adjective-brain-implications-for.html

Who Owns My Thoughts?

I attended the excellent Neuroscience, Law, and Ethics of Lie Detection Technologies Symposium in May, and as a consequence, I have spent the last month trying to answer questions I hadn’t even thought to ask before: Who owns the thoughts in my head? Could I be compelled to submit them? Can someone else decide that keeping my ideas to myself is a violation of the law or a threat to my country? If they force me to surrender them, do I lose ownership? So this week, I thought I would share some of the things I learned as I tried to find out answers.

You can actually buy this online. I am considering getting it printed on a hat.

Two preliminary points: first, I want specify what I mean when I say “compelled” to undergo a brain scan. It seems, at least it seemed to me while sitting in the audience, that Americans are pretty afraid of having someone else read their minds without their permission, or, worse, being forced to have their minds read. This extends even to a simplistic form of mind reading such as rudimentary lie detection. I have to say, I understand this fear, and for me, it boils down to this – I would be afraid that the government could, by compelling me to undergo a brain scan, make me give up information that I didn't even know I was concealing. Lest I spin totally into conspiracy theory territory, I tried to approach the question more systematically by researching how brain scans fit into our current constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure.

Second, a note about how lie detection is currently used. Both during the lunch we had earlier in the afternoon and the symposium itself, all of the featured speakers pointed out that fMRI lie detection evidence isn’t admissible in court.[1] Laken himself has even been involved in several landmark cases. In actuality, the forensic application of lie detection technology goes far beyond courtrooms. Results from a lie detector, including those done via fMRI, can be used in a variety of situations, including, but not limited to: arbitration, civil commitment, and parole, sentencing or administrative hearings. They can also, in theory, be used by law enforcement officials in the course of an investigation as long as such procedures lead to evidence that can be used in court, and nothing is obtained illegally (more on what that means later).[2] So, fMRI technology can already be used for legal applications, both in the civil and the criminal areas (although I am leaving aside some of the more complex legal arenas, like military courts and investigations done under the PATRIOT act). 

So, let’s go back to my original question: who owns the thoughts in my head? Do I own them? What process must someone follow in order to seize them?

I started by thinking about thoughts as a product of my body. After all, don’t I own what is inside my body?  Well, it turns out, I only own it until someone takes it from me. This might happen as part of a routine medical examination, where a doctor takes a blood or urine sample for testing. I might even request that someone remove something from inside of me- a tumor, for instance. But once they have taken it, guess what? I don’t own it anymore.[3] And that is just for medical use. Legally, persons can be compelled to give up physical evidence, such as DNA, or succumb to measurements and recording, such as fingerprints. All of these fall under the Fourth Amendment, meaning as long as law enforcement attains the proper warrants, they can gather physical evidence- even if that evidence is part of your body.

But thoughts are different- or, at least, they probably are. As both Paul Wolpe and Hank Greely emphasized during the symposium, lie detection technology, even technology measured through fMRI, is likely going to be considered testimony and not physical evidence. That is, it would be subject to the rules of the Fifth Amendment and not the Fourth.[4] The Fifth Amendment, for anyone who hasn’t spent a ridiculous amount of his or her life watching Law & Order, is the rule that says you can refuse to testify if the testimony you give would incriminate you. Since about the mid 1960s, physical evidence has been exempt from the Fifth Amendment, meaning you can be forced to surrender physical evidence (or, for example, try on a glove or clothing in front of a jury) even if that evidence would incriminate you. 

To paraphrase Nita Farahany, the Fifth Amendment covers what comes out of your mouth,

as long as what comes out is words and not saliva.

Okay, that’s all well and good - there are people considering how and when someone can scan my brain in the event that I am charged with a crime. But what about accidental discovery? What if, while being scanned about whether or not I ran that stop sign over on Clairemont Avenue last week (for the record, I absolutely did not), I happen to let slip that I’ve discovered the secret to safe, efficient nuclear power? (I also haven’t done that, just to be clear.) Does the person questioning me now own that statement too? Could they compel me to release it to the government? Or, worse yet, could they claim it as their own?

There are already laws and procedures in place for what happens if, in the course of the investigation of one crime, law enforcement officers find information about other criminal activity (you can, for example, give a witness immunity in order to convince them to testify.) But my right to protect my knowledge about nuclear power is another matter entirely. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that questions about brain images and ideas that only exist in someone’s head (i.e., haven’t been written down yet) get into a fair amount of copyright, trademark and patent law… and my head already hurts.

I know those feels, man.

Luckily for me and my aching head, legal scholar Nita Farahany has already started investigating these questions. In “Incriminating Thoughts” she points out that emerging neurotechnology has so changed the way we  measure the mind, it justifies an entirely new system of cataloging evidence.[5] She argues for abandoning the older physical/testimony dichotomy (which I’ve starting thinking of as the Fourth/Fifth Amendment dichotomy) in favor of a spectrum of evidence which includes “identifying, automatic, memorialized, and uttered.” This would cover all the different ways a person’s thoughts could be measured or recorded during the investigation of a crime.



In a newer article titled “Searching Secrets,” set to be published sometime later this year, she applies this standard to a wider spectrum of information, including “tangible and intangible thoughts, ambitions, and expressions.”[6] In her system, investigators would be guided by the rules of intellectual property law rather than more traditional Fourth Amendment concepts of property (home, possessions, papers.) This system integrates copyright concerns into discussions of what secrets can be investigated and uncovered, by whom, and for what purpose, and would offer more protection. This is largely because it would have a wider concept of the “reasonable expectation of privacy,” the guiding principle when deciding what can and cannot be collected as evidence without a warrant.[7] This integration would also, as far as I understand, allow for a more thorough investigation into how copyright functions when it comes to un-uttered and un-written ideas.

Alright, so, that covers whether or not I can be forced to submit my mind to scrutiny, and what people can do with the thoughts they may find there. The answers are far from set in stone, but there are definitely debates going on, which puts my mind at ease (har har.)

Except...

What about the things I am thinking of doing? What if, in the course of an investigation of my thoughts (admittedly one using a much more advanced system than we have now) law enforcement agents find that I am planning to commit a pretty terrible crime?

Precrime. It Works.

This may seem like I have ventured into the realm of science fiction (when an audience member asked a similar question during the symposium, Paul Wolpe answered "What you are talking about is Minority Report.") In fact, future dangerousness has long been a concern of forensic psychiatry, and there are forms of prediction in forensic application now. Civil commitment hearings are designed to determine the likelihood that someone will cause harm in the future, that is, whether the person in question is a danger to self and others, and therefore should be locked up. But what about beyond that? What about systems designed not only to curtail the actions of dangerously ill persons, but systems which attempt to prevent crime by predicting it?



In terms of brain imaging, and certainly as far as the technology discussed at the symposium, this is a futuristic vision indeed. But that doesn't mean there aren't emerging crime prediction technologies. (Go ahead and Google "precrime" if you don't believe me.) Tune in next month, where I’ll be blogging about how, where, and why "precrime" technology is being developed.

Want to cite this post?


Cipolla, C. (2012). Who Owns My Thoughts?. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/06/who-owns-my-thoughts.html

So

---

[1] For details about the use of Steven Laken’s technology in court, see David Nicholson’s blog post. For an overview of the standards for admitting scientific evidence, see Jamie Witter’s guest post.  

[2] For an overview of emerging uses for neuroimagining,  including fMRI, see Joseph R. Simpson, Neuroimaging in Forensic Psychiatry : From the Clinic to the Courtroom (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

[3] The rules of ownership governing medical tissue samples have been the subject of a lot of recent media attention, largely due to the publication of Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

[4] Sarah E. Stoller and Paul Root Wolpe, “Emerging Neurotechnologies for Lie Detection and the Fifth Amendment,” 33 Am. J.L. & Med. 359 (2007).

[5] Nita A. Farahany, “Incriminating Thoughts,” Stanford Law Review Vol. 64, 351 (2012); Available at SSRN.

[6] Nita A. Farahany, “Searching Secrets,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, (2012). Available via UChicago.edu.

[7] Basically, and I am really paraphrasing here, the key is that copyright also gives people the right not to publish something, that is, to keep it secret. Farahany uses the famous J.D. Salinger case as an example.

More or less human: How can a dog brain imaging study and companion animal neuroscience explain my human-ness?

“It was amazing to see the first brain images of a fully
awake, unrestrained dog,” Berns said. “As far as we know, no one has been able
to do this previously. We hope this opens up a whole new door for understanding
canine cognition and inter-species communication. We want to understand the dog-human
relationship, from the dog’s perspective.”—Greg Berns, MD, PhD

Recently, the Emory laboratory of Dr. Greg Berns published
the first fMRI brain imaging study in unanesthetized dogs.  Popular media reports of the study
touting, “What is your dog thinking?” and “Brain Scans Reveal Dogs’ Thoughts”
have raised the hackles of the public who ask, “Why conduct a frivolous
scientific study on something we already know?”



A closer inspection of the
actual study publication reveals a simpler and still significant result: The
study serves as an experimental “proof of principle”, establishing a model
precedent for future dog cognition studies. As a neuroscientist, I view this
recent dog brain imaging study as opening a new realm of possibilities for
research, not only on dog cognition, but also on the evolution of social
behavior in humans and with non-human animals that have come to define our
human-ness.

FMRI representations of neurological activity produced by reward anticipation in the brains of Callie and McKenzie. Image: Berns et al./SSRN--pulled from Wired

Dog imaging research in unanesthetized, cooperating dogs is
quite frankly, brilliant for 3 reasons that I will describe below.

Importantly, the timing of this research is impeccable. With
mounting trends against animal researchers, especially those who engage in
non-human primate research, the public is calling for different studies where
animals aren’t held captive in unnatural environments for research (some
neuroscience experts are even advocating that we utilize human models,
especially for research on psychiatric disorders).  In fact, not only are these studies non-invasive and call
for the dogs’ “voluntary” cooperation (the dogs were trained 8 months prior to
actually enter and sit still in a scanner with custom sound-blocking
headphones), the dogs are also considered, as stated by the authors, to be more
at home in the research setting: Dogs are human’s oldest domesticated animal
and have evolved to be quite “natural” in a human-dominated environment. In addition,
the scientific research community, along with many humanities scholars, is now
building a case that non-human animals have traits such as empathy, traits that
were previously (perhaps almost sacredly) privileged to humans.

Callie was trained to enter the scanner with headphones and sit still during the scans.

Berns and colleagues took special care with these studies,
seeking advice from the Institutional Review Board (IRB, which reviews human
research protocols) in addition to the Institutional Animal Care and Use
Committee (IACUC, which reviews animal research protocols), treating the
animals basically as special, vulnerable research subjects.

Second, it’s simply en vogue to care about animals and to
demonstrate principles of care about our non-human relationships, from the
environment to what animals we (don't) eat. This movement in “Green Capitalism” and
“Charitable Capitalism” can be seen daily, with major corporations providing
sustainable products, seeing sustainability and the organic food movement, for
better and/or worse, as good business.

Third, as a society, we are beginning to more routinely
acknowledge the significance of our non-human relationships; even our legal
policies, which reflect our temporally relevant consensus values and morals,
are currently being challenged. Legal scholars and aspiring lawyers are being
trained in animal personhood and animal law. According to the Animal Legal Defense Fund 141 (versus 125 when I wrote about this 1 year ago) schools in the U.S. and Canada now offer courses in “Animal
Law”.

Scholars like Donna Haraway, author of the Companion Species Manifesto and When Species Meet, believe that our relationship with dogs is
simultaneously a “historical aberration” and a “natural cultural legacy”.
Haraway argues that dogs and humans not only co-habit our worlds but also
co-evolved with us to develop a sophisticated cross-species social existence.

Donna Haraway, a brilliant scholar. You should read all of her books.

In
particular, she is interested in examining, “How might an ethics and politics
committed to the flourishing of significant otherness be learned from taking
dog-human relationships seriously?” And more pointedly, she and many scholars
are troubled by imbalances of “bio-power” and “bio-sociality” wherein “Man
makes himself the hero in the greatest story ever told” and human relationships
with dogs are rarely viewed beyond a “caninophilic narcissm”, an illusion that
one’s dog is a source of unconditional love for its owner.

Several researchers have noted that dogs and other furry
creatures have a track record of benefiting human health and well being of
children, the elderly, and those with and without disabilities. But rather than
viewing domesticated dogs as simply a technology invented by humans-- which she
argues is a unidirectional view of agency-- Haraway suggests a broader view
which acknowledges the existence of multiple directions of agency where dogs
and humans co-create and co-constitute our lives, partners in creating our
society as we know it.

Loukanikos aka "Riot Dog"": Stray dog that joined demonstrators in Athens, Greece.

What is to be gained by exploring this view with
Haraway?  Haraway says that
companion animals are “one instance in a story field of what makes us
human”.  Companion animals in a
sense aren’t just a commodity or piece of property for us, a technology that
humans made. Animal domestication and our lives with non-human animals (and
perhaps other non-human entities) actually makes us who we are as humans.  Our identities, be it human or
non-human animal, are co-created and have co-evolved with our environments and
all of the entities within it. Therefore, in conceptualizing humans, we must also consider
individuals as a product of their relationships, including those with animals.

But how would understanding our relationships with non-human
animals affect our world-view and our practices and what does this relationship
mean for society?

Read more about this in comparative religion scholar, Thomas Kasulis's work.  I recommend his book, Intimacy or Integrity.

Dr. Bern’s studies offer us an opportunity to explore some
powerful lines of research to illuminate human experiences. These lines of
research, some of which have been proposed by psychologists such as Gail
Melson, have not yet been considered in the light of recent brain imaging
studies. Nonetheless, these topics could be explored with neuro-imaging.

First, we could explore humans and animals as interdependent
systems: How do companion animals and their owners mutually reinforce and
modify one another’s behavior and what are the neurological bases of this
reinforcement and behavior modification.   Second, we could explore higher-order cognitive
functioning in non-human animals: How might animal research paradigms be
modified to reflect growing bodies of evidence demonstrating that animals have
qualities, such as empathy, that historically were privileged to humans? How
might these studies impact the growing interest in legal communities to grant
animals legal standing and “rights”? 
For example, how might the IRB and IACUC modify regulations for on-going
research to maximize welfare of research animals and maximize relevance of data
acquired from these experiments? And further, what are the legal ramifications
under various contexts in living with non-human animals such as companion
animals, research animals, and consumed animals?

 

These dog brain imaging and studies of companion animal
cognition are just the tip of the iceberg, opening a new world of research not
a moment too soon. I believe animal studies with dogs as a model may bring very
fruitful insights into understanding human and non-human alike social life. And
in so doing we can have an even deeper conversation and experience in our daily
lives.

In loving memory of Chino Zapata Moreno de Guevera

beloved companion, teacher, and mysterious fellow traveler 

December 14, 1997 - May 10, 2012

Want to cite this post?


Rommelfanger, K. (2012). More or less human: How can a dog brain imaging study and companion animal neuroscience explain my human-ness?. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/06/more-or-less-human-how-can-dog-brain.html

References and Recommended Reading:

“Functional MRI in Awake Unrestrained Dogs.” By Gregory
Berns, Andrew Brooks and Mark Spivak. Public Library of Science ONE,
publication date to-be-determined.

European Graduate School youtube channel: Donna Haraway
Companion Animals Manifesto (2003)



Donna Haraway When Species Meet (2008) Posthumanities Volume 3

Quotes and Images from Berns pulled from: http://news.emory.edu/stories/2012/05/esc_what_is_your_dog_thinking/campus.html

Gail Melson “Psychology and the Study of Human-Animal
Relationships.” Society and Animals Volume 10 (2002) 347-352



Thomas P. Kasulis. Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Differences (2002) University of Hawai'i Press

 

The Brain Does That? So What?

In a column earlier this year, Psychology Today contributor Nate Kornell wrote about his annoyance with the excitement over findings that "the brain does that." Kornell's response to findings that "the brain does that" is a bit of an intellectual "duh!" Or, closer to his own words, the response is more of an exasperated "Of course it does!"



And I have to admit I share his annoyance ... to a certain degree.



So what if researchers "discover" there are underlying neural mechanisms of the placebo effect? Does this make the placebo effect any more "real"? (Or, for that matter, any less real?) And, if we discover that reading causes activation in the brain, does that give us a meaningful reason to engage in more reading (as was argued in a recent guardian article)? (See the Onion's take here and here.)



As Kornell puts it, "every mental process is represented in the brain." Thus, according to Kornell if there is any change in our mental life, the change will be reflected somewhere in the brain. So, there is no big surprise, no profound discovery when researchers find that something "happens in the brain" whenever there is a change in our mental life. If people discover that the brain does that (whatever that may be), according to Kornell, there is no reason to be excited, and if we find ourselves becoming excited, we should simply "calm down."

But of course, neuroscience isn't just showing us that changes in mental life are associated with changes in the brain. Neuroscience is uncovering the biological mechanisms associated with the changes in our mental life. Understanding the mechanisms associated with changes in our mental life can have profound impacts. The sorts of treatments, interventions, and enhancements that can be devised through a more thorough understanding of the biological mechanisms of our mental lives have the prospects (at least in many cases) of far exceeding the efficacy of the sorts of treatments, interventions, and enhancements that could be devised with only an understanding of psychology.



So, when a researcher proclaims, "The brain does that!" an appropriate first response may be "of course it does!" But immediately following this trite reactive dismissal of the neuroscience, the second response should be a genuinely reflective, "So what?" I think if we all took a moment to seriously consider the answers to the 'so what' question, we would often find genuine reasons to be excited ... and given the potential ethical implications that often come along with more effective treatments, interventions, and enhancements, perhaps even a little bit concerned.






Want to cite this post?


Shepard, J. (2012). The Brain Does That? So What?. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/06/brain-does-that-so-what.html

Animal Models and the Future of Psychiatric Research

"Few
medicines, in the history of pharmaceuticals, have been greeted with
as much exultation as a green-and-white pill containing 20 milligrams
of fluoxetine hydrochloride — the chemical we know as Prozac"
wrote Columbia University Assistant Professor of Medicine Siddhartha
Mukherjee in a recent New York Times editorial on antidepressant
efficacy. As Dr. Mukherjee points out, the rise of antidepressants over the
past several decades has been swift and staggering. A recent CDC study found that antidepressants are the most commonly prescribed
drug for Americans between 18 and 44 years of age, with 11% of
Americans over the age of twelve utilizing such medications.

Original image from the Global Information Exchange Network

In light of such
overwhelming usage rates, one would think that pharmaceutical
companies would be falling over themselves to invent the next
antidepressant superdrug. As it turns out, however, exactly the
opposite trend is emerging. Pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca and
GlaxoSmithKline recently cut funding for new psychiatric drugs,
leading psychiatrists David Nutt and Guy Goodwin to lament that "The
well-reported pull-out of pharmaceutical companies from neuroscience
research that has occurred in the past year is a major concern... the
withdrawal of research resources is a withdrawal of hope for patients
and their families."

One popular
explanation for pharmaceutical disinterest in new antidepressant
drugs stems from what Dr. Steven Hyman has called a surfeit of
"refried serotonin" - that is, the continual redesign of
antidepressant drugs that affect levels of monoamine
neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine in essentially
similar ways.
While this paradigm has led to the development of useful
antidepressant drugs (Lexapro, Paxil, etc.), Hyman argues that
the great advances of recent decades have been in safety and
tolerability, but not in efficacy, which may have peaked in the
1950s. Given that only one third of patients fully recover from
depression on the current generation of antidepressants, it's clear
that a need for more effective therapies persists.

Are antidepressants
based on altering synaptic levels of serotonin and norepinephrine the
best we can do, or are there new drugs, yet to be discovered, that
may revolutionize the treatment of depression? Some have interpreted
pharmaceutical funding cuts as indicative of an over-reliance on
drugs in the treatment of psychiatric disorders and have suggested
increased emphasis on non-pharmacological treatments such as
psychotherapy; others, however, have called for the development of new methods and
paradigms within pharmacology as a means to develop more effective
psychiatric drugs. With Dr. Steven Hyman's visit to Emory to accept the Neuroscience and Ethics Award,
we had the opportunity talk to one of the most respected individuals
in the field about future research directions in psychopathology.

Moving Beyond
Animal Models

Dr. Hyman began by
criticizing reliance on animal-based assays that were originally
developed to produce new antidepressant drugs that acted like older
drugs. The classic "forced swim" and "tail suspension"
tests were developed based on antidepressant drugs discovered in the
1950s. In
the forced swim test, rats are placed in a water-filled cylinder from
which they cannot escape. Researchers found that rats pretreated with
certain antidepressants will attempt to swim for longer periods of
time before giving up. Similarly, rats suspended by the tail and given an antidepressant will struggle for longer in comparison to rats which are not given an antidepressant. Because these assays were worked out using
antidepressants already known to work in humans, and because they
successfully predicted the efficacy of similar antidepressant
compounds, they became standard tools in both academic and industry
labs.

Hyman expressed concern on several fronts: 




"First, these are 'black box
assays,' not disease models. As a result they may have limited
predictive power and may actually screen out potentially useful
drugs. Second, they are not even good models of what antidepressants
do in humans. In these assays, antidepressants are active following
a single dose, whereas in humans therapeutic responses required
weeks. At a minimum this should remind us that there is much that we
do not know.” 




He added that these screens have invaded basic
academic research. Investigators may laboriously investigate the
function of a gene by knocking it out in the mouse genome or through
injecting it into specific brain regions using a viral vector. They
will then use forced swim or tail suspension to argue that their
mouse may be a depression model, using the term “behavioral
despair” to describe rodents who fail to swim or struggle. This,
said Hyman, is “an anthropomorphism that behavioral pharmacologists
use to deceive themselves about our continuing difficulty of modeling
depression in animals.”

Not the same thing.

Original image from drugdiscoveryopinion.com

Moreover, many,
including Dr. Alan Schatzberg, a former Chairman of the Department of
Psychiatry at Stanford University's School of Medicine, have argued
that animal models for depression simply cannot model the cognitive
and emotional aspects of depression that are central to human
experience.
Insofar as animals do not feel guilt or hopelessness, researchers
such as Dr. Schatzberg argue that animal models cannot measure the
same disease processes that exist in depressed humans.

Dr. Hyman noted that
animal models have yielded clear success in studying highly penetrant
monogenic disorders such as Rett Syndrome and Fragile X syndrome, as
well as the functions of circuits that are highly conserved in
evolution such as "basic emotions of fear and reward."
However, he also noted that these models have had limited utility to
date in studying common mental disorders, which are generally
polygenic, heterogeneous, and involve circuits in the prefrontal cortex
that are not well modeled in rodents.

Animal models have
proliferated largely as an alternative to testing novel
pharmaceuticals on humans, a practice which holds potentially
problematic ethical implications. As a result, a difficult and important question emerges: how can testing procedures be refined to
produce effective psychiatric medications without putting humans at
excessive risk?

New Directions in
Human Research

Dr. Hyman suggested
a number of novel methods that he believes could reinvigorate
research into psychopathology and therapeutics. One possibility,
which he noted is "still almost
as much
science fiction
as real,"
is based on the rapidly progressing technology of reprogramming
peripheral cells such as human fibroblasts into neurons. Future work
in this area may be capable of creating replicable neurons of
specific types and assembling them into circuits, perhaps on a chip.
As knowledge of the genetics of mental disorders advances,
disease-risk versions of genes could be engineered into such cells
and then compared to patient cells. Dr. Hyman suggested that study of biochemical and cellular phenotypes may yield therapeutic benefits that exceed those produced by studies of rodent behavior.

Dr. Hyman also saw
promise in innovative forms of "human experimental biology"
that combine treatment interventions such as deep brain stimulation
with brain imaging to understand underlying circuits in
neuropsychiatric disorders. In particular, he praised Emory
researcher Dr. Helen Mayberg for continuing her research on deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a
treatment for depression, even after DBS had demonstrated therapeutic
benefit:

"I
think I
have great
respect for
what Helen
Mayberg and
the group
are doing
here because
they didn't
stop at
saying, well,
this works,
meaning it
improves the
Hamilton Depression rating
in otherwise
treatment
refractory
patients 60%
of the
time. They've
also followed
it up
by --
with very
inventive imaging
approaches to
see what
circuits are
involved. I
think that
within the
bounds of
careful, ethical
and safety considerations
we must learn from humans what we cannot readily learn from animals.”

Dr. Helen Mayberg, neurologist at Emory University.

Original image from emory.edu

More broadly, Dr.
Hyman emphasized the need to think creatively about novel ways to
approach long-standing research problems. He advocated convergent
interdisciplinary approaches to problems and avoidance of “cottage
industries” that lead nowhere. In particular, Dr. Hyman noted the
hundreds of genetic associations studies that have been done on
genetic variants such as the length polymorphisms in the serotonin
transporter gene, which have already been identified as the target of
a host of moderately efficacious drugs.

Neuroethical
Implications

Research with human
subjects raises a number of unique problems. The first is a problem
of external validity: current trials with humans have been criticized
on a number of grounds, including excessively stringent exclusion criteria and selective publication of studies demonstrating positive results.
The second is an ethical problem: research with human subjects
involves issues of safety, informed consent, and possible
exploitation of vulnerable populations such as prisoners or children.
These and similar concerns have led some, such as the Alliance for Human Research Protection, to oppose past efforts to expand drug
experimentation on humans.

More broadly, the
insufficiency of current research paradigms in psychiatric drug
development raises questions about the fundamental nature of
psychiatric practice. Are mental disorders best understood as
physical illnesses like any other, discrete neurological deficits
that can be cured through the use of appropriate medications, or are
they what some psychiatrists have termed "problems in living,"
more loosely defined constructs that don't necessarily imply
biological solutions?

Robert Whitaker, a
vocal critic of the biomedical paradigm in psychiatry, suggests that
funding cuts for new pharmaceuticals may have a "silver lining":
"it is possible that the drug tsunami that has swept over our
society will begin to ebb, and this will provide our society an
opportunity to rethink its psychiatric care." For Whitaker, there is little hope that new research methods will
substantially contribute to our capacity to treat mental illness, and
we would be wise to reconfigure our understanding of mental illness
to emphasize aspects of "wellness" rather than "disease."
Such claims imply that work with animals is likely to yield little
benefit in the treatment of depression, as animals cannot model
uniquely human aspects of depression such as guilt and hopelessness.
Whitaker's arguments are also likely to be met with skepticism in
research circles, where the disease model of mental illness still
prevails. Whatever new paradigms are adopted within psychiatric
research, then, are likely to hold significant implications not only
for what sorts of treatments are developed, but also for our
understanding of what it means to be "normal" and
"disordered" more generally.

Want to cite this post?


Gordon, R. (2012). Animal Models and the Future of Psychiatric Research. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/06/animal-models-and-future-of-psychiatric.html