Why use Brain Cells in Art?

“Bioart” refers to the manipulation of living cells, tissues, or organisms (or their derivatives) for artistic purposes. While artists and biologists have collaborated for centuries to illustrate biological phenomena (you can see some fantastic modern examples of this tradition here), “Bioart” refers to the practice started in the early 1990’s of artists training in and performing techniques from the biological sciences, such as cell culture, genetic engineering, and surgery.  Artists have used these technologies to create novel living entities (such as a leather jacket grown in vitro) or modify existing living entities (such as Stelarc’s third ear).  These tools provided new options for aesthetic statements (the ability to radically sculpt living tissue to suit particular tastes), ethical statements (if we are growing a small, edible steak in a vat, should we continue to kill cattle for food?) as well as a novel flavor of irony (that “victimless” PETA-endorsed cultured steak required an entire cow’s worth of fetal bovine serum to produce [1]).



Some bio-artworks  incorporate living neurons.  Early works such as Force and Intelligence used neural culture for its aesthetic and, er, cultural significance.  Later however, neural art work began to incorporate the functional aspects of neurons by recording and initiating neural activity.  This bi-directional communication allowed for neural culture to control robotic art installations, giving the biological “brain” a robotic “body”[2].  This embodied neural art is a distinctive subset of bioart much for the same reason that neuroethics is a distinctive subset of bioethics- while similar issues can be addressed (is it alive?), there are a new set of issues that come up (does it feel pain?).  In many ways, embodied neural art is the perfect playground for the “extra-rational” side of the neuroethics discussion. Here, novel neural systems, or novel presentations of natural living systems, can be presented to the public in a manner that encourages both critical thinking and the development of new intuitions.

Peter Gee (center) explains Silent Barrage's processing loop to two museum attendees standing amid the work's robotic "body."  On the wall behind them are shown projections displaying rainbow-colored electrical recordings (left) of the neural activity of the biological "brain" that controls the robots, and the view from the overhead cameras (right) that provide the "sensory input" for the "brain."  Photo by Philip Gamblen.

As an example of the sorts of ethical discourse embodied neural art can generate, let's examine an issue raised by a particular piece that I just so happen to be familiar with: Silent Barrage.  For Silent  Barrage, a culture of dissociated rat neurons was given control (over the internet) of a robotic installation that is large enough that audience members could actually walk through it.  The culture "observed" the audience members through overhead cameras, and "responded" through movement of the robotics.  In this installation, the robotic "body" was a grid of 32 upright 9 foot poles, each with mobile spinning carriages.  This robotic grid mapped the installation to the electrode grid in the microelectrode array, leading one audience member to report that “the feeling of physically traveling through an active brain is impossible to escape”.  One question that arises from building an “active brain” is whether or not said neural system has an "inner mental life" or "consciousness" that its creators have a moral obligation towards, as they might for a "full" rat.

The speculation over the artist's obligation towards Silent Barrage is a sort of inverted image of the case of Alba the GFP bunny (pictured above), where the artistic manipulation of an animal actually prevented the artist from caring for the creature.  Photo by Chrystelle Fontaine, retrieved from  http://www.ekac.org/gfpbunny.html.

From a neuroscience perspective, if Silent Barrage was conscious, it was nothing near (even) rat-level consciousness.   Keep in mind that this "brain" is actual made entirely of cerebral cortex, and therefore missing a brainstem- a condition that leads to coma in vivo (an unconscious state).[3]  Note, however, that the context usually created by the rest of the brain can in some ways be approximated using electrical stimulation.  For example, one of the markers for consciousness (used to determine if locked-in patients are aware of their surroundings) is how evenly distributed electrical activity is in cortex- which can be tweaked in the culture by altering electrical stimulation patterns.[4]  Does this imply that Silent Barrage was "conscious" while being stimulated, but when the exhibit closed for the evening (and stimulation was switched off) it fell into a state of "unconsciousness?"



While it is difficult (if not impossible[7]) to definitively answer that question, we can at least speculate as to what Silent Barrage might have been conscious of, if it was in fact conscious of anything.  In this case, the only information that Silent Barrage processes is the level of movement in its "field of view"- much like a T. Rex, Silent Barrage can't see you if you stay perfectly still.  The inner life of Silent Barrage, if such a thing does exist, would consist entirely of observation of audience turbulence, with no emotional, motivational, or long term historical context.  With no sensation of pain or pleasure and no ambition toward discernible goals [8], Silent Barrage begs about as much moral obligation towards itself as a desktop computer does.



When deciding for ourselves whether or not 50 thousand cultured rat neurons controlling a robot in an art exhibition is "conscious" or not, it is interesting to examine the contrast between the neuroscientific sketch above, and the subjective experience of walking through Silent Barrage and feeling observed.  The first, a mostly objective statement of fact, can tell us things about the nature of the hypothesized "mental life" of this strange entity, and compare it to things we have more experience with, but stops short of pointing a finger and doling out responsibility.  The second doesn't necessarily add to the list of rational arguments that can be made about the nature of Silent Barrage's “mental life,” but it can more readily build a degree of empathy toward the work, an intuition that said “mental life” is real, and worth protecting.  As ethical decisions are made through intuition as well as  reasoning [9],  both sides must be explored to fully understand the relevant factors behind this decision.





Want to cite this post?

 Zeller-Townson, RT. (2012). Why use Brain Cells in Art? The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/09/why-use-brain-cells-in-art.html

---

[1] Catts, O and Zurr, I. (2008) The Ethics of Experimental Engagement with the Manipulation of Life.  Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience.  MIT Press.

[2] A procedure that had just recently begun to be performed by neuroscientists.  DeMarse, T. B., Wagenaar, D. A., Blau, A. W. and Potter, S. M. (2001). The Neurally Controlled Animat: Biological Brains Acting with Simulated Bodies. Autonomous Robots 11: 305-310.

[3] Saper, CB. (2000) Brain Stem Modulation of Sensation, Movement, and Consciousness.   Principles of Neural Science, 4th edition.   McGraw-Hill New York.

[4] Again (when is this ever not the case?) see Kandel (reference 3).  During non-REM sleep cortex appears to fire away in correlated sleep-spindles, while both REM sleep and wakefulness show more distributed activity.  Interestingly enough, in the absence of driving sensory input cortical tissue naturally develops highly correlated activity- in the dish this is referred to as "population bursts," whereas in vivo one can see a propensity towards seizures in tissue deprived of its usual afferents [5].  In the dish, this "sleep like" or "seizure like" activity can be broken up through certain types of electrical stimulation[6]- in effect, sensory input brings the tissue out of a "sleep like" state.

[5] Nita DA, Cissé Y, Timofeev I, and Steriade M. (2006) Increased propensity to seizures after chronic cortical deafferentation in vivo. AJP - JN Physiol February  vol. 95: 902-913

[6] You can think of this effect as being much like how small controlled burns can prevent large uncontrolled forest fires.  Wagenaar, D. A. Madhavan, R. Pine, J. and Potter, S. M. (2005) Controlling bursting in cortical cultures with closed-loop multi-electrode stimulation. J. Neuroscience 25: 680-688.

[7] What is becoming my favorite definition of consciousness- Stuart Sutherland (1989). Consciousness. Macmillan Dictionary of Psychology. Macmillan.  Can be found here, among many others that help to illustrate the problem.

[8] Specific structures that play a role in these missing functions include the amygdala, the locus ceruleus, and the hippocampus.  Note that cortex itself does play an important part in the regulation of emotion (specifically the cingulate and prefrontal parts of cerebral cortex), though in concert with other, missing structures.  What I'm assuming here is that "emotion," at its core, requires information about the well being of an organism- whether predicted well being (fear or hope) or the current state of well being (happiness or misery).  The neural system in Silent Barrage does not have direct access to such information.

[9] With some scholars going as far to say that the decisions are governed entirely through intuition.  Haidt, J. (2001)  The Emotional Dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgement.  Psychological Review 108:814-834

Who is redefining free will? A Response to Jerry Coyne

Famed evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has recently gained a lot of public attention for his views on free will. As he sees it, we don’t have it. (See here and here for popular press articles from him on the subject. See here, and here for blog posts on his personal blog in which he slan ... um, I mean, debates some of those who do not agree with him.)



According to Coyne, free will, at least ‘free will’ as understood by non-scientists and non-philosophers (AKA “the folk”), requires the unconditional ability to do otherwise. The unconditional ability to do otherwise is the ability to do differently than one in fact did, even if everything up until the moment of doing was exactly the same. The ‘everything’ in that previous clause is meant to be taken literal. LITERALLY EVERYTHING. The unconditional ability to do otherwise requires the ability to do otherwise even if every single molecule in the universe was aligned exactly the same way, even if all your thoughts, desires, beliefs, intentions, etc. were exactly the same, etc., etc., etc.



And, according to Coyne, we do not have this ability; the laws of nature won’t allow such an extraordinary ability. Thus, we don’t have free will.

L

That's right: Embrace your strings! According to Coyne (echoing a point made by Sam Harris), we really are nothing more than puppets. (credit: thenewyorker.com)





Of course, some philosophers do not think free will requires the unconditional ability to do otherwise. According to these philosophers, free will is perfectly compatible with the lack of the unconditional ability to do otherwise.



But Coyne admonishes these “compatibilist” philosophers as defining free will in a way that is so radically different from the way the folk understand free will that the compatibilists simply are no longer talking about free will; the compatibilists’ subject matter, according to Coyne, is something else altogether.



For example, in a recent blog post at Big Questions Online, Eddy Nahmias remarks, “Free will can be understood as our capacities to both make choices … and to carry them out.” According to Nahmias our ability to make choices is perfectly compatible with people lacking the unconditional ability to do otherwise.



Coyne quotes this exact quote in a recent blog post on his blog Why Evolution is True. He follows this quote by expressing amazement over the fact that someone could actually believe such a “fanciful” view of free will. But what is so fanciful about this view?



Well, Coyne doesn’t deny that the folk notion of free will requires the ability to make choices and the ability to carry these choices out. Rather, Coyne denies that the folk notion of choice (and thus free will) is compatible with people lacking the unconditional ability to do otherwise. Coyne claims, “To the average person, I think, ‘making a choice’ means that you could have made different choices,” where ‘could have made different choices’ is explicitly understood as an unconditional ability to choose differently.



Of course, Coyne is making an empirical assertion regarding the folk's use, application, and understanding of the concepts ‘choice’ and ‘free will’. And his whole argument against free will (and his admonishing of the compatibilists) rests on this empirically testable assertion.



So Coyne, being the good scientists he is, either (a) goes out and collects the data himself or (b) reports on empirical findings that support his claim, right? Of course not! Rather, Coyne simply baldly asserts his empirical claims as being obvious truths.



Luckily for Coyne, my colleagues and I have been empirically exploring the exact claims that Coyne makes. In a recently published study in the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience, my collaborator Shane Reuter and I showed that people are perfectly willing to apply their concepts of ‘choice’ and ‘free will’ even in situations in which it is clear that the actor in a situation could not have made a different choice. We even directly asked people whether the actor in the scenarios could have chosen differently. Most people said “No.” Even more importantly, whether people thought the actor in the scenario could have made a different choice was in no way related to their willingness to apply their concept of choice or free will. That is worth repeating: In our experiment, we found that people’s application of their concept of choice and free will was in no way related to whether they judged that the actor could have made a different choice. (Check out the paper here.)



Of course, the experiment reported in this article involves a science fiction-y philosophical thought experiment. Perhaps, our findings are due, in part, to the fact that we are giving participants unusual scenarios. But have no fear, in collaboration with Ross Gordon, I am currently collecting data on people’s judgments of choice, ability to choose differently, and moral responsibility using realistic scenarios. And early results strongly suggest that people are willing to say that an actor can make a choice and can be held morally responsible even in circumstances in which people are not willing to say that the actor could have chosen differently.



Additionally, Eddy Nahmias, Shane Reuter, and I are doing follow up work that attempts to extend the results Shane and I report in the AJOB Neuroscience paper. In this follow-up work, we are presenting people with various scenarios, all of which take cues from the exact sorts of cases that scientists like Coyne (and Sam Harris) claim are incompatible with the folk concept of choice and free will. Even though data collection is still in a relatively early stage, the results thus far unanimously disagree with Coyne’s claims regarding the folk concept of choice, free will, and responsibility.



All in all, as long as certain conditions are met (e.g., the actor wasn’t coerced or manipulated into acting, the actor’s reasoning capacities were working normally, etc.), people seem to be overwhelmingly comfortable with saying that an actor made a choice, that an actor acted freely, and that an actor is morally responsible even in scenarios in which the actor could not have chosen otherwise.



If this is right, then people’s view of free will, choice, and moral responsibility accords well with the compatibilist philosopher’s view of free will. Unfortunately, this also means that people’s view of free will does not accord well with the view of free will that Coyne attributes to them.



Coyne’s definition of free will appears to be so radically different from the way the folk understand free will that Coyne is no longer talking about free will; Coyne’s subject matter appears to be something else altogether.



Cite This Blog! (You know you want to.)

Shepard, J. (2012). Who is redefining free will? The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/09/who-is-redefining-free-will-response-to.html

Return of the Pedophilic Brain Tumor: Acquired versus Innate Pedophilia

Last week, Reuters carried a story by Kate Kelland about a pediatrician in Italy, Domenico Mattiello, accused of sexually abusing his patients.[1] His lawyers plan to present evidence that his pedophilic urges are the result of a brain tumor and argue that the judge in the case should be lenient. As the Reuter's story mentions, this case is very similar to a US case I blogged about a few months ago, where a 40 year old man suddenly developed pedophilic urges and had to be removed from his home.  The US case was presented at a medical conference, with very little discussion of criminal charges, while Mattiello's case is presented by Kelland as an extreme example of the sort of challenges neuroscience may bring to our understandings of criminal responsibility. I want to push back against this framing, and argue that a tumor such as this poses an interesting ethical question because it does not simply challenge ideas about criminal responsibility, but also serves as a good example of the different responses to "acquired" pedophilia and "innate" pedophilia.[2] 

A display of criminal brains from the era of biological criminality.

For many discussions about these cases, the newest article by Kelland included, a brain tumor that causes sexually criminal behavior functions as a limit test for neuroscience in the courtroom. It is only reasonable to ask ourselves, as a society, how far are we willing to extend lenience to someone who argues that a crime he or she committed was beyond his or her control, and thus we often employ limit tests to explore boundaries. Since sexual crimes against children are, for many people, the worst possible type of crimes,[3] questions about pedophilic behavior are a common test for ideas about criminal responsibility and mental illness.[4]  Mattiello's case is used in Kelland's article as a limit test for the "my brain made me do it" defense in this way. 

Another image from an era where criminals
were a sub-type of human being- this is a
directory of criminal types.
Image in the public domain.

But the idea of a brain tumor that causes sexual impulses is interesting because it serves as a limit test for our understandings of the intersection between mental health and sex crime. Sex crimes occupy a unique position within United States law not only because of the abhorrence of the crimes themselves but also because of the way sex crime law both relies on and rejects certain psychological ideas about mental illness (I have no idea how this is paralleled in Italy, but if anyone reading this does, please comment or email me because I would love to know.) Most of the rhetoric around sex offenders is that they are both incurable and untreatable, and often sex offenders are treated as irredeemably bad people rather than people who have done bad things. 



All discussions about sexual crimes, especially sexual crimes against children, that have occurred in the United States since the mid-1990s have taken place under the umbrella of what are known as "sexual predator" laws.[5]  According to the original legal definition, a sexual predator is someone who commits violent sexual crimes and suffers from a mental abnormality that makes it unlikely that he or she will stop doing so. The laws as they exist in the United States state that the mental abnormality does not have to be treatable, and, in fact, in many situations must necessarily be untreatable. This is largely due to the fact that the most common mental disorders diagnosed in this type of criminal have been things like pedophilia, paraphilia not otherwise specified, and anti-social personality disorders, all of which are extremely difficult to treat. 



In this context, the concept of a brain tumor which causes someone to commit sexual crimes also serves as a limit test for gauging moral reactions to a form of pedophilia that responds to medical treatment. Let me give a more concrete example of what I mean by moral reaction. Back in June, Dr. James Cantor wrote an opinion piece on CNN in response to the Sandusky trial titled "Do pedophiles deserve sympathy?" . Cantor argues for more comprehensive mental health care for people suffering from pedophilia based on a separation of the mental disorder of pedophilia from the criminal act of sexually abusing children. The idea is that although pedophilia is incurable, not all people who have pedophilia actually commit sexual crimes, and thus we could, and should, extend some measure of sympathy to people who suffer from pedophilic urges but do not commit crimes.

This is a brain tumor, but not one
of the featured tumors.

His entire argument rests on the immutability of pedophilia, as he says, on the idea that "no one has been able to find a way to change pedophiles into nonpedophiles." That is not the situation here. Both of the tumors in these cases were treatable. In the US case, the patient's behavior returned to normal after his tumor was removed (although it returned as the tumor regrew). Mattiello is currently undergoing cancer treatment, and doctors are still waiting to see if the removal of the tumor has changed his behavior patterns, although the actions of his lawyers indicate they are fairly hopeful this will be the case.



Now, I am not saying that these brain tumors prove all pedophilia is curable - far from it. The discovery of brain tumors that make people commit sex crimes could be seen as further evidence that sexual predators are fundamentally (or "biologically") different from non-predatory humans - perhaps because they have permanent issues in the portion of the brain where these tumors cause temporary ones.[6] This sort of trajectory would go right into the territory of essentialism, and Kristina Gupta and I have both blogged about the pitfalls encountered when sexual behavior is essentialised. 



Further, given the current state of sexual predator laws, I would bet a discovery such as this would only serve to bolster the quarantine that is already taking place. This is why when I read an article about how brain science is being mis-used to argue that pedophilic sex criminals are "not responsible," and which seems to indicate that lenience towards a man with a brain tumor such as this will lead towards letting sex criminals go free, I cannot help but be skeptical. All the laws we already have in place seem to indicate quite the opposite: that these types of criminals are not on the extreme edge of criminal behavior we imagine them to be, but are, in fact, in a category of their own. To me, this means using Mattiello's case as a limit test for the forensic use of neuroscience, as the Kelland's article for Reuters does, is a little misleading. While it seems entirely plausible that "my brain made me do it" might work as a defense for certain types of crimes, it might never fully excuse sexual crimes and crimes against children - but that doesn't mean it will not succeed fully. 



A case like Mattiello's, viewed through the lens of US law and culture, gives us a situation in which someone commits unforgiveable crimes due to what might otherwise be seen as a forgivable situation. It presents a limit case on the rights of people who commit these crimes to receive medical treatment. The ethical question presented by these particular brain tumors is not, 'Should we hold these men responsible in terms of legal guilt,' but rather, 'How does knowing about the cause of their medical cause help us to move towards real  empathetic solutions even while maintaining guilt?' 



Moving outward from these cases, I offer the following questions: Could an understanding based on treatability be extended to someone who commits sex crimes as a result of a medication, as was discussed a few months ago on the University of Oxford's Practical Ethics blog? What about to medical issues that are not as straightforward as brain tumors or medications, or disorders that are fully in the realm of psychology, with no attendant measurable neurological component? Could we, as Cantor urges we should, separate out an incurable disorder from a compulsion to commit criminal acts, even if those criminal acts are beyond the limits of forgiveness?







Want to cite this post?

Cipolla, C. (2012). Return of the Pedophilic Brain Tumor. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on

-->, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/09/return-of-pedophilic-brain-tumor.html

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[1] It is
impossible for me to talk about a pedophilic pediatrician without thinking of this
story.

[2] Although I am not focusing on it here, the original article does not really highlight that Italian law differs significantly from US law in very important areas when it comes to our understanding of criminal responsibility: Italian law does not follow the US idea of mens rea, use due process as the US defines it, or allow
for a jury trial, for starters. News articles that jump from one jurisdiction to another as if "responsibility" were defined the same within all criminal courts make me grumpy - much as cavalier uses of "lizard brain" do to David Nicholson.

[3] The innocence of children and the placement of violent crimes against children in an overall scale of "worst crimes to commit" are both culturally contingent and historically variable. See the work of Kathy Stuart and Tyge Krogh (an English version of Krogh's book is summarized here.)

[4]  Pedophilia is often cited as the major argument against re-instating the "control test" standard for a not guilty by reason of insanity plea - see Penney, S., Impulse control and criminal responsibility: Lessons from neuroscience. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 2012. 35(2): p. 99-103.

[5] These laws, which allow for civil commitment in some states and for lifetime surveillance in others, are designed to target what are perceived to be the worst types of sexual offenders: people who are compelled to seek out victims and cannot control this compulsion. Despite the fact that sexual predators are not necessarily pedophilic, the concept of the sexual predator is firmly linked to the victimization of children - the television show To Catch a Predator is a good example.

[6]Schleim, S., Brains in context in the neurolaw debate: The examples of free will and "dangerous" brains. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 2012. 35(2): p. 104-111.

  

Brain-Boosting or Pulp Fiction?

It comes as no surprise that pulling all-nighters comes with the territory of being an undergraduate. It is the price that most of my peers and I have paid at one time or another for trying to get more work completed before a fast-approaching deadline. The sleepless nights ramp up during finals week while the use of caffeine and energy drinks fuels our self-induced, sleep- deprived zombie states.

                                                We all do it: study zombies 

                                      (Credit: zombiesandtoys.blogspot.com)                                 

Usually, our energy drinks do not purport to have cognitive-enhancing effects. However the drink Nawgan claims to be “What to Drink when you want to Think.” The label of the can states that it is powered with Cognizin, free of caffeine, taurine, gluten, carbonation and under 40 calories with natural ingredients. Now whom would this cleverly-branded Nawgan drink not appea tol? And how can Nawgan boast such wonderful claims?

Pretty packaging, but...?

Credit: fitblogr.com

According to the Nawgan website, Nawgan was co-founded and created by neuropsychologist Dr. Robert Paul. Dr. Robert Paul’s day job is as an adjunct assistant professor at Brown University. To his credit, he has had several publications from his work on cognitive performance and cognitive decline in subjects who have dementia or in subjects taking anti-retroviral medication for HIV. Dr. Paul’s joined the energy beverage industry because he “decided it was time to stop advising companies what to do and simply do it [him]self and make sure it is done right.” But did he accomplish his goal? Do Nawgan and Cognizin work? Or are the claims more substantiated in the minds of consumers because an Ivy League neuroscientist created and branded the drink?

Nawgan’s key ingredient is Cognizin, which ostensibly increases the cognitive performance of the user. After doing a little research, I found that Cognizin is the brand name for citicoline, a precursor to a neuropeptide known to be a dopamine agonist.

Citoline

Credit:http://www.chemicalbook.com/ChemicalProductProperty_EN_CB1343597.html

Outside of the U.S., citicoline has been given to stroke patients in countries such as Japan and England. However citicoline has not been administered in the U.S. due to a lack of clinical data supporting its efficacy in providing long-term neuroprotection in phase III clinical trials.

The method of administration of any drug meant to reach the brain is critical, due to the blood-brain barrier’s role in insulating and protecting the brain from pathogens. One major issue with Nawgan’s cognitive enhancing claims  is citicoline’s chemical structure, which would prevent it from appreciably crossing the blood- brain barrier. In 2000, Wurtman et al. found that citicoline orally administered to humans was metabolized rapidly even before fully circulating in the body [1]. Yes, citicoline has approximately 100% bioavailability when taken orally; however, studies also show that only (0.5%) of the original dose is taken into the brain when citicholine is ingested (Secades et al 1995, Adibhatla et al 2002) [2]. Although citicoline has not been found to have any major side effects when taken short-term, the long-term effects of exogenous dosages of this compound are still not understood.

That said, Nawgan appears to have an effective marketing campaign. The target consumer of Nawgan isn’t the ischemic stroke patient or the person with Alzheimer’s. Nawgan is continuously sold and distributed on college campuses as a cognitive enhancer. In fact, on Emory’s campus, free samples of Nawgan were given during finals week. In 2011 Nawgan received a $3 million dollar investment from the Japanese beverage company Kirin Holdings, to expand its distribution in stores such Walgreens. With the rapid onslaught of neuro-enhancing products, we need better measures to protect the consumers. A scientifically unsophisticated public enticed by scientific jargon might be convinced by the scientific evidence provided on the Nawgan website. Additionally, some consumers might see the Vitamin B complexes and Vitamin E listed in the ingredients and not realize the health complications that could come with product overuse and think “the more the merrier.”

For an otherwise healthy person, I’m not convinced that Cognizin works in the manner that Nawgan has reported. As a scientist-in-training, I realize that the dosage and the method in which a drug is administered is often equally as important as the compound itself. In an article in Discover Magazine, Dr. Paul Wolpe, Director of the Emory Center for Ethics and Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience, expresses similar concern for consumers of beverages boasting neuro-enhancing properties - especially people that may have an underlying mental health condition.

The underlying issue at hand, then, is, “Why are we relying on energy drinks in the first place?” Even though a healthier solution might be to get a sound night’s sleep, there seems to be a certain appeal, perhaps especially amongst college students, to consume energy drinks and supplements is to keep us alert and focused. Sleep deprivation, stress, overexertion and poor nutrition are the real culprits to our fatigue and poor concentration.

Who, me?

Credit: http://www.everydaylifeandbalance.com/quick-tips-to-help-you-let-go-of-stress.html

Surveys show that Americans continue to cut back on sleep to prioritize work and other obligations. There is even a growing problem of ADHD medication abuse by women who feel the need to keep pace with the ever increasing demands of work and family, as well as college students who feel the pressure to have an edge over their fiercely competitive peers. In a society that devalues sleep for the sake of productivity, reliance on energy drinks and caffeine, and other substances can only increase. Yet, some individuals might ask, “why not encourage people to enhance their cognitive abilities?,” if doing so enhances their productivity and happiness in their daily lives, and their utility to society. Hypothetically, if a researcher were to develop a novel drug to cure multiple sclerosis, and did so with the aid of cognitive enhancers, is there anything wrong with that?

With such widespread use of enhancers, we have to wonder whether current governing bodies are keeping pace with regulating technological innovation. Obviously new discoveries in science are being made daily, and as neuroscience continues to advance, scientists and entrepreneurs alike will capitalize on and commercialize its information to the public. Although currently Nawgan likely does not provide the cognitive boosting abilities it reports to have, future biotechnological innovations may well provide the possibility of neuroenhancement beyond the effects of a cup of coffee.

Bioconservatives such as Dr. Leon Kass, of President Bush’s Bioethics Commission, hold the belief that enhancements of humans beyond therapeutic purposes can compromise the dignity of an individual and ultimately affect the welfare of humanity. Some might suggest that, in the process of utilizing drinks like Nawgan in order to feel more productive, students are dehumanizing themselves and even others. Other students might look to “enhanced” students as an example for how to balance work and family life, and strive for an ideal unattainable without the aid of the same or a similar cognitive/performance enhancement.  While some might say that an individuals should have the right and freedom to access any enhancer, the students’ use of the drinks like Nawgan might “un-level” the playing field and result in peer pressure for other students to follow suit.

Overall, I think that Nawgan does not deliver on its claims of being an effective neuroenhancer. Additionally, I believe that the messages advocated by this product and products like it are damaging to our views on health, wellness, and achievement. Until safe and effective neuroenhancements are produced and accessible to consumers, we will continue to wrestle with the consequences of maintaining habits that contribute to lack of sleep and alertness, including obesity, heart disease, and other co-morbid conditions. Sure, in the short-term, with the aid of energy drinks you might get through a hard day’s work, but then what? A chronic dependence on caffeine and Vitamin B12 shots? Ultimately changes in lifestyle habits such as sleep and a well-balanced diet offer sustainable and safe measures towards increased concentration and alertness. Yet for many, this advice will fall on deaf ears, if some of the benefits of sleep can be mimicked from contents in a can.

Want to cite this post? 

Shagarabi, S. (2012). Brain- Boosting or Pulp Fiction? The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/09/brain-boosting-or-pulp-fiction.html

References

[1] Wurtman RJ, Regan M, Ulus I, Yu L. 2000. Eftect of oral CDP-choline on plasma choline and uridine levels in humans. Biochem Pharmacol 60: 989–992.

[2] Rao Muralikrishna Adibhatla , Hatcher, J. F. and Dempsey, R. J. (2002), Citicoline: neuroprotective mechanisms in cerebral ischemia. Journal of Neurochemistry, 80: 12–23. doi: 10.1046/j.0022-3042.2001.00697.x

Snakes On a Brain, or, Why Care About Comparative Neuroanatomy (Vol.1)

Have you ever seen the movie “Snakes On A Plane”? It might have occurred to you that, in real life, Burmese Pythons and Scarlet Kingsnakes don’t act like the computer-animated cobras from the film. Now imagine how a herpetologist would feel while watching it. I’m sensing some anger, some exasperation, maybe even a little righteous indignation.



Once the herpetologist works through these feelings, s/he might do an interview to capitalize on the movie’s popularity and correct some misconceptions the public has about snakes. Or, I don’t know, teach a class for non-science majors called “Snakes On The Colorado Plains”. Or write a blog post about it. That’s what I’m attempting to do here, but it’s not a movie from 2006 that’s got me thinking about reptiles. What happened was, I heard a RadioLab podcast which used the phrase “reptile brain”.

With one glance at this amazing animated gif that I found on VibeDoc.com, I am able to understand the reptilian brain.

As I’ll describe in more detail below, it’s not uncommon for neuroscience stories in the popular press to make reference to the “reptilian brain”. What does this term mean? Supposedly, it’s the most ancient part of the brain, which stuck around even as the rest of our brains evolved so we could be better than all other species. I hope my tone makes it obvious that I don’t think that’s the best description of brain evolution. I blame my righteous indignation on all the time I spent as an undergrad thinking about comparative neuroanatomy; comparative neuroscientists are very sensitive about the way people describe brain evolution. You might think the subject merits as much anger as improperly-placed apostrophes, but I hope I can convince you that that’s not the case.



The episode of RadioLab dealt with a neurodegenerative disease, frontotemporal dementia. As usual, the RadioLab team told a great story, and snuck in some interesting science at the same time. One of the hosts, Jad Abumrad, spoke with Bruce Miller, the neurologist who treated the patient described in the episode. Dr.Miller has clearly advanced treatment of neurogenerative diseases, and is an authority on frontotemporal dementia in particular (I like to research the important people that I write nasty blog posts about.) He pointed out that a “drive to repeat happens very early in the course of [the] illness”. Then he went on to outline his theory for why such obsessive-compulsive behaviors are associated with frontotemporal dementia. I don’t know for sure what Dr.Miller actually said, since Abumrad handled almost all the dumbing down of the multisyllabic science talk. Abumrad explained that, as the disease proceeds, neurons in the frontal lobes die, and they stop inhibiting other circuits in the brain. One of the areas thought to be modulated by frontal cortex is the basal ganglia, “this very ancient part of our brains” which Abumrad says you can call “our reptile brain”. If, as Miller said, the basal ganglia mainly execute “motor programs that we do repetitively every day”, then it would make sense that these repetitive actions increase as the frontal lobes stop modulating their activity.



It was at this point that Abumrad said that “birds and snakes get along with basically just this part of the brain". As someone with a background in bird brains, I reacted to this comment by emitting the following noise: "Aarrrgh!"



Hey, dudes! A recent revolution in avian neuroanatomy [1] confirms that birds have just as much basal ganglia as we do—no more, no less. They don’t have as much neocortex—the wrinkly, layered neural tissue that we think makes us so smart—but there’s still plenty of brain sitting on top of the avian basal ganglia. And they can do plenty with all that extra brain. Comparative cognition has made a cottage industry out of showing that birds are in many ways just as smart, and in some ways smarter, than we are [2]. They use tools! They recognize themselves in mirrors (unlike your stupid cat)! They can differentiate individual grad students (unlike some professors)! And songbirds—which are perhaps the most successful group, evolutionarily speaking—learn their songs from tutors, much like we learn language from our parents. Let’s see your dog do that.

(I'm not sure if Snowball the cockatoo's appreciation of the Backstreet Boys provides evidence for or against the theory that bird brains are basically just basal ganglia.) 

Please don't think I'm attacking Bruce Miller and Jad Abumrad, though. What I am actually attacking is the Triune Brain Theory. When I hear someone use the phrase “reptilian brain”, I am almost positive that somewhere, somehow, the Triune Brain Theory got involved. It's a great theory. Basically, it says that the human brain is just a snake brain, with a mouse brain on top of that, and then on top of all that, the magical new brain parts that make us human, and thus superior to all other species.

The Triune Brain Theory, as proposed by Paul MacLean

The Triune Brain theory has also been shown to be completely wrong by comparative neuroanatomists [3]. And yet people continue to repeat it, probably because it aligns so well with our intuitions about what sets us apart from other animals.

To understand why the Triune Brain theory is flawed, let's consider the reptilian brain. Here's two reasons why it does not exist: (1) Reptile brains follow the same basic “floor plan” as ours. In fact, the brains of almost all vertebrates follow this same layout. Lizard cortex might not have six sexy layers like ours does, but it's definitely there, looking all layered and stuff, and sitting right at the top of the brain like ours [4]. (And data from molecular biology strongly supports the idea that, across species, cortex arises from the same tissue during development [5]). And anyways, (2) the basal ganglia were around long before any Komodo dragons were lounging on Australian shores during the Pleistocene (i.e., before animals left the water.) In fact, we now know that pretty much everything we can identify in our own basal ganglia can be found in the basal ganglia of the sole surviving species of one the most ancient vertebrate lineages, the lamprey [6].

I can't see anyone blaming addiction or frontotemporal dementia on a takeover of our behavior by "our lamprey brain" any time soon though. It just doesn't have the same ring to it. Apparently, we want to believe that, deep down, we are snakes.

 

I could go on and on about the many ways in which the Triune Brain theory gets used and abused. It gets trotted out for educational books over and over again. It provides filler for lots of woo-filled alternative medicine websites.

Again, I’m not arguing that theories about obsessive-compulsive disorder or addiction are mistaken. Years of research show that these disorders do involve the basal ganglia. I’m arguing that, by relying on a disproven theory of evolution to explain how the brain works, those who act as interpreters of neuroscience are doing a disservice to the communities they serve. If you are a neuroscientist, doctor, or journalist, and you find yourself thinking that birds and snakes represent a shorthand way to explain brain function, please think again. There's no reason why we can't make the real story just as compelling. Our brains are not as different from other vertebrates as we might at first think. That means that, yes, we actually can learn a lot by studying the brains of other species, in spite of what some animal rights activists might tell you. (We’ve also learned much by studying invertebrates, but that’s the subject of another blog post.) There are also important differences we should keep in mind. For example, rats have a six-layered neocortex, just like us, but they don't have much in the way of pre-frontal cortex [7], the region that we think governs planning and other complex cognitive processes. These differences, seen in the context of the many similarities in brains across species, imply that we stand a good chance of figuring out what sets us apart from other animals.

There are plenty of other examples of how our current view of brain evolution gets lost in translation to the popular press, but I'll have to stop here. I also realize that ethical issues arise when we acknowledge that the brains of other species are so similar to our own, and I’d like to discuss those in a future post. Right now, though, I have to lecture a complete stranger sitting next to me that just called someone a “bird brain”.

Want to cite this post?


Nicholson, D. (2012). Snakes On a Brain, or, Why Care About Comparative Neuroanatomy (vol.1). The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/09/snakes-on-brain-or-why-care-about.html

References

[1] Jarvis, E., et al. (2005). Avian brains and a new understanding of vertebrate brain evolution.

[2] Shimizu, T.
(2009). Why Can Birds Be So Smart? Background, Significance, and
Implications of the Revised View of the Avian Brain. Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews, Vol. 4: 103-115.

[3] Northcutt, R.G. Evolution of the Telencephalon in Nonmammals. Ann. Review Neuro., Vol. 4: 301-350.

 [4] Butler, A.B. (1994). The evolution of the dorsal pallium in the telencephalon of amniotes: Cladistic analysis and a new hypothesis. Brain Research Reviews, Vol.19: 1, 66-101.

[5] Fernandez, A.S, et al. (1998). Expression of the Emx-1 and Dlx-1 homeobox genes define three molecularly distinct domains in the telencephalon of mouse, chick, turtle and frog embryos: implications for the evolution of telencephalic subdivisions in amniotes. Development. 125: 2099-211.

[6] Wullimann, M.F. (2011). Basal Ganglia: Insights into Origins from Lamprey Brains. Current Biology, Vol.21: 13, R497-R500

[7] Preuss, T.M. (1995) Do Rats Have Prefrontal Cortex? The Rose-Woolsey-Akert Program Reconsidered. J. Cog. Neuro., Vol.

7:1,
1-24.

Further Reading:

Principles of Brain Evolution. Georg F. Streidter. 2005.

Thanks to Tadd Patton for helpful comments and additional citations