200th Post! Why is Neurodiversity Useful?

Neurodiversity is a term that was coined by Australian social scientist and autism advocate Judy Singer. In her 1998 thesis, she wrote: “For me, the key significance of the ‘Autistic Spectrum’ lies in its call for and anticipation of a politics of Neurological Diversity, or what I want to call ‘Neurodiversity.’ The ‘Neurologically Different’ represent a new addition to the familiar political categories of class/gender/race and will augment the insights of the social model of disability.”[1] Similar to the way biodiversity is discussed as critical to the stability of the ecosystem, neurodiversity is considered to be critical for human and cultural stability. In other words, Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and other neurological differences should be a part of our community and, thus, neither cured nor subject to intense rehabilitative or normalizing efforts. Before I discuss how neurodiversity is useful to my work and to ASD-related professions, I want to quickly review ASD and my current project for the Neuroethics Scholar Program.

Source: Cafe Press

ASD is traditionally defined as a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects a person’s social and communicative style and includes frequent displays of specific behavioral patterns.[2] There is a huge range of autistic expression, from significantly impaired to subtle displays of autistic characteristics. As the Neuroethics Scholar at Emory’s Center for Ethics, I am working on a project at the Marcus Autism Center exploring how to communicate the results of future infant screeners for ASD to parents. This project was described in The Neuroethics Blog on October 1, 2013. A neurodiverse perspective informs my work in two important ways: shaping the language I use to talk about ASD and ensuring I maintain a focus on the quality of life for ASD individuals and their families. I believe that neurodiversity can be similarly important for all professionals working with and studying ASD or related disabilities.

In American civil rights movements, there has always been a linguistic focus—people pay attention to the ways individuals with different racial, gender, sexual, and ethnic identities are labeled and described. This language changes over time, becoming more appropriate and representative. The disability rights movement also works to change the way disability is spoken about. Neurodiversity is a part of this movement, and so advocates are thinking about and promoting respectful ways to talk about ASD and related disabilities. As a whole, the disability community argues for the use of a language of difference, not deficit. For ASD, this means saying individuals have different social interaction styles, rather than “deficits in social communication and social interaction,” or prefer adhering to a specific routine, rather than “inflexible adherence to routines.” The statements communicate the same thing, however the latter is linguistically demeaning and suggests autistic people are broken or somehow less than those who are not autistic.

My use of the phrase ‘autistic people’ is also informed by neurodiversity. In the field of disability studies, there is an ongoing conversation about the use or nonuse of ‘people first language.’[4] This approach attempts to verbally demonstrate that a person is more important than the disability by using phrases such as ‘person with a disability’ or ‘person with autism,’ thus rejecting the notion that a disability subsumes a person’s entire identity. This inaccuracy is most pronounced in phrases like ‘an autistic’ or ‘autistics.’ However, there are many self-advocates who prefer the use of the term ‘autistic person’ (and also ‘disabled person’) because autism is a central element to identity formation and the phrase ‘people with autism’ seems to serve as a reminder to others that autistic people are, in fact, people. As a result of many interactions and conversations with friends and colleagues who are autistic self-advocates, I now rely primarily on ‘autistic people’ with the understanding that this phrase is meant to respect the identity of autism. 

Source: Zazzle

In this way, neurodiversity draws attention to the ways we describe autistic people that serves to stigmatize and separate this community from the non-autistic community. Eradicating this stigma by focusing on the improvement of the lives of autistic individuals rather than finding cures for or rehabilitating autism as a primary tenet of neurodiversity. This is a fairly controversial topic in the ASD community. Many parents believe that neurodiversity fails to account for autistic children who are significantly impaired. Working towards acceptance, they argue, does not help them or their children who are significantly impaired and may be engaging in self-harm, difficult to communicate with, or having persistent sleep or eating difficulties. These parents want to find ways to alleviate the most significant autistic characteristics because they and their children are living stressful and exhausting lives.

I argue that neurodiversity is useful for these families as well. Neurodiversity does not promote allowing children to continually harm themselves or families to go without sleep for days out of respect for the neurological difference of the child. Neurodiversity means improving the quality of life for autistic people and their families. An autistic person who has not developed a reliable communication method, verbal or otherwise, would benefit from learning how to get her preferences, needs, and emotions expressed. This often does involve educational techniques and interventions. Similarly, some autistic people want to work on their social skills with explicit social skill instruction. This, however, does not mean that all autistic people should be subject to intense social skill instruction regardless of their desire to make and keep friendships.

Focusing on the quality of life of autistic individuals and their families does not mean leaving them alone until the surrounding community develops a more tolerant and accommodative environment. It means discovering ways to ensure that the autistic individual has a primary role in his life decisions. It means ensuring autistic individuals are employed in environments that respect and utilize their differences and skills. It means setting up school and adult environments where autistic individuals can thrive, feel comfortable, and learn. It means finding ways to support families and caregivers of autistic children and adults so that they can focus on loving and supporting the autistic people in their lives, rather than the frustrations of finding and fighting for appropriate and supportive services and environments. 

For my current project, relying on neurodiversity will result in suggestions to ensure that telling parents about the possibility of a later autism diagnosis is done in a supportive and realistic manner. This includes not suggesting that the introduction of autism into their lives will destroy the family that they want or expect and that information about ASD is provided using language that is respectful of autistic people and their families. This information should be provided in a reciprocal, ongoing dialogue about the future of a child and the family that answers caregiver questions and directs them towards useful resources and services for both the child and entire family.

For me and my work, neurodiversity means working towards a community that respects and interacts with autistic people and people with intellectual and developmental differences. But it also means that, while working towards this goal, researchers, clinicians, and educators can and should focus on developing immediate and sustainable ways to improve the qualities of life of autistic people and their families. Neurodiversity should be presented to professionals, parents, and the public as an alternative narrative about ASD that could supplement the more medically-oriented, cure-focused way of thinking about ASD. Thinking through these approaches is where neuroethics, bioethics, and neurodiversity can come together. Although the approaches seem contrastive, there is an important common ground—that of ensuring autistic individuals and their families lead fulfilling, rewarding, and uncomplicated lives.

[1] Singer, Judy. (1998) Odd people in: The birth of community amongst people on the "Autism Spectrum". A personal exploration of a new social movement based on Neurological Diversity. Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, University of Technology, Sydney. 

[2] American Psychiatric Association. (2013) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Shapiro, Joseph P. (1993) No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Suggested Resources:

1. Armstrong, Thomas. (2010) Neurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Brain Differences. Cambridge: Da Capo Press.

2. Autistic Self Advocacy Network: http://autisticadvocacy.org/

3. Disability Studies Quartetly Special Topic: Autism and the Concept of Neurodiversity (open source): http://dsq-sds.org/issue/view/43.

4. Jaarsma, P & Welin S (2011) Autism as natural human variation: Reflections on the claims of the neurodiversity movement. Health Care Analysis, 20(1): 20-30.

5. Kapp S, Gillespie-Lynch, K, Sherman, LE, & Hutman, T. (2013) Deficit, difference of both? Autism and neurodiversity. Developmental Psychology, 49(1): 59-71.

6. Nazeer, Kamran. (2006) Send in the Idiots : Growing Up in Another World. Bloomsbury: Trade Paper.

7. Neurodiversity Weblog: http://www.neurodiversity.com/main.html

8. Saverese, Ralph. (2007) Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption. New York: Other Press.

Want to Cite This Post? 



Sarrett, J. (2013). Why is Neurodiversity Useful? The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2013/12/why-is-neurodiversity-useful.html

It's Complicated: Molly Crocket and Patricia Churchland Discuss the Future of the Neuroscience of Morality

Last month, as a recipient of the Emory Neuroethics Program Neuroethics Travel Award, I had the wonderful opportunity of attending the International Neuroethics Society Annual Meeting in San Diego, California. The conference brought together leading neuroethics scholars from around the world and focused on the themes of moral enhancement, disorders of consciousness, and the role of neuroscience in the courtroom. (The conference was structured around three star-studded panels. For a full program, please visit here. For full videos of the panels, please visit here.) There were also five oral presentations and a poster session. As part of the event, I exhibited a poster entitled “Revising Weakness of Will: A Reply to Neil Levy,” where I challenged Levy’s use of the theory of ego depletion as an explanation of weakness of will and provided an alternate, neurocomputational account.

Presenting my poster at INS.

Photo credit: Karen Rommelfanger

As a philosopher interested in the intersection of the computational neurosciences and morality, “The Science and Ethics of Moral Enhancement” session was a particularly enlightening one for me. It brought together three leading women neuroethics scholars, Barbara Sahakian (as Moderator), Molly Crockett, and Patricia Churchland, as well as neuroethicist Julian Savulescu of the Oxford University Center for Neuroethics. It was a remarkable conversation. Throughout their discussions and even in the question period that followed, I was struck by how clearheaded the panelists were about the challenges facing the field. At the same time, and despite their very different perspectives, they evidently shared a real optimism about the future of this area of research. As the session moderator, neuroscientist and neuroethicist Barbara Sahakian of Cambridge University set the tone by explaining that the panelists would tackle, “the science of what’s possible now,” but also look at “what we may be able to do in the future.”





A Morality Pill?

Molly Crockett

The first panelist, Molly Crockett, is a leading neuroscientist working at the University College London and the University of Zurich. She is also in the process of setting up a lab at Oxford University. She explained that, as a scientist, the aim of her presentation would be to describe, “What it’s like, on the ground, doing this research.” In particular, she focused on how own area of expertise, which is in exploring how different brain chemicals influence moral behavior.



To start off, she emphasized, “It’s complicated.” She described how, in light of her work on the neurotransmitter serotonin, people often ask her about the possibility of a morality pill. She explained that she often feels compelled to point out that both the moral behaviors in question and the biological systems underlying them are very complex. For example, she noted, her research on serotonin and sociality was picked up in the media in such as away as to suggest that “Enhanced serotonin biases moral judgment and decision-making toward sociality.” While not necessarily inaccurate, she explained, she also wanted to make clear that there is a lot more going on.



In her talk, Crockett laid out three major reasons for why she believed a straightforward ‘science of moral enhancement’ would not happen overnight. First, she noted, there is ongoing discussion as to exactly what constitutes ‘moral behavior,’ and hence, what it is exactly that we would want to enhance if we could. Second, she detailed how that all the neurochemicals in question do many different things: oxytocin may enhance empathy, for instance, but also increase Schadenfreude in individuals participating in economic games.



Finally, Crockett emphasized that moral behavior is highly context-specific. For example, it is not clear that we would want to be helpful to anyone we meet, wherever or whenever. There is a technical term for this kind of individual, she noted: “Sucker.” The audience loved the joke but also certainly appreciated the point. Like cognition, morality is so complex that it cannot simply be replicated in specific circumstances.



In her own efforts to study morality, Crockett noted, she found it useful to hone in what she called “low-hanging fruits,” that is, on behaviors that almost no one would find to be morally objectionable. As an example of such a behavior, she discussed Peter Singer's dilemma regarding the duty of easy rescue, where an agent passes a drowning child and decides whether to help or not. "These are a set of behaviors we would want to target if we could," she noted.



'Before Going Whole Hog'

Patricia Churchland discusses oxytocin

The second panelist, philosopher Patricia Churchland, is Professor Emerita of the Department of Philosophy University of California San Diego. Like Crockett, Churchland emphasized that she was skeptical of the idea of a ‘morality pill’ and argued against the claim that morality could be something like a “swiss army knife” set of moral modules. But she proposed to tackle the issue from a slightly different perspective, proposing to examine some of troubling issues surrounding the frequently touted molecule of oxytocin.



Oxytocin is known to play an important role in childbirth, lactation, intimacy, pair bonding, and trust. In a recent study, researchers at Yale argued that “intranasal administration of oxytocin enhances activity in the brain for socially meaningful stimuli and attenuates its response to nonsocially meaningful stimuli in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as measured via functional MRI.” But, Churchland argued, the issue is not so simple.



To start, Churchland outlined some general problems with oxytocin and its recent popularity in both scientific research and the popular press. Its mechanisms are relatively poorly understood, it interacts with other neurochemicals, it makes female voles go into estrous, and there is very little known about the long term effects of its administration. In addition, she added, the general and unregulated availability of oxytocin makes it vulnerable to abuse. Nonetheless, the problems go even deeper for Churchland. The main body of her talk emphasized that how oxytocin is administered and measured in human beings plays a surprising role in how the molecule becomes understood, reported, and used by scientists in the field.



In human beings, oxytocin is measured by comparing levels of the molecule before and after a behavioral manipulation. For example, a plasma sample is taken, the participant is given a massage, and then a second plasma sample is taken. Researchers then compare oxytocin levels to examine the effect of the manipulation. But how is oxytocin measured in these kinds of studies? Churchland explained there are two standard ways to look at plasma and measure oxytocin. She described the first method as the ‘gold standard,’ using a radioimmunoassay to “tag the thing in question” on extracted, highly purified samples. By contrast, the second method is commercially available and relies on a much easier-to-use enzyme-linked immunoassay (EIA). But it has the disadvantage of often not producing accurate results.



In a recent paper, Michael McCullough, Churchland, and Armando Mendez compared the two kinds of assays. In addition, they tested the commercial kits independently and found that that were misidentifying all kinds of molecules as oxytocin, including vasopressin. This led them to argue that the EIAs “lack reliability when used on unextracted samples of human fluids, and that they tag molecules in addition to oxytocin, yielding estimates that are wildly discrepant with an extensive body of earlier findings that were obtained using methods that are well validated, but more laborious.”  Building on this finding, Churchland showed a rather striking comparison of data. One the one hand, she she showed how, using the ‘gold standard’ radioimmunoassay, women in late stages of labor register between 1-5 pc/ml of oxytocin in their plasma. By contrast, using the commercial kits, individuals who had merely received a massage appeared to have 200 times as much oxytocin in their blood. Despite these shortcomings, however, Churchland noted that the results achieved using EIAs are “widely cited and widely used in good faith to apply oxytocin to children with social difficulties.”



Here, Churchland made clear the ethical import of what earlier on she had acknowledged was a rather ‘technical’ talk. She noted, “if the way you’re measuring oxytocin is unreliable, you have results that are un-interpretable, then you have to ask yourself if it’s okay to be giving oxytocin to people with schizophrenia or with autism.” And then she added, “What we really need to do, before going whole hog on using oxytocin as a treatment for socially difficult children, is we really need to get this straight.”



In her conclusion, Churchland acknowledged that her talk may have sounded rather negative and, in general, a little bit too pessimistic about the neuroscience of morality. To counter this, she emphasized, “I think it can be done.” But she emphasized that it must be done with patience and care for those involved all along the way.



All in all, in was an enlightening experience. I’m already looking forward to the 2014 International Neuroethics Society meeting in Washington, DC!

Want to Cite This Post? 



Hass, J. (2013). It's Complicated: Molly Crocket and Patricia Churchland Discuss the Future of the Neuroscience of Morality. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2013/12/its-complicated-molly-crocket-and.html

Bias in the Academy Video Archive of Presymposium Seminars

Neuroethics Symposium December 10, 2013

Bias in the Academy: From Neural Networks to Social Networks

 

This neuroethics symposia is designed to discuss the complex influence of stereotype/bias on academia and apply advances in the science of stereotype bias to university policies and practices. Through a pre-symposia seminar series and symposia, a white paper will be produced to highlight challenges and to put forth practical solutions to move toward mitigating the detrimental influence of bias and stereotyping in academia.  

Presymposia seminar series 1/4: An Introduction to Bias: A Social Network Primer facilitated by Jacob Billings, Neuroscience graduate student, Emory University 

Presymposia seminar series 2/4: Biased People or Biased Researchers: A puzzle for Social Psychology facilitated by Chris Martin, Sociology graduate student, Emory University 

 

Presymposia seminar series 3/4: A Look at Power Structures and Bias in Academic Settings facilitated by Roger Sikes

 

Presymposia seminar series 4/4: Operationalizing the Research on Bias: Faculty Hiring and Recruitment Processes, facilitated by Dona Yarbrough, PhD, Vice Provost for Community and Diversity, Emory University

 
 

Disclaimer: 



Titles and institutional affiliation for individuals who contribute to
these seminar series are for identification purposes only. The opinions expressed
are solely those of the speakers (facilitators or audience members) and do not represent the views
of any organization that the speaker is affiliated with or with the
opinions of any other author who publishes on this blog. The material
contained on these videos represent the personal views of the individual speakers and do not necessarily represent the views of any organization
that any speaker is affiliated with or with the views of any other author
who might post on this blog. 

Neuroethics Journal Club: Neural Correlates of Negative Stereotype

Our everyday perceptions of others
can potentially be biased by cultural stereotypes. However, research has
suggested that an initial, and often negative, stereotype can be downregulated
via a highly connected neural network. While this regulatory process has been studied
under neutral conditions, for the third journal club of the semester
Neuroscience graduate student Kim Lang led a discussion about regulation of
this neural network when White individuals are not under neutral conditions,
but actually primed for negative African American stereotyping.




A recent paper published by Forbes et al. used functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex (PFC),
and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), three highly interconnected brain regions
important for stereotyping and bias. Studies have shown that the amygdala,
involved in arousal, is activated immediately when encountering a so-called
out-group member. This first response can be downregulated though if an
individual is given time for non-biased deliberation, and this is reflected by
activation in the PFC. The OFC is the regulator of these two neural regions,
especially if initial negative stereotyping is in conflict with an egalitarian
view. Prior research has shown this amygdala inhibition by the lateral PFC
region with an experiment where White participants were shown Black faces in
either rapid succession (30 ms) or at a slower rate (525 ms). When participants
did not have time to reflect on the faces during the fast exposure speeds,
enhanced amygdala activation was observed reflecting the early arousing
response. During the slow exposure time condition though, amygdala activity was
not enhanced.  Instead, increased activity
was observed in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which correlates
with decreased amygdala activation (Cunningham et al.). This study suggests that if given enough time, a biased
view reflected in the activation of the amygdala, can be reconsidered.

Adapted from The Jury Expert

The authors of the paper for
journal club discussion (Forbes et al.)
took this previous experiment further and studied the activation of the
amygdala when White participants were exposed to Black faces at either 30 ms or
525 ms in the presence of violent and misogynistic rap (VMR) to create a
situation that is primed for negative African American stereotyping. While
evidence shows that individuals are able to downregulate the initial arousal
and response to stereotypes, researchers hypothesized that if stereotypical or
suggestive music were playing, then individuals would be less likely to downregulate
the response even if given ample time to consider the situation. In other words,
during the slow showing of Black faces in the presence of VMR, White
participants would show a prolonged amygdala response instead of a downregulation.  “Straight Outta Compton”
by NWA was rated high by participants and chosen as the song to represent Black
American stereotyping in the study. To prime for negative stereotyping, but not
African American stereotyping, participants were also asked to rate a death
metal (DM) song, since this genre of music is typically associated with White
American culture. “Only
One” by Slipknot was chosen based on a similarity in tempo and violent
references to “Straight Outta Compton.” Participants were then shown
expressionless Black and White male faces at either the fast (30 ms) or the
slow (525 ms) rate while listening to VMR, DM, or no music (NM) while the fMRI
scans were completed. After the scanning, participants were asked general
questions regarding their feelings toward the song, whether they owned any of
the songs (no participants did), and how they rated themselves on the Modern
Racism Scale³ and the Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice
Scale⁴.




Based on the responses to the two
rating systems, participants reported being non-prejudiced and motivated to
regulate their biases, and the fMRI scans of the amygdala during the slow scan
with NM reflected this. Consistent with previous work (Cunningham et al.), when participants were exposed
to the faces at the fast rate, amygdala activation was observed and during the
slow speed, OFC and DLPFC activation was recorded. When participants were
exposed to Black and White faces at the fast speed in the presence of DM, no
activation at the amygdala, OFC, or the DLPFC was observed. Similar to NM, at
the slow speed during DM, activation of the OFC and DLPFC regions was still
greater when seeing the Black faces compared to White faces, suggesting that
participants were still engaging in a deeper processing of the Black faces. The
focus of the hypothesis was the activation of brain regions in participants
when VMR was playing. As predicted, when Black faces were displayed during the
fast exposure, greater amygdala activation was observed compared to White faces.
During the slow speed, participants still showed higher amygdala activity when
seeing Black faces compared to White faces, but also increased OFC and DLPFC
activation.




When comparing results across the
two types of music and the context with no music, greater amygdala activation
was seen during the fast and slow exposures for VMR than for NM and DM. As
expected, greater DLPFC activity was seen for the fast and slow exposures for
NM and DM compared to VMR. Interestingly, when exposed to the fast speed,
greater OFC activation was seen for VMR compared to NM and DM. However, during
the slow speed exposure, the opposite was observed, and greater OFC activity
was seen for NM and DM compared to VMR. These findings suggest that not only is
there a continuum of neural processing during slow and fast social cognitive
assessments, but the lack of downregulation in the amygdala during the fast and
slow speed exposure for VMR is evidence that although White individuals can control
an initial, arousing reaction to a Black individual in a neutral context, this
is more difficult when the situation lends itself to negative stereotyping. The
authors offer two possible interpretations for this lack of downregulation in
the VMR scenario. Either exposure to the VMR causes a prolonged amygdala
response that is cognitively taxing on other neural regions, making it
difficult to control a response or the VMR justifies the initial response and
reinforces that stereotype.

From Forbes et al.

Whether a situation that is primed
for negative stereotyping makes deliberation more cognitively taxing or
justifies an initial stereotype, brain activation isn’t predictive for
behavioral responses since similar activation patterns in individuals do not
always give rise to similar behaviors. Although this study was more
representative of everyday circumstances than the previous study with neutral
conditions, it would be interesting to measure the neural activity of
individuals when encountering situations that prime for negative
stereotypes.  Even if there is typically
a lack of amygdala downregulation, does this mean that individuals still
behaviorally restrain themselves?




A second experiment that was
discussed during journal club as a potential follow-up to this paper would be
to repeat the fast and slow exposures of Black faces during the three different
musical contexts, but with Black participants instead of White participants.
“Straight Outta Compton” is not subtle, but instead overtly violent and
misogynistic, and it could be that people
of all races would have an arousing response in the amygdala that would be
difficult to regulate strictly due to the nature of the lyrics – not because
the song stereotypes African American culture. Of course it is a matter of
opinion whether “Only One” really mimics “Straight Outta Compton,” or whether
“Straight Outta Compton” is truly violent and misogynistic, so the experiments
could be repeated with more and different songs to help confirm the hypothesis
that “when something as subtle as a rap song is played in the background,”
White individuals negatively stereotype Black Americans (Forbes et al.).




More research will most likely be
done in the future, but these results do have larger implications to consider for
society today. Knowing that even in tolerant individuals with an egalitarian
viewpoint the amygdala is activated and can be difficult to downregulate, does
this mean that neural activation would justify racial violence, especially in a
court case? Should defense attorneys ever be able to claim that this activity
in a context that primes for negative stereotyping is a valid defense for a
violent or egregious crime against an out-group member? As neuroscience
research becomes more sophisticated, more debates will follow about where we
draw the line for allowing scientific research as evidence in the courtroom and
when we must hold the individual solely responsible. In the meantime, hopefully
when encountering an out-group member, we will consider that negative
stereotypical contexts may prime us for negative stereotyping due to a complex
neural interaction that is somewhat out of our control. If we are conscious
that we have difficulties mediating initial responses, perhaps more conscious tolerance
and reflection could follow a circumstance where an initial judgment seems
justified based on contextual cues.






References

1. 
   Forbes, C.E., Cox, C.L., Schmader, T., Ryan, L.
   (2011). Negative stereotype activation alters interaction between neural
   correlates of arousal, inhibition and cognitive control. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7, 771.
   




2. 
   Cunningham,
   W.A., Johnson, M.K., Raye, C.L., Gatenby, J.C., Gore, J.C., Banaji, M.R.
   (2004). Separable neural components in the processing of Black and White faces. Psychological Science, 15, 806–13.
   




3. 
   McConahay,
   J.B. (1986). Modern racism, ambivalence, and the modern racism scale. In:
   Dovidio, J.F., Gaertner, S.L., editors. Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism (pp. 91–125). Orlando,
   FL: Academic Press.
   




4. 
   Plant,
   E.A., Devine, P.G. (1998). Internal and external motivation to respond without
   prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 811–32. 

Want to cite this post?



Strong, K. (2013). Neuroethics Journal Club: Neural Correlates of Negative Stereotype. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2013/12/neuroethics-journal-club-neural.html

Just Neurons?

Neuroessentialism is the belief that you, your mind, your identity, are essentially just your brain. It gets touted as an example of how science has triumphed, once again, over superstitions of the past - your soul hasn't died, it was just an illusion! Created by the brain. With memory, sensation, speech, and just about every other human attribute found to be located in one gyrus or another, it seems like there isn't anything left that could be outside of the brain. Francis Crick referred to this as the “astonishing hypothesis[1],” and while Stephen Pinker pointed out that for most neuroscientists this idea hardly warranted much astonishment[2], what might be more astonishing is how quickly the idea is bleeding out of the laboratory into popular media.  The basic philosophical foundations of this notion have been around for a long time (as mentioned on the [highly entertaining] podcast “very bad wizards,” we've known for a long time that when you remove the head, the mind ceases to function. Grant Gillet mentions that even Aristotle held that the mind emerges as function of the body, rather than a separate spiritual entity that somehow inhabits the body).  However, the recent attention that neuroscience has been getting (especially with the advent of fMRI, which enabled a huge number of studies on healthy, awake humans) appears to have made this an easier pill for the public at large to swallow. Dr. Peter Reiner has even gone as far to document the rise of neuroessentialism and has begun to map out the potential positive and negative effects of this cultural shift[3].

A distant relative of the brain-in-a-vat: the brain-in-a-hat.  "I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. Therefore, it is the brain I must consider." A very neuroessentialist sentiment of Sherlock Homes, in The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Image from here.

With the rise of any sort of public awareness, we should expect there to be reactionaries who warn us about going too far with our new idea and neuroessentialism is no different. Rather than defending old arguments in the face of overwhelming experimental evidence, these thinkers instead point cautiously forward and advise us to make our claims about the mind carefully, rather than jump on the neuro-bandwagon.  I'd like to display two of these recent, anti-essentialist thinkers here.  Both argue what might be considered further expansions of Clark and Chalmers' extended mind hypothesis[4]--which itself argued that pen & paper, computers, (and today, cell phones) could all be considered as vital components of cognitive processes, and thus as part of the mind.   

Walter Glannon, in his 2009 Neuroethics article "Our Brains are Not Us" tackles the problem of what he calls "neuroreductionism"- which with all the talk about scientific reductionism going on, certainly sounds worse than innocent "neuroessentialism."  The position that Glannon takes against this neuroreductionism is referred to as "the distributed mind." The basic premise is to say that the mind is a result of the interaction between brain, body and environment, rather than just the result of neural activity.  At first glance, this claim (like the extended mind hypothesis itself) might seem like a licentious redefinition of the term 'mind.'  However, Glannon motivates this shift in focus, to see the mind as embodied (being situated in a body) and embedded (being situated in a vast physical, social, and at times adversarial environment), by suggesting that such an expanded view of the mind allows for a broader view of what might affect the health of that mind.  If we become too focused on the brain, we lose sight of the fact that the rest of the body, as well as the environment, can also be a place where mental health-affirming interventions take place.  Examples of this might be environmental changes in dealing with addiction, or the ability of psychotherapy to cause physical changes in the brain.

Glannon's argument for this shift towards a distributed mind is broken into two sections.  The first, to situate the mind as embodied, can be thought of as following Antonio Damasio's Somatic Marker Hypothesis[6].  The principle here is that many mental states, most notably many emotions, emerge through an interaction between the brain and body.  Likewise, there are a host of transactions between the brain and the rest of the body that affect mood and cognition, such as those mediated by the endocrine system (think of a life without adrenaline), the immune system (remember how groggy you feel when sick), and the proprioceptive sense (try to imagine life with tentacles rather than bony arms).

Thus, the famed "brain in a vat" thought experiment wouldn't be able to have emotions in any sense familiar to you or me, unless it was connected to a carefully simulated body.  While one might argue that such a simulation would simply be part of the simulated 'world' that this brain resides in, one should consider whether the human mind is more defined by human emotions (a capacity of the joint body and brain), or the ability to process visual information (a capacity of the brain).  In viewing the mind as the accumulation of many capacities, the skull becomes a much less authoritative bound on the physical implementation of the mind.

XKCD's take on neuroessentialism.  Comic by Randal Munroe, from here.

Once Glannon's mind has seeped out of the skull and permeated the rest of the body, it becomes much easier to envision it wafting through the pores and out into the world at large.  Glannon's point here is that the meaning of an experience is tied to the physical and social situation in which it occurred, not just to the brain states that represent it.  The claims related to this point are a bit contentious, however.  Glannon claims that information gleaned from brain imaging could never recreate a remembered scene, or identify how that memory influenced the person, or describe other subjective, qualitative aspects of that experience.  While this is, for the most part, true regarding the current generation of brain scanners (remember the 'dream imaging' technique that hit the news in 2011, 2 years after Glannon's paper?), in principle the information necessary for at least a qualitative description of these aspects of experience should be present in the physical brain (how else could we talk about such memories, long after the event has passed?).  Some advanced brain-interrogation device might thus be able to infer from the structure of the brain the speech it might produce when asked questions of the subjective nature discussed by Glannon, or even find subtle associations between potential stimuli (a strong connection between brain regions responsible for mounting a fear response, and parts of the olfactory cortex that deal heavily with garlic, for instance) that wouldn't necessarily be consciously available to the speaker. Glannon is apparently pointing to a different aspect of subjectivity, however, as he very clearly asserts that "Neuroimaging cannot read minds because the mind is not located in the brain."

Grant Gillett, in his 2009 article "The Subjective Brain, Identity, and Neuroethics," takes a very different approach to expanding the mind out from the brain.  Gillett starts from Aristotle to provide a definition for what makes one "human"- which Aristotle defined as a rational, social being.  This definition importantly includes both a physical aspect-the being itself, as well as a narrative aspect- the rational, social life of this being.  Thus, any sort of discussion about a person's mind cannot be divorced from the story of how that mind interacts with the world, and thus must include the physical, social, cultural, geographical relationships that the mind participates in (a list which Gillett includes under Husserl's term "the human life-world").  In Gillett's own words, “...for a neo-Aristotelian, the human psyche (soul) is neither a ghostly or spiritual inner core of a human being nor is it comprehensible in the language of physical objects, biology, and causal relationships yet it is (pun intended) the soul of ethics and therefore of fundamental importance for neuroethics.”  

The implications of this view are surprisingly far-reaching. Instead of thinking of how the brain orchestrates our experience, Gillett's language places the brain in the somewhat more passive role of being molded or inscribed by our experience of the world, by our story as a character in that world. This affirms the notion of an individual brain, whose response to physical interventions (such as stimulation, surgery, etc) depends on how this story has shaped the brain. Gillet then illustrates the power of this way of thinking by using it to reframe several neuroethical dilemmas, ranging from the rights of human embryos, patients with disorders of consciousness, the utility of the notion of 'free will,' the otherwise nonsensical notion of "fighting against one's damaged brain," and the effect of neurodegenerative diseases on human identity.  

Both Glannon and Gillett provide alternative conceptions to the "brain first" view of the human mind and identity that is held by the neuroessentialist position, without resorting to the arguments that neuroessentialism explicitly refutes (such as dualism). While these views might seem somewhat alien and even intrusive to those of us steeped in neuroessentialist thought (those of us studying neurons in culture, for instance, might be a little indignant at the implication for the human meaning of our work), I think that they may also help to cushion the shock of a culture that is just beginning to come to grips with the implications of neuroscience by reminding us that no matter what neuroscientists may tell you about your brain, you still have a great deal more than that making up your mind.  

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Zeller-Townson, RT. (2013). Just Neurons? The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2013/09/just-neurons.html

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References



[1]Crick, Francis. Astonishing hypothesis: The scientific search for the soul. Scribner, 1995.

[2]Pinker, Steven. "The mystery of consciousness." Time Magazine 29 (2007): 55-70.

[3]Reiner, Peter B. "The rise of neuroessentialism." Oxford handbook of neuroethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2010): 161-175.

[4] Clark, Andy, and David Chalmers. "The extended mind." analysis 58.1 (1998): 7-19.

[5] Glannon, Walter. "Our brains are not us." Bioethics 23.6 (2009): 321-329.

[6] Damasio, Antonio. Descartes' error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. Penguin. com, 2005.

[7] Gillett, Grant R. "The subjective brain, identity, and neuroethics." The American Journal of Bioethics 9.9 (2009): 5-13.

Neuroethics Journal Club: Sexual Fantasies and Gender/Sex

In May of 2013, The
New York Times Magazine published an article
discussing the ongoing clinical trials of a unique new drug that caught the
interest of Emory University neuroscience graduate student Mallory Bowers. The drug, dubbed “Lybrido”, was being tested
for its ability to improve sexual desire in women.  However, Lybrido is not just a female
Viagra-like formulation.  That is
apparently one part of it but the other, perhaps more surprising part, is the
pill’s testosterone coating that is designed to melt away immediately in the
mouth. To better understand how testosterone (T) could modulate female desire,
and to discuss the neuroethical implications of pharmaceutically targeting it,
Ms. Bowers chose a recent paper in the Journal of Sex Research by Goldey et al. entitled “Sexual Fantasies and
Gender/Sex: A Multimethod Approach with Quantitative Content Analysis and
Hormonal Responses” for the second Neuroethics Journal Club of the year. 

In the present study, Sari van Anders’s group at the
University of Michigan designed experiments to dissect the gender differences
in testosterone’s role in sexual behavior, which has not been well-understood.  Although men have much higher levels of T, it
is secreted by the adrenal glands in both men and women.  Similarly, men have comparable levels of
circulating estradiol (E₂) to women despite that hormone being
typically associated with the female reproductive cycle.  However, according to van Anders, the
available evidence suggests that while E₂ and T are both associated
with intimacy, E₂ is more related to nurturing behavior whereas T is
more closely linked to explicit sexuality. In this study, van Anders’s group explored
these potential differences by quantifying the nurturing and explicit sexual
content of volunteers’ fantasies accompanied by hormonal measures.




The Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds (S/P Theory), as
presented by van Anders in a recent review¹,
is explained through an evolutionary perspective: explicit sexual contexts,
which support reproduction, increase T but nurturant contexts, which support
parent-offspring bonds perhaps at the energetic expense of further
reproduction, decrease T (in men). 
However, van Anders argues that social contexts strongly impact T
responses as well: men are socially discouraged from excessive nurturing and
women are socially discouraged from being overly sexual.  It is thought that perhaps due to their lower
baseline levels, women may be more sensitive to small changes in circulating
levels of T², and van Anders
hypothesized that levels of T might be differentially modulated by the content
of sexual fantasies in men and women.




In previous studies, T has been observed to increase most
consistently in the context of sexuality for physical pleasure in men and women,
but nurturing behavior has been associated with lower T in men³.  The same group found that sexual fantasy
increases T in women⁴ but not men⁵ and the authors
reasoned that sexual fantasies likely include thoughts of nurturing behaviors
in addition to those of an explicitly sexual nature which, according to S/P
Theory, would give a mixed signal in terms of T and could explain gender
differences.  These observations and
others have led van Anders to propose S/P Theory to better explain how these
hormones, in conjunction with the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin,
influence social and sexual behaviors in men and women.

The Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds (van Anders et al.)

The study by Goldey et al. was designed to determine whether
fantasy content differs between genders and if the frequency of nurturing or
sexual content predicts hormonal responses. The authors report a significant
negative correlation specifically in men between change in T and frequency of
nurturant content in fantasies.  Essentially, the men who included less
nurturing images in their fantasies had larger increases in salivary T during
the test.  This was an expected result
and supports van Anders’s S/P Theory. 
However, the group also unexpectedly found no overall difference in the
amount of explicit sexual or nurturing content between male and female
fantasies.  The authors, as well as our
journal club group, thought that this might result from the volunteers being
mostly young undergraduate psychology students who are not necessarily
representative of even Western society at-large.  Moreover, it was suggested that relationship
status and history could strongly impact fantasy content and conceivably the
hormonal response to it.  An analysis of
any relationship between these variables might have been very interesting
though the sample size in this particular study might not have provided enough
statistical power to detect differences.  




So how does an individual’s hormonal profile impact fantasy
content and how do fantasies affect hormonal fluctuations?  There is still quite a lot to learn, but as exemplified by the makers of Lybrido and other potential female
libido-boosters, the impact of this research reaches well beyond academic
journal clubs and the neuroethical considerations are significant.  Another approach that this group could have
taken – which likely would have extended these findings – would be to dose
participants with placebo, T, or E₂ and then quantify sexual fantasy
narratives under each of these three conditions.  It would be very interesting to see if T and
E₂ differentially modulate narrative content in men and women but,
even if that is the case, should this be a pharmaceutical target?  Both Viagra and Lybrido essentially aim for
the same effect but the latter affects brain function as well as blood
flow.  But is lack of sexual desire
really a mood disorder or, is any uneasiness about the prospect of a female
libido-enhancer simply the result of our society being less comfortable with
women wanting to improve their sex lives? 
These questions are clearly beyond the scope of Goldey’s paper but may
be important to discuss for future basic science and clinical research.




An innovative aspect of van Anders’s study was the
integration of individual narratives as well as biological measures.  As the authors point out, biological measures
are often thought to be more valid than qualitative analyses.  In this case the narratives provided a very
useful context to understand the hormonal data and this approach will likely be
useful in future studies.  To some, the
idea of a single pill to modulate a complex mood may be offensively
reductionist but van Anders’s multi-method approach offers the possibility to
better understand the nuances of the reciprocal relationship between hormonal
fluctuations and sexual attitudes.  One
near-certainty is that a drug like Lybrido will reach the market soon and so in
the meantime, and beyond, studies and discussions such as these should
continue.






For more on Dr. van Anders check out this 2012 interview
on The Neuroethics Blog.






References

1. 
   van Anders, S. M., Goldey, K. L. & Kuo, P. X. The Steroid/Peptide Theory of
   Social Bonds: integrating testosterone and peptide responses for classifying
   social behavioral contexts. Psychoneuroendocrinology
   36, 1265-1275,
   doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2011.06.001 (2011).




2. 
   Sherwin,
   B. B. A Comparative-Analysis of the Role of Androgen in Human Male and Female
   Sexual Behavior - Behavioral Specificity, Critical Thresholds, and Sensitivity.
   Psychobiology 16, 416-425 (1988).
   




3. 
   S.M. van
   Anders, K. L. G., P.X. Kuo. The steroid/peptide theory of social bonds:
   Integrating testosterone and peptide responses for classifying social
   behavioral contexts. . Psychoneuroendocrinology,
   1265-1275 (2011).
   




4. 
   Goldey,
   K. L. & van Anders, S. M. Sexy thoughts: effects of sexual cognitions on
   testosterone, cortisol, and arousal in women. Hormones and behavior 59,
   754-764, doi:10.1016/j.yhbeh.2010.12.005 (2011).
   




5. 
   Goldey,
   K. L. & van Anders, S. M. Sexual thoughts: links to testosterone and
   cortisol in men. Archives of sexual
   behavior 41, 1461-1470,
   doi:10.1007/s10508-011-9858-6 (2012). 

Want to cite this post?




Ryan, P. (2013). Neuroethics Journal Club: Sexual Fantasies and Gender/Sex. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2013/11/neuroethics-journal-club-sexual.html

The Future of Law and Neuroscience: An Interview with Owen Jones, The Director of the MacArthur Research Network on Law and Neuroscience

After watching the PBS “Brains on Trial” special that featured innovative brain imaging technologies and examined the subsequent implications for the legal field, I decided to take a deeper look at the status of current neuroscience research and the future ramifications for the emerging field of neurolaw. To that end, I interviewed Professor Owen Jones. Owen Jones currently directs the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience taking the lead in crafting a conceptual framework, which seeks to define and outline many of the legal issues surrounding recent neuroscientific findings. Jones also designed, created, and now directs the Law and Neuroscience Research Network, an unprecedented interdisciplinary effort that has called upon scholars from a myriad of areas for the purpose of examining how neuroscience can inform legal decisions in criminal contexts.



The MacArthur Foundation has made great strides in helping to organize numerous neurolaw conferences as well as establishing a critical framework for evaluating neuroscientific evidence in the courtroom. What do you foresee as the biggest limitations as the research group moves forward into the second phase of research of the Law and Neuroscience program? 



The MacArthur Foundation has provided much-needed funding support to help the criminal justice system engage with rapid advances in the neuroscience of law-relevant decision-making.  The Law and Neuroscience Project (2007-2011), directed by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga, represented a very significant and large-scale effort to explore this interdisciplinary frontier, and to begin the important processes of separating wheat from chaff, navigating between the promise and the perils, and conducting cutting-edge research to define the boundaries of usefulness.  The  Research Network on Law and Neuroscience (2011- 2014), which I have the honor to direct, represents a related but distinct next step: to explore a narrower subset of issues in greater depth.  In both cases, Dr. Gazzaniga and I have had the good fortune to have terrifically smart and skilled colleagues – in both law and in neuroscience – working together to fulfill a common mission. Significant limitations include: the cultural differences between the two fields; the different knowledge bases, assumptions, and methods; and the challenges of navigating the fine line between undue hope and undue skepticism.  The apparent enthusiasm – of both lawyers and the general public – for using neuroscience in law provides its own challenges, as that enthusiasm is sometimes premature or misplaced.  Having said that, some at the opposite end of the spectrum are perhaps too pessimistic, either about what the technology can reveal or about society’s ability to draw legitimate and balanced conclusions.  Perhaps the biggest challenge, however, is endemic to all scientific work that has potentially important social implications: how do you do meticulously careful and scientifically valid work that will be properly interpreted and legitimately used?  In the Research Network, we ask ourselves this constantly.  And it informs our entire process – from identifying researchable questions to designing experiments with the best chances of providing useful information.



Some individuals question whether neuroscientific evidence will alter the way in which legal decisions are made. To help others understand how the emerging field of neurolaw may change legal practices, could you give a situation in which neuroscientific evidence may be critical to determining culpability or punishment?



That’s a good question.  I think the answer must be: there is no such thing as science that is critically important to any legal issue, all by itself.  Whether or not something can be and should be deemed critically important, in the context of criminal culpability and punishment, necessarily depends on social and legal values, not just on scientific facts.  Some see this initially as counter-intuitive.  But it’s a consequence of the fact that society assigns science and law very different roles to play.  Neuroscience – like any science – can often offer facts that the legal system may choose to consider relevant and important or not, depending on the net of the costs and benefits of using that information.  For example, science can sometimes help us understand whether a person who committed a violent crime was more likely to be violent than the average member of the population.  And that can be useful to know, when thinking about the probability of recidivism, for example.  But science cannot tell us whether or not the criminal justice system should punish a violence-prone person less (because he faces more trouble with self-control than others do, and therefore seems morally less culpable) or should instead punish such a person more (because he is more likely to be dangerous again in the future, putting the population at greater risk).  The key point is that new forms of knowledge – such as non-invasive, high-resolution brain images – do not and cannot come neatly packaged with instructions on what their legal significance is.  The significance of neuroscience to criminal justice depends not only on the specific context (liability versus sentencing phases, for example), but also on the nature of the inferences jurors and judges are asked to draw, on the nature of other available evidence, and the like.



Phase 1 did not attempt to provide prescriptive solutions to some pressing ethical questions regarding neurotechnologies. Do you foresee the MacArthur Project evolving its focus from discussing descriptive problems with neurotechnologies to researching ways in which lie detection could be admissible in a courtroom setting?



We are a diverse team of researchers, committed to remaining agenda-free.  We are not on a mission to increase or to decrease the use of neuroscience in any particular domain.  We are instead trying, among other things, to help the legal system decide how to weigh different forms of neuroscientific evidence, which can lead to a variety of possible conclusions, some more scientifically or legally sound than others.   

  

As a future law student interested in neuroscience, I was quite intrigued by Vanderbilt Law School’s classes focused on juvenile justice, neuroscience and law, and neuroimaging. Do you think that other law schools will begin to adapt similar curriculums?



I certainly hope so!  After co-teaching with neuroscientist Jeffrey Schall the interdepartmental course “Law and Neuroscience” several times, we, along with Francis Shen, have a forthcoming coursebook that we hope will inspire law colleagues and law students, as well as faculty and students in other graduate and undergraduate fields – such as neuroscience, philosophy, biology & society, and the like – to recognize key neurolaw issues and grapple with how best to understand and resolve them.  Although people tend to think first about the implications of neuroscience for culpability in the criminal context, there are in fact a wide variety of ways in which – for better or for worse – neuroscience and law currently intersect.  These include such things as: the use of neuroimaging in support of claims for disability benefits; invocations of neuroscience in policy debates over brain death or abortions; concerns over cognitive enhancement technologies (whether through drugs or brain-machine interfaces); debates over the potential for brain imaging techniques to identify lies; the use of drugs to dampen traumatic memories; understanding the behavioral effects of non-concussive head traumas; using neuroscientific techniques to understand how punishment decisions are made; using neuroscience to better understand and evaluate law-relevant memories and testimony; and the like. 



How can future law students immerse themselves in this material to prepare themselves for future infusion of neuroscience into the courtroom?



As you might expect, our first advice is: buy (or borrow) the book when it is published in early 2014.  (Interested students can learn more about the book online at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lawbrain.)  Our hope is that the book not only informs, but also provokes serious reflection and critical thinking on what the limits of usefulness are, where the best opportunities lie, and how to know the difference.  We are altogether uncertain what the optimal amount of neuroscience in the courtroom is.  But we are certain that lawyers are increasingly offering neuroscientific evidence, for better or worse.  And therefore judges, lawyers, and policy-makers need to know enough about what neuroscience does and does not (and can and cannot) say to responsibly engage with the evidence – either by explaining why it may be useful, or by revealing where, and why, it isn’t.  We also encourage both students and anyone interested in these topics to join the Research Network’s “Neurolaw News” email listserv, through which we regularly announce new publications, job postings, conference listings, and the like. You can subscribe online through our Network website at: http://www.lawneuro.org/.

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Marshall, J. (2013). The Future of Law and Neuroscience: An Interview with Owen Jones, The Director of the MacArthur Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2013/11/the-future-of-law-and-neuroscience.html