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/.

Want to cite this post?



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

Now Available! Bias in the Academy Pre-Symposium Series Archives on YouTube

This year's Neuroethics Symposia, a partnership of Emory's Neuroscience Graduate Program, Laney Graduate School and the Emory Center for Ethics Neuroethics Program, 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.



The first of four pre-symposium seminars was led by neuroscience graduate student, Jacob Billings.  The video of this seminar is available below.

An Introduction to Bias: A Social Network Primer 

Jacob Billings, Neuroscience graduate student, Emory University 

Stay tuned for more videos! The next seminar series will be led by Chris Martin, a sociology graduate student at Emory University. He discussion is entitled, "Biased People or Biased Researchers? A Puzzle in Social Psychology." 




Find us on Facebook and Twitter #biasintheacademy. 

Experimental Neuroethics

By Peter Reiner, VMD, PhD



Dr. Reiner is Professor in the National Core for Neuroethics, a member of the Kinsmen Laboratory of Neurological Research, Department of Psychiatry and the Brain Research Centre at the University of British Columbia, and a member of the AJOB Neuroscience Editorial Board.



Four years ago, Neil Levy gave the concluding lecture at the first Brain
Matters conference in Halifax. He alerted the audience of neuroethicists to the
fact that the field of philosophy was undergoing a revolution – rather than muse
from their armchairs in the ivory tower, a group of renegade philosophers were
carrying out real experiments, asking people what their intuitions were about central
issues in philosophy. Dubbed experimental
philosophy, the new initiative was met with more than passing resistance
from traditional philosophers. The apostate experimental philosophers responded
by developing a logo of a burning armchair.

Photo credit: Timothy Epp, Shutterstock

The landmark experiment was carried out by Josh Knobe, and its findings
subsequently became known as the Knobe effect (you can watch a great recreation
of the phenomenon in this
YouTube video). Essentially, what Josh did was repurpose an old method from
social psychology called the contrastive vignette technique (CVT)¹. At its simplest, the CVT
involves designing a pair of vignettes that carefully describe a particular situation
(in the case of experimental philosophy, one that is often morally charged) but
crucially differ in one detail, hence the term contrastive. Respondents see one
and only one version of the vignette, and are then asked questions about what
they have just read, with responses commonly recorded as a numerical rating on
a Likert scale. By comparing the averaged responses between separate groups of
people who have read the vignettes, the experimenter can systematically investigate
the effects of small changes (of which the respondents are entirely unaware)
upon attitudes towards nearly any topic. The experimental philosophers tend to
use the technique to explore the meaning of concepts. Neil Levy pointed out
that this same approach could, in principle, be applied to the full range of
issues in neuroethics.




Neil’s presentation struck me like a thunderbolt. I had come to the field of neuroethics with a background in cellular and molecular biology, and had spent much of my career as a card-carrying reductionist: as a graduate student in the 1980’s, I championed the then-novel technique of recording from single neurons in freely moving animals, and as a postdoc I moved on to the better controlled (if less naturalistic) technique of patch clamp analysis of identified neurons in slices of brains. My subsequent rise through the ranks of academia was one in which I applied quantitative rigor to every question that I asked, and in the circles in which I traveled, this was lauded as the ultimate way to provide reproducible (and by inference, meaningful) results. I saw at once that the CVT opened the door towards doing something similar in the field of neuroethics.




My research group at the National Core for Neuroethics has embraced the use of contrastive vignettes wholeheartedly, and with a nod to the experimental philosophy camp, we call the approach Experimental Neuroethics. The team is applying the technique to a range of issues in contemporary neuroethics, probably best exemplified by our recent publications exploring public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement² as well as the acceptability of overt and covert nudges³.




If the vignettes appear simple, I can assure you that properly crafting them is hard work. We begin with a carefully considered hypothesis and regularly find that the hypothesis morphs substantially (usually into something much more insightful) as the process unfolds. We then compose two or more contrastive vignettes, working hard to have the vignettes as minimally contrastive as possible (one word differences between vignettes is the ultimate goal, but this is often not feasible). Finally, we develop questions; we like to have the wording of the questions always be identical irrespective of the contrastive nature of the vignette.

Filming a vignette (Source)

Then the real fun begins. After a day or two, we assemble as a team and attack our previous work. Inevitably, we find it wanting in some respect. Sometimes, embarrassingly so. We find it best to begin by asking whether the vignette and the questions directly address the hypothesis. Sometimes that means that the hypothesis changes. Nearly always, that means that the vignette changes. This process is repeated again and again, over days and weeks and sometimes months (yes, and even sometimes years!) until we have a set of vignettes that get to the heart of the matter.




At some point late in the process we carry out cognitive pre-testing. This involves sharing the vignette and the questions with someone who has no particular expert knowledge (friends of friends are likely culprits), and debriefing them about what they read. We are sometimes amazed to find that what we intended for people to glean from a vignette is at odds with their reading of the vignette. That sends us back to the drawing board.




We also run some metrics to determine whether the words we have used are
understandable by a general audience. We use online readability tests such as this
one to establish the educational level required for understanding the
vignette; our goal is that no more than a high school education is required. Finally,
we launch the survey, recruiting respondents from amongst the thousands of
people who have signed up on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk – they’re more
representative of the real population and aren’t as blatantly WEIRD as typical
undergraduate samples. And then we hold our breath.



Once the data is analyzed, we get mired once again in deep discussion. For it is not just the quantitative aspect of Experimental Neuroethics that is satisfying (to me), but also that the data gives us an entirely new benchmark for engaging in the process of wide reflective equilibrium. Throughout this process we remain aware that an ought can not derive from is, but having the data at hand, our version of ought is very much informed by the is. Ultimately, our data emerge in concert with our normative insights, and then one more advantage of Experimental Neuroethics is realized: it is easy for others to replicate our experiments, or even to improve them by taking our vignettes and modifying them to further test their own. This iterative process of replication, critique, and systematic modification has proven to be a robust strategy for advancing insights into the nature of biological and physical phenomena. Only time will tell whether Experimental Neuroethics catches fire in our discipline as it has in the field of philosophy (where it remains controversial). If it does, we can trace it back to Neil’s presentation in Halifax….





Cross posted on Neuroethics at the Core

References



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2. Fitz NS, Nadler R, Manogaran P, Chong EWJ, Reiner PB. Public attitudes toward cognitive enhancement. Neuroethics. 2013 doi: 10.1007/s12152-013-9190-z.



3.Felsen G, Castelo N, Reiner PB. Decisional enhancement and autonomy: public attitudes towards overt and covert nudges. Judgment and Decision Making. 2013;8(3):202–13.





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Reiner, P. (2013). Experimental Neuroethics. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2013/11/experimental-neuroethics_2.html.