Dr. Johnson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Bioethics in the Department of Humanities at Michigan Technological University. Her work in neuroethics focuses on disorders of consciousness and sport-related neurotrauma. She has published several articles on concussions in youth football and hockey, as well as on the ethics of return-to-play protocols in youth and professional football.
This post is the first of several that will recap and offer perspectives on the conversations and debates that took place at the recent 2015 International Neuroethics Society meeting.
At the International Neuroethics Society annual meeting in Chicago this month, Nita Farahany and a panel from the Football Players Health Study at Harvard University (FHPS) headlined the public talk “Is professional football safe? Can it be made safer?” The panel declined to provide direct answers to these important questions, but the short answers are “No,” and “Not by much,” respectively.
In recent years, there has been much public concern about the impact of football and other neurotraumatic sports on the brains of athletes. The neuroethics community has been somewhat slow in picking up sport-related concussion and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) as topics of neuroethical concern. Public and media concern have been fueled by reports stating that the brains of deceased athletes show evidence of the distinctive tauopathy of CTE, attributed by researchers like Bennet Omalu (who described the first case in a retired football player in 2005) and Ann C. McKee (Boston University) to brain trauma sustained while playing sports. To date, there have been approximately 150 documented cases of CTE, and an exceptionally high number of the brains examined by Omalu, McKee, and colleagues have been positive for the characteristic tau depositions.
Of course, there is selection bias in neuropathological case studies, since few retired athletes donate their brains to research after death. Neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone of the FPHS was openly dismissive of the existing CTE research during his brief discussion of it, criticizing the work as woefully underpowered. The existing science is worth little, Pascal-Leone told the audience, implying that the current alarm about the neurological effects of football-related brain trauma is premature, and probably overblown.
The speakers commented that there are some 15,000 retired, living NFL players—a small, elite group—and the FPHS is attempting to recruit 10,000 of them for its studies. Funded by the National Football League’s Players’ Union, the FPHS proposes to tackle whole lifespan player health through population studies to assess the scope of health problems experienced by retired players, pilot studies to develop interventions, and a law and ethics component that outlines ethical principles important to considerations of player health and is sensitive to the unique conflicts of interest in professional sports. Only some of the work being done by the FPHS addresses brain trauma and its effects on athlete health—that part of their work was, of course, of most interest to the neuroethicists assembled for the meeting, but it received scant attention from the panel. Judging by the questions from the audience, they mostly had brain trauma on their minds as well.
Moderator Nita Farahany and panel members Alvaro Pascual-Leone, I. Glenn Cohen, and Damien Richardson (pictured from left to right).
Concussion and neurotrauma in professional football are the subjects of much neuroscientific activity, but the bigger problem, briefly alluded to by law professor I. Glenn Cohen, is not what happens to adult, professional athletes, but to the large number of junior and amateur players. While there are millions of high school football players in the United States, only several thousands of these players continue to play at the college level, and an even smaller fraction go on to play in the professional ranks. This fall, seven US high football players have already died, most of them due to head trauma-related injuries. The majority of reported concussions in the US occur in high school football players, while the impact of all that head trauma remains largely unknown and understudied. Damien Richardson, a former NFL player, and now a doctor and advisor to the FPHS, discussed his own long path to the pros while sitting on the panel, beginning with Pop Warner football when he was a kid, through high school and college ball. When asked if he thought pro football was safe, he demurred, but explained that knowing what he knows now, he would still play, but would play differently than he did.
Richardson emphasized the need for change in professional football, change that would trickle down to influence the next generation of players coming up through the ranks. That model of top-down change has been endorsed by the NFL as well, but there is already evidence of bottom-up change, with greater attention to and concern about safety leading to fewer kids playing football, and opting for other sports instead. For many young athletes and their parents, there’s no longer any question about the safety of football.
Want to cite this post?
Johnson, LSM. (2015). INS RECAP: Is professional football safe? Can it be made safer? The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2015/10/ins-recap-is-professional-football-safe.html
Dr. Reiner is Professor and co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics, at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Reiner began his academic career studying the cellular and molecular physiology of the brain, and in 1998, Dr. Reiner became President and CEO of Active Pass Pharmaceuticals, a drug discovery company that he founded to tackle the scourge of Alzheimer's disease. Upon returning to academic life in 2004, Dr. Reiner refocused his scholarly work in the area of neuroethics. He is also an AJOB Neuroscience board member.
In 1890, Samuel Warren and his law partner Louis Brandeis published what has become one of the most influential essays in the history of US law. Entitled The Right to Privacy [1], the article is notable for outlining the legal principles that protect privacy of thought. But it is not just their suggestions about privacy that are illuminating – it is their insight into the ways that law has changed over historical time scales that makes the paper such a classic. In very early times, they write, “the law gave a remedy only for physical interference with life and property...[and] liberty meant freedom from actual restraint.” Over time, as society began to recognize the value of the inner life of individuals, the right to life came to mean the right to enjoy life; protection of corporeal property expanded to include the products of the mind, such as literature and art, trademarks and copyrights. In a passage that resonates remarkably well with the modern experience, they point out that the time was nigh for the law to respond to changes in technology.
Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual …the right “to be let alone”. Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops."
The notion that privacy is problematic in a world dominated by instant communication is hardly new: as long ago as 1999, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNeally famously stated “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”[2] This early sentiment on the invasiveness of technology has been borne out in chilling fashion with revelations that governments and corporations extensively monitor internet and cell phone use. It seems to me that the time is right to consider the proposition that continued changes in technology – in particular with respect to the life of the mind – require that we revisit the contours of the issue known as privacy of thought.
An important starting point is the extended mind hypothesis[3], the idea that cognition extends beyond the brain into the world at large. One example from the original paper - the case of Otto and Inga – illustrates the issue quite nicely. Inga hears about an exhibition at a museum that she recalls is on 53rd Street and sets off to see the artwork. Her neighbor Otto has dementia and so has made a practice of storing important information in a small notebook that he carries with him. When he hears of the exhibition, he consults his notebook, finds that the museum is on 53rd Street and, just like Inga, sets off for the same destination. Thus the cognitive function of storing information is mediated by the brain in one case and pen and paper in the other.
The claims of the extended mind hypothesis are radical: going beyond suggesting that human cognition relies on external structures for scaffolding and support, the extended mind thesis suggests that the physical vehicles that realize (at least some of) our cognitive processes lie outside of the bounds of the skull. Yet the concept resonates with a key feature of modern life: for many, there is a growing sense that computers, smartphones, and increasingly ‘the internet of things’ function as sophisticated extensions of our cognitive toolkit[4]. Conceiving of the mind as a blend between brain and algorithm challenges long-held assertions that there is something exceptional about the brain[5], but one ignores reality at one’s peril. Of late, I have begun to refer to the entire suite of algorithmic agents as "Technologies of the Extended Mind."
If we return to the question of privacy and situate the discussion in the context of a worldview that considers "Technologies of the Extended Mind" as a growing reality, we see that there is some new and interesting terrain to explore. It is well-known that both breaches and oversharing of our digital information has grown from the occasional to an everyday event. But if "Technologies of the Extended Mind" really are extensions of our cognitive toolkits, at some point the ability of others (governments, corporations, employers, friends, hackers, and more) to glimpse this information crosses the line from being a run-of-the-mill invasion of privacy to a more worrisome intrusion upon privacy of thought. Defining this dividing line – even if it turns out to be a fuzzy boundary – is an important challenge for neuroethical discourse.
The fundamental insight of Warren and Brandeis – that changes in technology require us to at least revisit if not update our moral norms – is as relevant today as it was 125 years ago.
REFERENCES
1. Warren, S. D. & Brandeis, L. D. The Right to Privacy. Harvard Law Review 4, 193 (1890).
2. Sprenger, P. Sun on Privacy: “Get Over It." Wired News (1999).
3. Clark, A. & Chalmers, D. The extended mind. Analysis 58, 7–19 (1998).
4. Pew Research Center. Digital Life in 2025. 1–61 (2014) at http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/03/11/digital-life-in-2025/
5. Reiner, P. B. The rise of neuroessentialism. in: Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics (eds. Illes, J. & Sahakian, B. J.) 161–175 (Oxford University Press, 2011).
It is my pleasure to present you with our first edition of The Neuroethics Blog reader. This reader includes some of the most popular posts on the site and highlights our junior talent.
While the blog showcases cutting-edge debates in neuroethics, it also serves as a mechanism for mentoring junior scholars and students and providing them with exciting opportunities to have their pieces featured alongside established scholars in the field. In addition, the blog allows for community building, inviting scholars from multiple disciplines to participate. Our contributors have included individuals at various levels of education from fields such as law, neuroscience, engineering, psychology, English, medicine, philosophy, women’s studies, and religion, to name a few. Each blog post is a collaborative process, read and edited numerous times by the editorial leadership in partnership with the author.
We aim to continue to mentor and deliver quality posts that serve to cultivate not only our neuroethics academic community, but also members of the public who may be cultivating their own interests in neuroethics. Whether for direct applications in your profession or simply to understand the world in which we live, we hope the blog will help you navigate the implications of new neurotechnologies and explore what is knowable about the human brain.
At this time, I'd like to thank our amazing editorial team including Lindsey Grubbs (Managing Editor), Carlie Hoffman (Editor of this reader), Ryan Purcell, and Katie Strong. I'd also like to highlight our previous Managing Editors Dr. Julia Haas and Julia Marshall who have since graduated and are continuing their scholarship in neuroethics, as well as Jonah Queen who was there from the very beginning. Stay tuned for more great things from this group along with all of our talented contributors.
Thank you for taking the time to embark on this journey with us and please enjoy this reader!
P.S. If you are lucky enough to find yourself at the International Neuroethics Society conference this Oct 15-16, we will have limited printed copies available. Just look for folks wearing the "Ask Me About AJOB Neuroscience" buttons.
An intellectually diverse and opinionated crowd gathered recently for the most recent Neuroethics and Neuroscience in the News journal club at Emory University—“Your brain on movies: Implications for national security.” The discussion was one of the liveliest I've seen in the years I've been attending these events, which is perhaps not surprising: the talk touched on high-profile issues like neuromarketing (which is controversial enough that it has been banned in France since 2011) and military funding for neuroscience.
The seminar was led by Dr. Eric Schumacher, Associate Professor of Psychology at Georgia Tech, director of the Georgia State University/Georgia Tech Center for Advanced Brain Imaging, and principle investigator of CoNTRoL—Cognitive Neuroscience at Tech Research Laboratory. Currently, the lab investigates task-oriented cognition, as well as the relationship between film narratives and “transportation” (colloquially, the sense of “getting lost” in a story), which is a complex cognitive puzzle involving attention, memory, and emotion.
Cary Grant chased by an airplane in North by Northwest,
Schumacher presented his recent article, “Neural evidence that suspense narrows attentional focus,” published in Neuroscience. Subjects in the study were placed in an MRI scanner and shown film clips of suspenseful films including Alien, Blood Simple, License to Kill, and three Hitchcock films: North by Northwest, Marnie, and The Man Who Knew Too Much (I think I enrolled in the wrong studies to pay for college). The scanner revealed when suspense in the film increased, people's gaze was focused on the film.
Researchers correlated this fMRI data with moments of increased suspense—as when Cary Grant was chased by a plane in North by Northwest. This revealed two key findings: first, during moments of heightened suspense, subjects had increased activity in visual regions processing the film and corresponding decreases in activity to visual regions processing the visual periphery. Second, follow-up questions testing memory initially showed a slight but not significant increase of memory during suspenseful moments for questions like “What color was the truck at the end of the film?” However, when the questions were re-tooled to include plot elements, the memory increase became statistically significant. Thus, memory for plot-relevant information was shown to improve with increasing suspense.
Researchers from this study also collaborated with a group investigating how brain coherence (i.e., the similarity of activity across participants) as monitored on EEG relates to subjective preference. In this experiment, EEG coherence predicted population preference of Super Bowl ads. That is, the more similar the brain signal across participants, the higher rated the Super Bowl ad was. Schumacher identified that some of the same attention and visual processing regions related to suspense are also more active with increasing preference of commercials. According to Schumacher, combining the research into suspense in films and attention in Super Bowl advertisements suggests that when attention is allocated to films and commercials, we can see changes in the brain, especially in visual processing, attention, and memory—and these factors are related more broadly to preference.
These facts alone were enough to spur intense conversation. Participants worried that this kind of neural research into visual engagement might result in more manipulative ads, or in a profusion of dull blockbuster-style action movies designed to trigger neural engagement. Some suggested that there would be nothing wrong with creating films engineered to maximize enjoyment. Others asserted that “enjoyment” is not what art is actually about, and claimed that they want films that make them uncomfortable and push them out of their comfort zone. Still others--including Schumacher--thought that the two are not mutually exclusive, and that art engineered to maximize the enjoyment of the kind of viewer who likes edgy indie films would be even edgier and indie-er, and that everyone could win in the end.
Would Hitchcock use neuro-insights to make more suspenseful films?
“Art” seems to be a touchy subject when it comes to neuroscience. The animated discussion highlighted anxiety about science taking on topics we conceive of as belonging to subjective human experience. To many, “art” is intrinsically linked with “humanity,” and hence mechanizing how we think about art seems to make people fear for the mechanization of the individual or society. The fear, apparently, is that films produced using insights from neuroscience would result in a loss of agency or taste that is somehow intrinsic to our being—that films will manipulate or control us. It’s worth noting, though, that science is no more alien to our self-expression than art. Both come from a creative impulse, and science is always shaping our relationship to our humanity, just as our humanity is always shaping the way we engage in science.
The anxiety surrounding neuromarketing or neuro-aesthetic research is compounded in this case by military involvement. A Washington Post article about Schumacher’s research is provocatively titled, “Why DARPA is paying people to watch Alfred Hitchcock Cliffhangers.” The study was funded by “Narrative Networks,” a program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—the Department of Defense agency heading all kinds of totally wild sci-fi style research.
Narrative Networks specifically is interested in funding research into quantitative methods for studying narratives and their effects, into the neurobiology and endocrinology of responses to narratives, and into simulating and monitoring the impact of narratives and “doctrinal modifications” in the real world. DARPA claims, “Narratives exert a powerful influence on human thoughts and behavior. They consolidate memory, shape emotions, cue heuristics and biases in judgment, influence in-group/out-group distinctions, and may affect the fundamental contents of personal identity. It comes as no surprise that because of these influences stories are important in security contexts: for example, they change the course of insurgencies, frame negotiations, play a role in political radicalization, influence the methods and goals of violent social movements, and likely play a role in clinical conditions important to the military such as post-traumatic stress disorder.”
An article in Wired proclaims, “Darpa wants to Master the Science of Propaganda” and the BBC reported on “Building the Pentagon’s ‘like me’ weapon.” Given their titles, both are actually quite (disappointingly?) measured, and present the project as a defensive, not aggressive, one. The latter quotes neuroscientist Read Montague, who says, “I see a device coming that’s going to make suggestions to you, like, a, this situation is getting tense, and, b, here are things you need to do now, I’ll help you as you start talking.”
The dystopic Ludovico treatment in A Clockwork Orange,
Despite this emphasis on defense, the mention of DARPA led our group, again, to spirited debate (also known as rampant conspiracy theorizing by those of us raised on the X-Files). When the research at hand is relatively straightforward and non-threatening, we might ask why military research is such a hot button issue. The most obvious answer is that many object to military activity and are uninterested in advancing science that could be used for violent or nefarious purposes. I will admit that my first glance at DARPA’s innocuous “Narrative Networks” immediately yields the more threatening “propaganda” or “mind control,” but there are at least two ways that this knee-jerk reaction can be elaborated on.
First, understanding narratives can of course yield pacifist as well as violent results. DARPA claims that they hope that understanding the ability of narratives to radicalize, for instance, could lead to more successful methods for de-escalating radicalization. They also point to the possibility of better treatments for PTSD, and to more effective measures for disseminating public health information.
Cold War propaganda, courtesy of Flickr user Dan H.
Second, although the word “propaganda” has an undoubtedly sinister ring to it, it is important to keep in mind that rhetorical appeals meant to influence belief and behavior are omnipresent and not inherently linked to an ethical judgment. We are all trying to convince people of things at all times. Public health campaigns, education, and this blog post itself are all propagandistic in their own ways—but that does not mean that they are necessarily reprehensible or ethically unacceptable. Schumacher hinted at this when he noted that after being quoted saying, “governments use stories,” he wishes he had stated more broadly that “people” use stories. You apparently can’t talk about defense research into narrative without the inevitable Goebbels reference, but rather than reactionary blanket judgments, it will more productive to think about ethical and unethical ways that research can be employed.
So, what are the ethics of military research funding? Although the topic originally calls to mind weapons development, chemical warfare, and the creation of Terminator-esque super soldiers, funders like DARPA provide enormous resources for researchers doing non-nefarious work, for instance, Schumacher’s suspense and transportation study, or Greg Berns’ work on neural connectivity when reading fiction (which I've written about elsewhere on this blog). For researchers like these, should DARPA be seen as just another (and often extremely generous) source of grant money? Schumacher noted that the money came with no restrictions or conditions on the publication of the data received, and the work doesn’t go directly to some mysterious military database—it is published in major journals in order to advance the field.
Should pacifists have reservations about using DARPA money?
But are there other reservations? Can pacifists or conscientious objectors ethically pursue research with military funding? Are there ways that a Quaker graduate student, for example, could refuse to work on a DARPA project for which their PI obtained funding without stigma? Is the source of the funding important when the objective of the study is simply to increase our knowledge of the neural correlates of processes like reading or watching films? Scientific interest in narrative pre-exists this initiative, so in one way DARPA simply funds things we were already curious in. It is worth noting that DARPA is a significant funder for the BRAIN Initiative in the US, and hence is a major partner in advancing study into the brain. But does the military framing change the kinds of questions we ask or research agendas we pursue?
After hearing the skepticism that greeted the idea of military research into narratives, one can almost understand DARPA's enormous investment in controlling narrative and belief. Judging from our conversation, DARPA and the military could really use some work on their PR. But at this point, perhaps many, many years before the successful integration of this research into field tools (if that day ever comes), DARPA’s scientific approach to narrative reminds me less of Obi-Wan Kenobi's “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” and more of Star Trek’s android Data when he uses his processors to try to act naturally--like when he picks a fight with a girlfriend in order to foster intimacy, explaining to her, “In my study of interpersonal dynamics, I have found that conflict, followed by emotional release, often strengthens the connection between two people.” (The relationship is not a success.)
We should definitely question and discuss the aims guiding research and the ways that the gains of research will be put into action—perhaps especially when the military is involved, but also when it comes to targeted advertising or the creation of appealing art. Perhaps science fiction, dystopia, and conspiracy theorizing provide some protective benefit, as they allow us to imagine possible negative futures that we can then avoid. But (despite the fun of conspiracy theorizing) can we see these conversations as an opportunity to discuss ethical paths forward, not simply unethical nightmares to avoid?
Want to cite this post?
Grubbs, L. (2015). Your brain on movies: Implications for national security. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2015/10/your-brain-on-movies-implications-for.html
