The International Roots of Future Neuroethics

By Denis Larrivee 

Denis Larrivee is a Visiting Scholar at the Neiswanger Bioethics Institute, 

Loyola University Chicago and a member of the International Neuroethics Society 

communication committee. He also serves on the editorial board for the journal Neurology and Neurological Sciences, where he is the section head for neuroscience. He is currently the editor of a text on Brain Computer Interfacing and Brain Dynamics. 

The reappearance in 2017 of the Ambassador Session at the International Neuroethics Soci-ety’s annual meeting underlines both the rapid upswing of global investment in neuroscience and the internationally perceived need for ethical deliberation about its interpretive significance, distinctive cultural manifestations, and evolution of complementary policy and juridical structures best serving global versus regional interests. The 2017 session juxtaposed the more mature organizational approaches of the American and European neuroethical programs against recent undertakings in Asia, a juxtaposition that helped to clarify how neuroethics progress is conditioned by local neuroscience research priorities and how more established programs assist in cross-cultural transmission to shape budding, national efforts. 

In this vein, moderator of the panel, Karen Rommelfanger, and co-moderator Ariel Cascio, began by summarizing this year’s theme on common roots and future collaboration in a chart relating national neuroscience priorities to their respective neuroethics postures. Reflecting the early, but growing, international interest in neuroethics, the chart tracked the successive neuroethics awakenings in regional programs, first in Europe, then in the USA and Australia, and now in Korea. Similar initiatives have yet to grow to the same stature in China and Japan but are apparently underway there also. In the USA, for example, the Neuroethics Division formed in late 2015, while the first R01 Neuroethics Research grant was awarded only in 2017. Emphasizing that it takes the world to understand the brain, Rommelfanger proposed that formulating an international neuroethics outlook necessitates a complementary and culturally shaped global contribution. For specific efforts to this end, she pointed to the Global Neuroethics Summit, which convened in Asia in 2017. 

Image courtesy of Flickr.

Building on the theme of responsivity to national neuroscience postures, panel members then described their national and regional neuroethics efforts both in terms of their respective national neuroscience emphases and the most significant and likely ethical impact. Representing the Human Brain Project (HBP) , Europe's flagship research infrastructure for brain research and brain inspired computing, Arlene Salles argued that a fundamental prerequisite for such efforts was a philosophical reflection for charting the neuroethical terrain at three levels: the normative, the empirical, and the conceptual. Salles described neuroethics as concerned normatively with the application of ethical theory to issues of applied neuroscience; empirically, through the assessment of ethical reasoning; and conceptually, in the clarification of neuroscience linguistic and theoretical tools that bear on a human ontology. Her articulation of a philosophical-neuroethical model illustrated how the ethical response in Europe is conditioned by the HBP’s more ontologically-based strategy of determining how the nervous system underwrites human behavior. 

By contrast, Khara Ramos of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Brain Research for the Advancement of Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Neuroethics Division, USA, summarized the more focused risk-benefits-tack used to monitor R01 neuroscience and neuroethics grants, which concern NIH’s circuit-based approach to disease and BRAIN's prioritization of neurotechnology development. In the American pursuit of a more pragmatic approach to the cellular and circuit building blocks of brain operation, Ramos pointed out that ethical priorities were necessarily less concerned with the interpretive aspects of the human dimension, due to the close link of ethics with the practical issues of technology impact and the strategy of elucidating the physical dimensions of brain operation taken in the USA. 

Jinni Jeong of the (South) Korean Brain Initiative described Korea’s new evolving neuroethical effort as one not only subject to the influences of American and European programs but also as a reaction to the nations’ limited scientific infrastructure, now attempting to expand its manpower pool of scientific experts. Despite the nation's neuroscientific emphasis on such practical domains of research as mapping and connectivity architectures, like the Americas, Jeong pointed out that neuroethics in Korea nonetheless also emphasizes the human concerns, seen in its prioritization of brain enhancement and brain death issues. 

Image courtesy of Pixel.

Commenting on the Kavli Foundation’s mission as a worldwide dissemination of science theory and practice as well as the development of a public understanding of this effort, Kavli’s representative Caroline Montojo offered, lastly, a model for mediation between the old and the new through the International Brain Initiative (IBI), a global alliance connecting the multi-institutional brain research projects now underway in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. In recognition of the diversity of efforts in these varied settings, IBI is designed to promote cooperation among various parties to help ensure their benefit to all nations. Kavli's role here, she explained, is that of an exchange facilitator, sponsoring a series of meetings to enhance the process of interregional cooperation. Montojo offered a synopsis of the Coordinating Global Brain Project meeting, jointly hosted by Columbia University and the Rockefeller University in September 2016, and the UN Assembly high level dialogue concerning the prerequisite for its foreign policy priority. Besides Kavli's focused facilitator role in IBI, Montojo also emphasized how the foundation's broader based efforts for spreading and promoting science through data sharing, tool dissemination, and training can assist in promoting neuroethical deliberation and cross regional efforts on neuroscientific discovery. 

With this in mind, promoting neuroethical deliberation and scientific complementarity is a task whose timing is current and coming, and whose international siting is broadly distributed across a number of forums. Representatives from Japan, Korea, Europe, USA and Australia, for example, just announced a formal declaration of cooperation in Canberra, Australia on December 12, to speed progress on the brain's neural coding. The 'Canberra Declaration' to create an IBI is now moving quickly ahead with a meeting for its steering committee planned for January 2018 . Global neuroethics summits like the recent Asia one, moreover, are on the horizon, according to Rommelfanger, which will further international cooperation through alignment of thematic proposals with those of the IBI. Given the international prominence of these undertakings, their consideration in world deliberative bodies, like the World Health Organization (WHO) can be expected to occupy an increasing proportion of program discussion. Already in 2016, WHO's Global Bioethics Summit in Berlin  incorporated issues centering on cognition. This cognitive theme can be expected to undergo exponential growth by 2018, at the Summit's next convening.

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Larrivee, D. (2018). The International Roots of Future Neuroethics. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2018/01/the-international-roots-of-future.html

Hot Off the Presses: The Neuroethics Blog Reader and Issue 8.4

It is our pleasure to present you with two newly released publications: the second edition of The Neuroethics Blog reader and the 8.4 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Leo Reynolds.

The second edition of The Neuroethics Blog reader features the most popular posts on the site, with topics ranging from human knowledge and its enhancement to mental illness to gut feminism. The reader includes posts from luminaries in neuroethics, scientific pioneers, undergraduates, graduate students, and established scholars from both within and outside the field of neuroethics. The Neuroethics Blog, now in its 6th year of creating weekly publications, is pleased to present this reader to you and would like to thank our amazing blog editorial team: Sunidhi Ramesh (Volume Editor of this reader and Assistant Managing Editor), Carlie Hoffman (Managing Editor), Nathan Ahlgrim, Kristie Garza, and Jonah Queen (Supporting Editors and blog contributors). Please find the reader below.

We are also pleased to announce the publication of issue 8.4 of AJOBN, which is a special issue focused on head transplantation. This issue contains two target articles, “HEAVEN IN THE MAKING BETWEEN THE ROCK (the Academe) AND A HARD CASE (a Head Transplant)” by Ren Xiaoping and Sergio Canavero and “Ahead of Our Time: Why Head Transplantation is Ethically Unsupportable” by Paul Root Wolpe. In the editorial for the issue, Karen Rommelfanger and Paul F. Boshears comment,

“The prospect of a near future wherein a head transplant has become a therapeutic procedure available to people suffering from the effects of failing bodies has been surrounded by pageantry, vitriolic responses, and a sense melodrama that has made a caricature of what discussions of neuroethics can and should be . . . It is our position that averting our gaze from the development of technologies and techniques that we find morally repugnant or technically incredible does not free us from the results of those techniques and technologies. Indeed, if we fail to examine and carefully consider this technique and the technologies attendant to Canavero’s work, we risk something greater than the value of our self-satisfaction at the moment of declaring our disinterest.



Whether or not we find them to be morally unsupportable, or we anticipate that head transplants will not be viable procedures in the future, the fact of the matter is that head transplant technology is being developed and practiced right now. And this body of research is happening in China.”

Issue 8.4 also contains numerous open peer commentaries that generate a rousing discussion of the ethics of head transplantation. We would like to thank Karen Rommelfanger for coordinating this special issue and Paul F. Boshears for his contribution to the issue. Keep an eye out for the official publication of Issue 8.4 in the coming weeks.

Please enjoy the latest blog reader and issue 8.4 of AJOBN!

Rethinking Irreversibility and Its Implications on Determining Death

By Alex Lin

Alex Lin is an undergraduate student at Rutgers University pursuing a dual degree in Biological Sciences and Philosophy. As an aspiring physician, he is interested in medical ethics and runs the Rutgers Bioethics Society alongside a diverse team of student thinkers. Alex is from Paramus, New Jersey, and volunteers as an emergency medical technician for his community.

Death, by definition, is irreversible. The notion of irreversibility is a central component of the current standards of death, cardiopulmonary and neurological alike. Given that the neurological criteria−the irreversible cessation of whole brain function−is the legally recognized criterion of death in many countries, including the United States [1], forthcoming advancements in neurotechnology under the BRAIN Initiative will be crucial to the accurate determination of death. With the development of technologies that allow scientists to study how individual neurons interact in significantly greater detail, questions emerge concerning the particular moment of truly irreversible total brain failure.

Consider the relatively new discovery of human adult neurogenesis. The established view was that the nervous system is fixed and neurons are unable to regenerate. However, this old dogma has been confounded by recent research in neuroscience. Studies have revealed that new neurons are continuously generated in the hippocampus and olfactory bulb, and adult hippocampal neurogenesis may even contribute to human brain function [2]. Modern technologies and research techniques enable scientists to study neurogenesis, which demonstrates the role that new scientific discoveries have in debunking long-standing views of neuroanatomy.

Image courtesy of WikiCommons.

Also, recent advancements in neuroimaging have enabled physicians to detect signs of awareness in patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state, whereas traditional clinical assessments that attempt to elicit predictable behavioral responses fail to do so. In recent years, numerous studies have recommended the practice of neuroimaging techniques, such as fMRI and EEG, in addition to standard behavioral assessments in order to obtain a more accurate diagnosis of various disorders of the consciousness [3,4,5]. For example, in Dr. Adrian Owen's pioneering 2006 study, fMRI revealed that a patient in a vegetative state demonstrated residual cortical activity, and the patient was able to express signs of her covert awareness by following specific mental imagery tasks [5].

With the advancement of neuroimaging and development of more sensitive brain electrography monitoring devices, researchers may start detecting previously undetectable brain activity. Negative readings may become positive readings with more sensitive devices. In order to diagnose irreversible brain failure, the physician must perform a series of neurological examinations. These examinations can include assessing the absence of certain brainstem reflexes, such as the corneal reflex and the pharyngeal or gag reflex, as well as other muscle movement tests [6]. Still, the clinical examination of brain death is not consistent, even across the U.S. [7]. To achieve a confirmatory diagnosis, physicians can request additional tests, such as electroencephalography (EEG). However, current EEGs have a number of limitations. A few square centimeters of the cortex have to be activated simultaneously in order to generate readings that can be detected by the electrodes, which makes EEG insufficiently sensitive to less robust neural activities [8]. Furthermore, false readings can occur due to electronic background noise, especially in the ICU setting [6]. With increasingly sensitive neuroimaging devices, perhaps the determination of total brain failure, and generally what is considered irreversible, can be further refined.

In 2013, President Obama announced the BRAIN Initiative, a collaborative research initiative to advance our understanding of the human brain. The research goals of the BRAIN Initiative include generating circuit diagrams of the brain and developing new technologies that will allow researchers to rigorously study the most complex organ of the human body. In addition to previous investments made by the NIH, the BRAIN Working Group outlined a commitment of $4.5 billion in federal funding over the next 10 years, starting in fiscal year 2016. Thus, this year marks the start of the first five-year phase of the BRAIN Initiative: technological development and validation. Ultimately, research projects of the BRAIN Initiative will continue to redefine what counts as physiologically irreversible and thus challenge the moment of death.

The ethical consequences of such developments should be explored. In particular, it would be important to encourage research projects that explore irreversibility as a component of our scientific conceptions of death. It is important to note that legal death, namely death by neurological criteria, is biological death [9]. Grasping the role of irreversibility in brain death will advance our understanding of death as a biological phenomenon. Moreover, the swiftness of post-mortem action makes urgent the need to accurately determine the moment of death. Such action includes the procurement of life-sustaining organs for transplantation and experimental research on brain-dead patients. Because organ retrieval before the patient is truly dead would be morally reprehensible, as expressed by the Dead Donor Rule, organs must be procured (albeit shortly) after death to ensure they are viable for transplantation. Thus, the determination of death must be rigorous to ensure that the condition is truly irreversible in potential organ donors.

As we obtain more information about neural networks and develop tools to measure brain activity with greater accuracy, it is likely that what is currently considered irreversible brain failure will cease to be irreversible in the near future. In this way, the identification and determination of brain death are bound by the limits of current technology. Discoveries made through the BRAIN Initiative will likely continue to challenge the notion of irreversibility in neuroscience and may lead to novel methods to treat−or even reverse−the dying process.

Acknowledgement 

I would like to thank Nada Gligorov, PhD for providing inspiration and comments on these issues. 



References 



 1. Wijdicks, E. F. (2002). Brain death worldwide Accepted fact but no global consensus in diagnostic criteria. Neurology, 58(1), 20-25.



 2. Ernst, A., & Frisén, J. (2015). Adult Neurogenesis in Humans- Common and Unique Traits in Mammals. PLoS Biology, 13(1). 



3. Cruse D, Chennu S, Chatelle C, Bekinschtein TA, Fernandez-Espejo D, et al. (2011). Bedside detection of awareness in the vegetative state. Lancet, 378(9809), 2088–94.



 4. Monti M. M., Vanhaudenhuyse A., Coleman M. R., Boly M., Pickard J. D., et al. (2010). Willful modulation of brain activity in disorders of consciousness. N. Engl. J. Med., 362(7), 579–89.



 5. Owen, A. M. (2013). Detecting Consciousness: A Unique Role for Neuroimaging. Annual Review of Psychology Annu. Rev. Psychol., 64(1), 109-33.



 6. Wijdicks, E. F. (2001). The diagnosis of brain death. N. Engl. J. Med., 344(16), 1215-1221.



 7. Greer, D. M., Wang, H. H., Robinson, J. D., Varelas, P. N., Henderson, G. V., & Wijdicks, E. F. (2016). Variability of brain death policies in the United States. JAMA neurology, 73(2), 213-218.



 8. Smith, S. J. (2005). EEG in the diagnosis, classification, and management of patients with epilepsy. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 76(suppl 2).



 9. Gligorov, N. (2016). A defense of brain death. Neuroethics, 1-9.

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Lin, A. (2016). Rethinking Irreversibility and Its Implications on Determining Death. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2016/10/rethinking-irreversibility-and-its.html

Neuroethics and the BRAIN Initiative

By Henry T. Greely

Hank Greely is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University. He specializes in ethical, legal, and social issues arising from advances in the biosciences, particularly from genetics, neuroscience, and human stem cell research. He directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Program in Neuroscience in Society; chairs the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research; and serves on the Neuroscience Forum of the Institute of Medicine, the Advisory Council for the National Institute for General Medical Sciences of NIH, the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law of the National Academy of Sciences, and the NIH Multi-Council Working Group on the BRAIN Initiative. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. His book, THE END OF SEX AND THE FUTURE OF HUMAN REPRODUCTION, was published in May 2016.

Professor Greely graduated from Stanford in 1974 and from Yale Law School in 1977. He served as a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme Court. After working during the Carter Administration in the Departments of Defense and Energy, he entered private practice in Los Angeles in 1981 as a litigator with the law firm of Tuttle & Taylor, Inc. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1985.

On April 2, 2013, President Obama launched the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative®. (Neuroscience has yet to reveal why an initiative about the brain had to have an acronym that spelled BRAIN; * legal issues explain the trademark notation.) Built on the report, BRAIN 2025: A SCIENTIFIC VISION, of a committee created to advise Francis Collins, the NIH Director, and chaired by neuroscientists Cori Bargmann of Rockefeller University and Bill Newsome of Stanford, the Initiative, in spite of political deadlock and budgetary woes, has survived and, in some respects, even thrived.

At its launch, the BRAIN Initiative was hailed as a project that would bring together at least three U.S. government agencies, charitable foundations, and industry. In reality, the initiative has been more decentralized. It has no overall director and no dedicated staff; it will only get an overall web page this summer. The various federal agencies stay in regular communication, some foundations and some foreign funders have played important roles, three international memoranda of understanding have been completed, and the Initiative has sponsored annual meetings of all BRAIN investigators whatever their funding. Still, it is more a confederation of individual activities, however inter-communicating, than a unitary project [1].

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has taken the leading role in organizing the Initiative. This is partially because of its large financial stake in it; this fiscal year the NIH budget for the BRAIN Initiative is about $150 million. But other agencies are also spending large amounts on BRAIN – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration has a $95 million budget for it this year, the National Science Foundation expects to spend $72 million, and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Administration and the Food and Drug Administration both have multi-million dollar BRAIN budgets.

NIH’s role may be more a function of its own complexity than the size of its BRAIN budget. Ten Institutes and Centers at NIH are part of the BRAIN Initiative: the National Institutes of Aging, Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, Child Health and Human Development, Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, Drug Addiction, Mental Health, Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Eye Institute, and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Many other Institutes and Centers have at least some central nervous system connection (the National Cancer Institute, for example, studies brain tumors). NIH needed to organize its own response to, and its role in, the Initiative.

President Obama speaking on the BRAIN initiative,

image courtesy of Flickr user Open Knowledge.

To do so, in 2014 it created the “Multi-Council Working Group on the NIH BRAIN Initiative,” happily shortened to MCWG. (I have tried to get people to pronounce the acronym as “McWig” but with very limited success.) MCWG has 14 members, one from each of the Advisory Councils for the 10 participating NIH Institutes and Centers and four “at large” members, including me. The directors of the relevant NIH entities normally attend; in addition there are “ex officio” members representing BRAIN activities at DARPA, FDA, IARPA, and NSF.

Since its first meeting in late August 2014, MCWG has met twice a year, summer and winter. Co-chaired by the directors of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Dr. Walter Koroshetz, and the National Institute for Mental Health, initially Dr. Thomas Insel and now his acting successor, Dr. Bruce Cuthbert, MCWG tries to provide some of the kind of guidance that their Advisory Councils give NIH Institutes and Centers. The group is briefed on current funding areas and grants as well as proposed new funding areas and in turn provides its thoughts to the NIH.

“Thriving,” though doesn’t just mean “has big budgets and a fancy committee.” The BRAIN Initiative is funding exciting and important work. It has no grand substantive goal akin to “sequencing the human genome,” but instead wants to create tools to help us understand the brain (and, after all, the most important product of the Human Genome Project was nearly infinitely cheaper, faster, better sequencing, not the actual sequence).  You can find out more about BRAIN’s progress with things like photoacoustic imaging and miniaturized and highly sensitive electrophysiology and optical imaging instruments at the BRAIN Update blog.

Fine, you say, but what does all of this have to do with neuroethics?

Ethical questions were seen as part of the Initiative from before its beginning. BRAIN 2025 recognized that “Because the brain gives rise to consciousness, our innermost thoughts and our most basic human needs, mechanistic studies of the brain have already resulted in new social and ethical questions.” When President Obama announced the Initiative, he asked the President’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (PCSBI) to report to him on ethical issues it raised. It did, twice, in GRAY MATTERS, Volumes 1 and 2, which can be found here.

I was asked to serve as an at-large member of MCWG not just (?) for my good looks, but in the hope that I could bring some neuroethics experience to the group. It was immediately clear to me, and quickly became clear to the rest of MCWG, that the BRAIN Initiative needed more neuroethics input. The importance of those issues was also highlighted by a November 2014 neuroethics workshop held by NIH, discussed here.

The NIH has played a large role in the BRAIN initiative,

image courtesy of Wikipedia

For one thing, particular research areas or grants could raise very specific questions that were more granular than the recommendations in GRAY MATTERS. MCWG also recognized that there might be possibilities for the Initiative to lead to some general guidelines for approaching recurring problems in neuroscience research ethics, particularly in work with human subjects but also in research with non-humans. And finally the Working Group realized that the BRAIN Initiative might also be interested in funding some neuroethics research that could, by recommendations or criticism, support its work.

So, at the MCWG co-chairs suggestion, Dr. Christine Grady, Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the NIH Clinical Center and a member of PCSBI, and I were asked to prepare and present a plan for neuroethics activities to MCWG at its summer 2015 meeting. As a result MCWG approved the creation of a MCWG Neuroethics Work Group, co-chaired by Dr. Grady and myself and reporting to MCWG and its co-chairs. (Very happily for us, Dr. Koroshetz threw in from NINDS the very able support of Dr. Khara Ramos from his office as the Work Group’s Executive Secretary and liaison to NIH.) That fall the Work Group was chosen with members from both inside MCWG – Drs. James Eberwine of Penn, Bradley Hyman of Mass. General Hospital, and Rafael Yuste of Columbia – and outside it – Drs. Nita Farahany of Duke, Steve Hyman of the Broad Institute, Karen Rommelfanger of Emory, and Chandra Sripada of Michigan. Some of us met for a working dinner at the International Neuroethics Society annual meeting last fall in November, we’ve had several conference calls, and we held our first in-person meeting on February 9.

So, after just over a thousand words – what does this mean and why should you care?

Well, the MCWG Neuroethics Work Group is working. We are preparing two draft documents laying out ethical issues around data sharing in neuroscience research and about long-term obligations to human research participants who received implanted devices. We are working with other interested parties in cosponsoring workshops on neuroethics issues relevant to the BRAIN initiative. And, although we cannot claim too much credit for it, the NIH recently announced that it would be able to use funds from this fiscal year to support administrative supplements to existing NIH BRAIN Initiative Awards, including those about neuroethics.

Specifically, the PIs on BRAIN Initiative grants have been told that if there are any ethical considerations involved in their research, a supplement to explore those questions, as they fall within the funded specific aims of a given award, would be appropriate. The relevant grants are listed here. Applications for supplements are due May 2, and should follow these instructions. We hope that these will just be a new start for NIH-supported research on neuroethics.

We will have to see where neuroethics goes within the BRAIN Initiative, and, for that matter, what a future Administration holds for the whole initiative. But I think good starts have been made on both points. And I promise you that the MCWG Neuroethics Work Group will continue to look for good ways to apply neuroethics to the BRAIN Initiative – and to apply the BRAIN Initiative, and NIH more broadly, to neuroethics. Feel free to contact me, Dr. Grady, or Dr. Ramos directly with your thoughts or questions at hgreely@stanford.edu, CGrady@cc.nih.gov, or ramoskm@ninds.nih.gov. You can also read a bit about the work group on the NIH BRAIN Initiative website [2].

[1] It may be a case of what Steve Hyman has called a “COA” – a “Crypto-Orwellian Acronym.”



[2] My sincere thanks to Drs. Grady and Ramos for their help with this blog post.

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Greely, H.T. (2016). Neuroethics and the BRAIN Initiative. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2016/04/neuroethics-and-brain-initiative.html

Brain devices: Navigating collaborations between industry, government, and researchers

by Paul J. Ford, PhD



Dr. Ford is Director of the NeuroEthics Program at the Cleveland Clinic. He is an active clinical ethicist, and teaches ethics to medical students, residents, and fellows. His publications have appeared in Science, The Hastings Center Report, Neurology, Neuromodulation, and Journal of Medical Ethics. He is also a board member for AJOB Neuroscience.



This spring (June 3-4, 2015) the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of the BRAIN Initiative convened an eclectic group of individuals in hopes of encouraging more investigator initiated studies of currently approved neuromodulation and neuro recording devices for new indications (agenda, session videos, and program goals available here). The participants, both on the program and in the audience, specifically included industry, researchers, universities, and governmental agencies. I was delighted to participate in the workshop and was impressed by the number of sincerely interested parties across the spectrum of roles. Within these conversations it was apparent that there existed many shared values and goals as well as complex challenges for protecting particular interests. It beautifully highlighted the complexities of interactions among varied stakeholders.





Among the group there was a broad interest in performing due diligence in discharging their various duties to their constituents. At its heart, the meeting was a good faith effort to realize a desire to see innovations develop to the point of helping clinical populations, i.e. real people who suffer. This aspect of the BRAIN initiative recognizes the current significant logistical barriers to exploring new uses of existing devices within a research context. Too often the current system in the United States with respect to devices encourages off-label use with retrospective review data, rather than small prospective trials. There are numerous disincentives within the system, some of which are bureaucratic and legalistic in nature (see Kelly et al. discussion.) In developing new ways for investigators to create partnerships with industry, the June meeting announced opportunities that would allow easier access to letters for “right of reference” (a specific type of permission needed from intellectual property owners to allow use of previously submitted safety and engineering data. Kelly et al. discusses this further) as well as standardized intellectual property agreements as part of a streamline for some types of NIH funded research. In addition, the dialogue between industry, researchers, universities, regulators, and funders creates an opportunity to standardize approaches to some of the most difficult ethics challenges in brain implant research, such as long-term access to implant upgrades.



Much of the June meeting itself was dedicated to understanding the mechanisms for collaboration, addressing the challenges of negotiating intellectual property, as well as the need for further aggregation of data across research studies. However, the organizers also dedicated a session specifically to ethics, in which I participated as a panelist. The session included a brief presentation by Joseph Fins, MD followed by panel comments by Christine Grady, MSN, PhD, Scott Kim, MD, PhD, Helen Mayberg, MD, and me. A diverse set of practical ethical issues were addressed relating to both research ethics in general and specific ethical issues in neuromodulation. Scott Kim particularly highlighted the opportunity for neuroethics research that could be undertaken in parallel to the other science conducted during further neurological device studies. This model of integrating ethical investigation in tandem with the initial clinical research provides an opportunity to fully appreciate the research participants’ perspective.



A second session of particular interest to the neuroethics community was a presentation by a Public-Private enterprise, Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC) developed in collaboration with the FDA. This organization “aims to advance regulatory science in the medical device industry.” In particular it has various industry, non-profit, and governmental members. This past spring, they released a report on a framework for use in demonstrating to the FDA whether a risk benefit balance is appropriate from a patient perspective (draft release May 2015). The FDA released a companion draft guideline regarding how patient preferences could be used in the approval process. These draft guidance documents provide an opportunity to include neuroethics research into clinical trials of neurological devices. Scott Kim’s comment regarding the need for rigorous methods to be applied in undertaking the type of ethics research nicely resonates with the intention of the MDIC document to provide guidance of methods.



The initiatives and conversations that occurred during this June 2015 meeting is well worth paying attention to for their long reaching implications on how neurological device research is approached and the ethics opportunities that are available.



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Ford, P.J (2015). Brain devices: Navigating collaborations between industry, government, and researchers. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2015/09/brain-devices-navigating-collaborations.html

Obama’s BRAIN and Free Will

By Eddy Nahmias, PhD



Eddy Nahmias is professor in the Philosophy Department and the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State University. He is also a member of the AJOB Neuroscience editorial board.



On April 2, 2013 President Barack Obama announced the BRAIN Initiative, a 10-year, $3 billion research goal to map all of the neurons and connections in the human brain. The BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative is modeled on the Human Genome Project, which successfully sequenced the entire DNA code of the human genome in 2003. Our brains, with 100 trillion neuronal connections, are immensely more complicated than our DNA, so the BRAIN Initiative has a much higher mountain to climb.



But let’s suppose that, finally, during the next Clinton presidency, the BRAIN Initiative is completed…. that is, the presidency of Charlotte Clinton, Bill and Hilary’s grandchild. In fact, suppose that eventually neuroimaging technology advances to the point that people’s brains can be mapped fully enough to allow real-time computations of all of their occurrent brain activity. Neuroscientists can then use this information to predict with 100% accuracy every single decision a person will make, even before the person is consciously aware of their decision. Suppose that a woman named Jill agrees to wear the lightweight BrainCap^TM for a month. The neuroscientists are able to detect the activity that causes her thoughts and decisions and use it to predict all of Jill’s thoughts and decisions, even before she is aware of them. They predict, for instance, how she will vote in an election. They even predict her attempts to trick them by changing her mind at the last second.

From interbilgisayar.com

Question: Do you think it is possible for such technology to exist in the future (the “near” future of Charlotte Clinton’s presidency or perhaps a more distant future)? And if such technology did exist, what would it tell us about whether we have free will?



Some people have used such neuro-prediction scenarios to explain why they think free will is an illusion. For instance, in his book Free Will (2012) Sam Harris asks us to “imagine a perfect neuroimaging device that would allow us to detect and interpret the subtlest changes in brain function.” He concludes, “You would, of course, continue to feel free in every present moment, but the fact that someone else could report what you were about to think and do would expose this feeling for what it is: an illusion” (10-11; see also Greene and Cohen 2004, p. 1781).



Others have drawn on recent neuroscientific experiments in which information about brain activity from EEG or fMRI that proceeds awareness provides predictive information about simple decisions, and they extrapolate from these experiments to conclude that all of our decisions are caused by brain activity that bypasses conscious activity, challenging free will. For instance, neuroscientist John Dylan Haynes (2008) says, “Our decisions are predetermined unconsciously a long time before our consciousness kicks in… It seems that the brain is making the decision before the person themselves.”¹



I call those who claim that science shows free will is an illusion, willusionists. Typically, they assume that free will would require that the conscious mental activity involved in our deliberation and decision-making is distinct from brain activity. And they assume that the ordinary definition of ‘free will’ requires this dualistic view of the mind. If they are right, then they should predict that most people would reject the possibility that the BRAIN Initiative could succeed in the way I describe above. After all, non-physical minds could never be fully understood or predicted based on a complete mapping of brain activity. And if we had a magical free will untethered to brain activity, then we could exercise it to make some decisions that could not be predicted by neuroscientists scanning our brain. Are the willusionists’ accurate in their predictions about how most people understand free will?



Fortuitously, while the BRAIN Initiative was being hatched, my collaborators and I were working on a much less complicated (or expensive!), project in ‘experimental philosophy’, an emerging field that uses empirical methods to consider people’s views about philosophical questions. Two former neurophilosophy MA students at Georgia State, Jason Shepard (a Neuroethics Scholars Program Alum and Psychology PhD student at Emory University) and Shane Reuter (now in the PNP Program at Washington University St. Louis), and I developed various detailed descriptions of the neuro-imaging technology above that allow perfect prediction of decisions based on prior brain activity. One scenario concluded with a statement of physicalism about the mind-body relationship: “These experiments confirm that all human mental activity just is brain activity such that everything that any human thinks or does could be predicted ahead of time based on their earlier brain activity.”

Dilbert, by Scott Adams

We asked our participants (students at GSU) whether such technology was possible. Contrary to the predictions of willusionists, we found that 80% said yes. Of the 20% who said no, most did not explain their response by referring to non-physical minds or souls or free will. Instead, most raised ethical concerns (society would not allow anyone to gain so much information about our minds) or financial limitations, or they mentioned problems pointing towards what I think is actually the right answer: No, the technology could never be that perfectly predictive because the brain is too complex for real-time calculations to occur faster than the brain actually carries out complex deliberations and decision-making. But these responses do not suggest a commitment to a non-physical mind.



Furthermore, the vast majority of participants did not respond as willusionists predict regarding free will: three-quarters or more said that Jill had free will even though her decisions were predicted by the neuroscientists and that, even if such technology existed, people would have free will and would be morally responsible for their actions. The only scenarios that led people to respond that the technology would undermine free will were ones in which we added that the neuroscientists could also alter people’s brain activity, and hence their decisions. (See our article in Cognition for more details.)



The question is why our participants do not seem to be ‘freaked out’ by the possibility of such neuro-prediction, while willusionists assume they would be, and should be.



One possibility is that our participants just didn’t get it. Perhaps they have a deep, implicit commitment to dualist free will such that they either reject the stipulations of the scenarios or ignore their implications when responding to the questions about free will (while nonetheless saying the technology is possible). I think this explanation is likely true for some of our participants, but unlikely for most of them, given the patterns of responses to the many questions we asked.



Instead, I think most of our participants simply do not have an implicit or explicit commitment to dualist free will. Most people, even some who may talk as if the mind is non-physical or have religious beliefs about souls, seem ‘theory-lite’ about the mind and free will. They know we are conscious and make choices, but they don’t know how (or in what) these mental processes are implemented. And for good reason, since we don’t yet have a neuroscientific theory to explain things like conscious deliberation, reasoning, and imagination of future options for action. But most people seem willing to accept that neuroscience might explain how these mental processes work… at least as long as it does not thereby explain them away.



For instance, most participants responded that the neuroimaging technology does not mean that “people’s reasons have no effect on what they do,” and that seems to be the right way to interpret it. When people’s decisions are predicted while wearing this futuristic technology, it’s based on information about the neural activity that implements their conscious reasons and reasoning. That activity is not bypassed by earlier brain activity; it is a crucial cause of some decisions we make. When we imagine future options, it opens up those options as possibilities for action, even if our brains carry out the imagining.



Why then do willusionists seem to neglect this possibility that free will could be understood in terms of the complex activity of the human brain? I think it is because they are not theory-lite. Instead, they theorize that a neuroscientific explanation of behavior either replaces an explanation in terms of conscious mental processes (a form of eliminativism) or cuts those processes out of the causal picture (a form of epiphenomenalism). Such views are understandable. Neuroscience is a relatively young science, and we lack a theory to explain how consciousness works in terms of neural activity. So, for scientists who are used to thinking in terms of physical mechanisms such as neurons causing physical events such as bodily movements, it may be hard to see how conscious mental events—yet to be explained in terms of neural mechanisms—get into the story.



Some willusionists argue that getting people to recognize that free will is an illusion will have beneficial consequences, especially for our legal system. For instance, if criminals lack free will, then they don’t deserve the harsh retributive punishment typically meted out to them. If we come to accept that no one deserves such punishment, we’ll focus on more useful solutions to crime, such as deterrence, rehabilitation, and restoration. We may also be more understanding, and less judgmental, of people in poverty or with mental illnesses or addictions. (See, e.g., Harris and Greene & Cohen).



I too think our legal system is overly retributive and that criminals, and the rest of us, would typically be better served if we focused more of our resources on alternatives to retributive punishment. I also think we should give up our ‘just world’ beliefs that lead us to think people are responsible for their unfortunate circumstances or deserve all their good fortune (or literal fortunes). But I think the willusionist view of free will may influence us to see people as objects or mechanisms, some of which need to be repaired, perhaps even opening up problematic forms of brain manipulation.



A naturalistic view instead says that we have degrees of free will to the extent that we possess the psychological capacities for imagining and assessing various future options and for self-control to actualize the better options. But this view also reminds us that we often have less free will than we tend to think, and that some people’s opportunities to develop and exercise the capacities for free will are far more constrained than others.



The BRAIN Initiative won’t lead to BrainCaps that allow perfect neuro-prediction. But even if it could, it would not illuminate some new challenge to the possibility of human free will. Instead, the BRAIN Initiative will continue the recent trend of helping people come to recognize and accept that everything we think and do is enabled by what our amazingly complex brains do. It may even provide information that leads to a satisfying theory of how our brains explain consciousness and decision-making. It will surely provide more information about when and why people’s decision-making and self-control are diminished, suggesting mitigated responsibility. And it will also raise difficult neuroethical questions about whether and how we should use all this information to alter people’s brains and hence their minds.





¹ Haynes’ and his collaborators’ fMRI studies carry on the tradition of the infamous studies by Benjamin Libet. For explanations for why these studies, along with others thought to challenge free will (such as Daniel Wegner’s), do not have these implications, see, e.g., Mele (2009) and Nahmias (2014).





References



Greene, J. & Cohen J. (2004). For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 359, 1775-1778.



Mele, A. (2009). Effective intentions: the power of conscious will. New York: Oxford University Press.



Nahmias, Shepard, Reuter. 2014. It’s OK if ‘My Brain Made Me Do It’: People’s Intuitions about Free Will and Neuroscientific Prediction. Cognition 133(2): 502-513.



Nahmias, E. 2014. Is Free Will an Illusion? Confronting Challenges from the Modern Mind Sciences. In Moral Psychology, vol. 4, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, ed. by W. Sinnott-Armstrong (MIT Press, 2014), 1-25.



Soon, C., Brass, M., Heinze, H., & Haynes, J. (2008). Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neuroscience, 11, 543-545.



Related Reading



Nahmias, E. 2011. Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will? The New York Times. 



Nahmias, E. 2015. Why We Have Free Will. Scientific American 312(1).



Shepard, J. (2012). Who is redefining free will? The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on February 9, 2015, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/09/who-is-redefining-free-will-response-to.html





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Nahmias, E. (2015). Obama’s BRAIN and Free Will. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on

, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2015/02/obamas-brain-and-free-will.html

The 2014 International Neuroethics Society Annual Meeting

By Mallory Bowers




On November 14, the International Neuroethics Society convened for its annual meeting at the AAAS building in Washington, D.C. I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at INS through the generous support of the Emory Neuroethics Program. The society is an interdisciplinary group of scholars - including lawyers, clinicians, researchers, and policy makers - and the 2014 agenda reflected this diversity in expertise.




The conference opened with a short talk by Chaka Fattah, the U.S. representative for Pennsylvania’s 2nd congressional district. As a Philadelphia native, I was excited to learn that Congressman Fattah was an architect of the Fattah Neuroscience Initiative, which was an impetus for developing the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.

Courtesy of Gillian Hue

Discussion of the BRAIN initiative continued through the following panels, “The BRAIN Initiative & the Human Brain Project: an Ethical Focus” and “The Future of Neuroscience Research & Ethical Implications”. Panelist Stephen Hauser spoke about the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, while Henry Markram discussed the Human Brain Project – the European-based research collaboration to establish innovative neurotechnologies and develop a more thorough understanding of the human brain. Representatives of several scientific funding institutions (Dr. Tom Insel – Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. George Koob – Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and Dr. Geoff Ling – Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) discussed the progress of neuroscience research, while emphasizing the need for continued advancement. Although the morning panels were interesting (as a behavioral neuroscientist, seeing Dr. Tom Insel was quite thrilling), I was left with the impression that the scientific “establishment” was only beginning to scratch the surface of the neuroethical implications of the research being conducted by scientists like myself. I wondered if any of the morning panelists attended the later sessions, which discussed more neuroethically hard-hitting issues, such as “Neuroscience in the Courts” and “Neuroscience and Human Rights”.



In the session “Neuroscience in the Courts – International Case Studies”, presenters considered how neuroscience has been used in the courtroom across the globe, specifically, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, and Singapore and Malaysia. In particular, speakers examined the “my brain made me do it” defense used by adolescent defendants in criminal trials. This defense uses research on the developing prefrontal cortex of the adolescent, thought to be responsible for impulse control and executive function in mature adults (Blakemore and Robbins 2012), to explain criminal behavior. In the following session, “Neuroscience and Human Rights”, I was particularly struck by Dr. Mariana Chilton and her work on the neuroscience of food insecurity. While Dr. Chilton uses scientific research to demonstrate the deleterious effects of hunger on mental health, she advocates for an antidote that extends beyond science to include public policy.



The conference concluded with an hour long poster session after oral presentations by INS abstract awardees (our own Ryan Purcell presented on the ethical implications of the brain training program Lumosity). My poster, “Feminist neuroethics: biological determinism, agnotology, and overlooked risk factors for PTSD” examined potential alternative factors, besides “innate” neurobiology, that might explain the difference in prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among men and women (lifetime prevalence of PTSD is approximately 10-14% in women and 5-6% in men in the United States (Breslau, Davis, et al. 1991, Kessler, Sonnega, et al. 1995)). Sociocultural conditioning may be one possibility. Men and women are differentially conditioned according to expected gendered behaviors from birth. Epidemiological data demonstrates sex/gender differences in the prevalence of PTSD according to specific categories of trauma, but not others (Kessler, Sonnega, et al. 1995). This indicates that it is not merely the presence of trauma, but the interpretation of trauma that precipitates development of PTSD. If trauma severity - shaped by an individual’s unique perception/interpretation - influences risk for PTSD, and perception is gendered according to sociocultural conditioning, then researchers need to address whether specific forms of gendered sociocultural conditioning precipitate risk for PTSD. Furthermore, as diagnoses of psychiatric disorders (including PTSD) rely on clinician-defined suites of symptoms catalogued in the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) rather than biomarkers, these diagnoses could be influenced by subjective and implicit gender stereotypes. Finally, the stress of microaggressions (Sue 2010) related to gender bias and discrimination could exert long-term ramifications, potentially contributing to rates of psychiatric disease like PTSD, as research demonstrates that pre-trauma risk factors like life stress predict PTSD (Yehuda 2004). I concluded my poster by advocating for an alliance between the sciences and humanities, who can provide a rich knowledge on how sociocultural factors shape conceptions of not only gender, but also illness.

Mallory presenting her poster (Courtesy of Gillian Hue)

Although scholars approaching neuroethics with a feminist lens seemed to be a small contingent at INS, reception to my poster was enthusiastic. Fellow feminist neuroethicist Vanessa Bentley had an especially exciting poster where she examined the evidence in favor of and against a sex/gender differences in size of the corpus callosum. Bentley’s analysis surmised lack of a sex/gender difference in the size of the corpus callosum. Bentley further argued that neurosexism perpetuated a conclusion to the contrary.



My hope is that the area of feminist neuroethics will continue to grow and be represented at forthcoming INS meetings and elsewhere, particularly in light of the recent NIH call to study both male and female experimental subjects. Historically, biomedical studies have not included female animal subjects to avoid the potential confounding variable of the estrous cycle. While a more balanced approach is a step in the right direction towards more comprehensive research, the field should be cautious in the design and interpretation of such studies, in order to avoid blind reinforcement of sex/gender-based biases – in particular, biased notions of how sex/gender may interact with behavior. Feminist empiricists’, bioethicists’, and neuroethicists’ critiques will be instrumental in helping the biomedical field move forward in an ethically and scientifically rigorous way, in light of the recent NIH mandate.



I would like to see feminist neuroscience studies impacting not just the laboratory but also the broader implications of the science as I describe with my work and the impact on clinical care. I would even see it relevant or as a key discussion under the theme of “neuroscience and human rights” at future INS meetings. If neuroscience is used as a tool to underline sex/gender differences in cognition, empathy, sexual behavior, parental investment, etc. – characteristics that have been used to disenfranchise women for centuries – then the work of the human rights field may invaluably inform future discourse. I look forward to participating in future INS events to continue to further my own neuroethical inquiries and to intersect with other sub-disciplines.






References




Blakemore, SJ and Robbins, TW (2012) Decision-making in the adolescent brain. Nat Neurosci 15: 1184-91.



Breslau, N, Davis, GC, Andreski, P and Peterson, E (1991) Traumatic events and posttraumatic stress disorder in an urban population of young adults. Arch Gen Psychiatry 48: 216-22.



Kessler, RC, Sonnega, A, Bromet, E, Hughes, M and Nelson, CB (1995) Posttraumatic stress disorder in the National Comorbidity Survey. Arch Gen Psychiatry 52: 1048-60.



Yehuda, R (2004) Risk and resilience in posttraumatic stress disorder. J Clin Psychiatry 65 Suppl 1: 29-36.






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Bowers, M. (2014). The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on

, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2014/12/the-2014-international-neuroethics.html

Neuroethics in Theory and in Practice: A First-hand Look into the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues

Anyone who turned on CNN this past summer probably remembers the most popular news stories ranging from Obama’s recent efforts to quell political violence in Iraq to Emory University’s admission of two Ebola patients. What was missing from several (if not all of these newscasts), however, was any mention of the continuation of President Obama’s BRAIN initiative right here at Emory University. Specifically, this past June, the Atlanta university welcomed the prestigious Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to confer over many pertinent issues surrounding various ethical and neuroscientific issues. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the session and catch a glimpse of the commission in action. Upon the commission’s completion, I found myself excited while simultaneously confused about the group’s overall mission and decided it would be worthwhile to investigate the Bioethics Commission further. Particularly, I hoped to understand why it is that Obama created a group to investigate several important issues discussed on this blog every week.

From Center for Genetics and Society

First, some background information: Obama launched the “Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies” Initiative (appropriately known as the BRAIN Initiative) in 2013 through executive order. In short, the initiative seeks to provide scientists and research organizations the appropriate tools (e.g., funding and support) to ascertain a better understanding of the brain and to develop breakthrough neuro-technologies to treat disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and PTSD, to name a few. However, some question whether Obama’s choice to fund the BRAIN initiative represents a truly transformative moment in neuroscience research. For example, many have spoken out against the project’s funding structure, feasibility, and goals¹. Furthermore, similar to my sentiments after leaving the Atlanta Bioethics Commission meeting, many people felt that Obama’s BRAIN initiative was little more than a vague pronouncement of monolithic ideas with little substance ². Nonetheless, in response to such outcries, Larry Swanson, the president of Society for Neuroscience, lauded Obama’s choice to fund and encourage research in important scientific areas ³.



To supplement the efforts of the BRAIN Initiative, the Obama administration also brought together a group of highly qualified individuals to also explore the potential bioethical implications that could arise as a result of the development of more advanced neuro-technologies. The Commission is also closely tied to Emory University given the Vice-Chair of the group is our own President James Wagner. Furthermore, the commission’s goals are largely advisory and interdisciplinary in nature. Specifically, the group meets at select locations throughout the United States and invites experts in particular research fields to meet and discuss their research.

From Emory University

To find out more about their past efforts, I’d highly suggest reading the Commission’s first report entitled “Gray Matters: Integrative Approaches for Neuroscience, Ethics, and Society.” This report outlines four broad areas of interest to the group: (1) neuroimaging and brain privacy; (2) dementia, personality, and changed preferences; (3) cognitive enhancement and justice; and (4) deep brain stimulation and the ethically difficult history of neurosurgery. Additionally, the report outlines four recommendations, one of which is a heavier emphasis on integrating ethics and science through education at all levels. The report mentions the importance of further developing models for bioethics education not only for graduate students, but also high school and undergraduate students. The report also recommends that neuroscience research be accompanied by ethical evaluations for the entirety of the research process. Such explicit recommendations demonstrate the ever-increasing importance of evaluating the ethical implications of certain neuroscientific developments. The group is now working towards putting together a second report that attempts to tackle a much broader task of discussing the applications and implications of neuroscience.



The sessions themselves often explore several different areas of interests. The meeting in Atlanta, in particular, included 8 different sessions over the course of two days. The webcast of the event is posted here (along with the video archives from other bioethics meetings throughout the country). I highly recommend sifting through this website because the meeting recordings are truly a goldmine for anyone interested in neuroethical issues. The topics discussed at the Emory University event included a talk about the potential of neuroscience research and also a report on the potential implications of advances in neuroscience research for ethics and moral decision making.



If you’re anything like me, you are probably wondering how the commission plans to integrate all the different areas of interest reviewed at the meetings and subsequently distill their findings to the president. Essentially, I wanted to understand the process and purpose of the meetings within the grander framework of Obama’s BRAIN initiative. To figure out more, I interviewed Dr. Nita Farahany, a member of both the AJOB Neuroscience editorial board and Bioethics commission. In response to a question I posed to her regarding the broad missions of the commission, she aptly noted that, first and foremost, the individual meetings help to provide each member of the commission a comprehensive understanding of the ethical issues that tend to arise when dealing with neuroscience. To that end, she noted that for some areas which have already been well debated in the neuroethics community, such as cognitive enhancement, the Commission is unlikely to “reinvent the wheel” in its report on the issues. Consequently, the mission of the group entails both determining how to frame a specific set of pre-determined issues and then deciding when and what recommendations would be most valuable for a particular field.

From MSNBC.com

Ultimately, my experience at the Commission was both enlightening and perplexing. I think many questions still remain regarding the ability of the Commission to institute change. As is the problem with other academic discussions, a gap often exists between those discussing problems in academic buildings and policy-makers hoping to enact change as a result. It remains to be seen how Obama responds to the recommendations of the Gray Matters report and other resources the commission develops in the future. Additionally, there are limits to the depth of information that can be discussed in a public arena between people with disparate research backgrounds. Given the speakers only have 15 minutes to present their research to a group of people with divergent areas of expertise, the commission usually does not have the time to delve into certain ethical issues that may warrant more attention. Regardless, I think that the entire effort is of incredible importance to anyone interested in neuroethics and points to the increasing significance of supplementing cutting edge neurological research with ethical deliberation. The process of considering the multitude of psychological and neurological consequences of certain research endeavors within the institutionalized setting of the bioethics commission meetings represents an important step in determining the relevant ethical questions surrounding brain technologies. To that end, the Commission serves as a groundbreaking model for vital interdisciplinary discussion that could not have been made possible without the support of the executive branch.



The success of the commission thus far also speaks to the mounting attention directed toward neuro-ethical and bioethical considerations in many areas of research and development. If a student, scholar, researcher or member of the general public takes anything away from watching a few webcasts of Commission meetings or reading the Gray Matters report, it should be noted that the ethical ramifications of research ought not to be ignored. Rather, the effort represents a different way to get involved in the increasingly important neuroethical conversation. In fact, the next meeting will take place on November 5th and 6th in Salt Lake City. The Commission ensures that there is a live-stream of the event on their website equipped with the ability to send in questions via email. The events are also open to the public upon registration. Be sure to tune into the upcoming event to both listen to experts discuss fascinating neuroscience developments and also to watch engaging conversations between scholars from a wide array of backgrounds debate about the ethical implications of such advances.





Citations



(1)  Leonard, A. (2013, April 15). Obama’s BRAIN gets hammered. Salon. From http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/obamas_brain_gets_hammered/

(2) Shen, H. (2013, Nov 6). BRAIN storm. Nature. From http://www.nature.com/news/neurotechnology-brain-storm-1.14105

(3) Wadman, M. (2013, April 15). Society for Neuroscience quashing dissent on BRAIN Initiative, critic complains. Nature News Blog. From http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/04/society-for-neuroscience-quashing-dissent-on-brain-initiative-critic-complains.html

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Marshall, J. (2014). Neuroethics in Theory and in Practice: A First-hand Look into the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2014/09/neuroethics-in-theory-and-in-practice.html