The Effects of Neuroscientific Framing on Legal Decision Making

By Corey H. Allen

Corey Allen is a graduate research fellow in the Georgia State University Neuroscience and Philosophy departments with a concentration in Neuroethics. He is a member of the Cooperation, Conflict, and Cognition Lab, and his research investigates (1) the ethical and legal implications of neuropredictive models of high-risk behavior, (2) the role of consciousness in attributions of moral agency, and (3) the impact of neurobiological explanations in legal and moral decision making.

More than ever, an extraordinary amount of up-and-coming companies are jumping to attach the prefix “neuro” to their products. In many cases, this ”neurobabble” is inadequate and irrelevant, serving only to take advantage of the public’s preconceptions about the term. This hasty neuroscientific framing doesn’t stop with marketing but instead creeps into public and legal discourse surrounding action and responsibility. This leads to the question: does the framing of an issue as “neuroscientific” change the perceptions of and reactions to that issue? This question, especially in the realm of legal decision making, is the focus of ongoing research by Eyal Aharoni, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby, Gidon Felsen, Karina Vold, and myself, with the support of Duke University and the John Templeton Foundation. With backgrounds varying from psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, to neuroethics, our team employs a multi-disciplinary approach to probe the effects of neuroscientific framing on public perceptions of legal evidence as well as the ethical issues surrounding such effects.

The Power of “Neuro”

When it comes to public perception, neuroscientific information seems to play a stronger role in confusion than in clarification. For example, the inclusion of irrelevant neuroscientific information (such as complex-sounding brain areas) clouds a person’s ability to tell good explanations from bad explanations as well as increases people’s satisfaction with these bad explanations (1). Similarly, the inclusion of brain images alongside scientific argumentation increases perceptions of scientific reasoning above and beyond different graphical representations of the same data; though, it is worth noting that these results have been contested (2 & 3). Regardless, neuroscientific explanations seem to possess some sort of “seductive allure” that other modes of explanations lack (1). But, this seductive allure does not stop at our perceptions; it also extends to how people behave and react to these perceptions. Please also see previous posts on this topic here.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Typically, research on the behavioral implications of neuroscientific discourse focuses on an actor’s moral responsibility and individual control of his/her future actions. It is conjectured that these topics of interest are due to laypeople’s proclivity to make (potentially faulty) assumptions regarding what caused the act and how much control the actor had in that process (4). In other words, painting a picture in which the actor’s brain activity arises prior to “them” realizing it leads to assumptions that his/her actions are nothing more than middleman in a larger causal chain and are, therefore, events that “they” have no control over. For example, Vohs & Schooler (2008) found that when participants were exposed to a deterministic message (i.e. an argument that behavior is a direct result of genetic and environmental factors, and thus, unchangeable), they were more likely to cheat on a task, presumably because they saw themselves as unable to do otherwise (5). Furthermore, neuroscientific discourse can affect how individuals treat others. When exposed to neuroscientific information (whether it be an entire semester of an introductory course in neuroscience or just a magazine blurb), people are less likely to be overly punitive when deciding how to respond to an individual’s bad actions (6). Seemingly, due to assumptions about causality, we are more likely to see others’ actions as being caused by their brain instead of being caused by “them,” leading to the intuition that they are now less morally responsible for their bad action and therefore less deserving of punishment. 

Neuroscience and Criminal Sentencing

One realm in which this research is especially pertinent is in criminal sentencing in the courtroom. Given that the usage of neuroscientific explanations and evidence in criminal sentencing has been steadily rising, the question regarding the seductive allure of neuroscience in the courtroom has already been posed frequently in the literature (7, 8, & 9, & 10). In particular, there is a focus on what is commonly referred to as “the double-edged sword” of neuroscientific evidence; that is, neuroscientific evidence has both the ability to mitigate or aggravate punishments depending on how the argument is framed. For example, explaining away a criminal action by positing that it was the offender’s brain that made him/her do it has the potential to decrease punitive sentences based on that crime. On the other hand, by making the argument that an offender is “unable to do otherwise” because of their brain, a picture is painted of an offender who cannot control his/her actions. Offenders who are unable to control their actions pose a larger future danger to society. This increased future danger has the potential to bring with it intuitions that the offender needs to be incapacitated for a longer time in order to protect society. 

Image courtesy of Flickr.

While most experiments aiming to find the effects of neuroscientific explanations in courtroom settings have found modestly mitigating (if any) effects on punishment (8, & 9, & 10), two studies in particular, by Aspinwall (2012) and Fuss (2015), show reasons to think that the “double-edged sword” of neuroscientific evidence is more than just theoretical (11 & 12). These studies posed the question of the effect of neuroscientific explanations on judges, American and German, respectively. Both studies found similar mitigating effects – the inclusion of a biological defense in the trial decreased attributions of legal responsibility and, furthermore, decreased the punishment recommended. But, on the other hand, both studies also found potentially aggravating effects. Aspinwall, for example, found that as mitigating post-hoc rationalizations (such as decreases in perceived moral culpability) increased with the introduction of a biological defense, so did mentions of balancing this effect with similar aggravating rationalizations (taking into account the offender’s future danger to society). Comparably, Fuss also reported an increase in judges’ recommendations for involuntary civil commitment. Though these results are certainly indicative and supportive of the notion of the “double-edged sword,” these findings rely heavily on open-ended question analyses instead of on direct punitive and incapacitative measures. 

Our Research on the Double-Edge Effect 

Because of the mixed results in the literature, we wondered whether or not failures to detect the “double-edge” effect were due to how punishment was being measured. A key assumption of the “double-edge” effect seems to be that mitigation and aggravation are driven by very different motives— one concerned with the moral responsibility of the offender (mitigation) and the other more concerned with the future consequences of letting a potentially dangerous offender back into society (aggravation). Overall, we were worried that prison sentences confound these motives and mask the “double-edge” effect, so we aimed to test it by including multiple measurements. In this research, we utilized an experimental vignette method, in which participants read a case summary regarding an offender with an impulse control disorder who was found guilty of sexual assault. They were then asked to assume the role of the judge overseeing the case and recommend a prison sentence for the offender. Participants were also given the opportunity to recommend that the offender be involuntarily hospitalized instead of or in addition to their prison sentence. This measure served as a way to incapacitate the offender (due to his/her dangerousness) without necessarily doing so for punitive reasons. 

Within these experimental vignettes, we manipulated two main aspects of the offender’s story: 1) whether the offender’s impulse control disorder was caused by behavioral or neurobiological factors, and 2) whether this disorder was found to be treatable or untreatable. Alongside these manipulations, we also included a control condition in which the offender was completely healthy. In line with the notion of the double edged sword, we hypothesized that neurobiological evidence, compared to behavioral evidence, would serve to reduce recommended prison sentences, and inversely, increase recommended time in involuntary hospitalization. This is exactly what we found: neuroscientific evidence decreased prison sentences (Figure 1) and increased involuntary hospitalization (Figure 2). We also found that both prison sentence recommendations (Figure 1) and involuntary hospitalizations (Figure 2) were greater when the disorder was described as untreatable as opposed to treatable.

Figure 1. Neurobiological evidence mitigated sentences relative to behavioral evidence and no evidence. Similarly, treatable conditions evoked significantly shorter sentences than untreatable conditions.

Figure 2. Neurobiological evidence increased involuntary hospitalization terms relative to behavioral evidence and no evidence. Inversely, treatable conditions evoked significantly shorter involuntary hospitalization terms than untreatable conditions.

What do our results suggest? 

While neuroscientific evidence certainly has the capacity to be mitigating in criminal sentencing, as previous studies have shown, that may not be the whole story. Our research suggests that when people are given the option of involuntary hospitalization in addition to prison time, they are then able to manage the offender’s future dangerousness without resorting to the “one-stop-shop” of retributive prison sentencing. In other words, when prison time is the only option available, our pluralistic motivations, and thus the potentially mitigating influence of neuroscientific evidence, may be obscured. Only when individuals can choose among sentencing options with distinct functions may this sensitivity to neuroscientific framing arise. 

Our results imply that sentencing decisions may be susceptible to how the evidence is framed. If this framing effect does turn out to be both prominent and replicable, then many ethical and legal issues arise with it. Though it is not my intention to address these issues here in the depth they warrant, it is worth mentioning two in particular: 1) more empirical research is needed to bolster the theoretical claims regarding ethical and legal issues of neuroscientific evidence in the courtroom, and 2) this type of research can play an important role in educating judges about the influences of framing, as well as address misconceptions about what neuroscience can and cannot tell us with respect to questions of causation and control. 

By applying the experimental method to the theoretical claims that have arisen in the popular media regarding the potential effects of neuroscientific evidence and framing within the courtroom, this line of research serves to substantiate, dispel, and scrutinize these claims. In doing so, both the accuracy and the precision of these concerns increase, leaving the public, future researchers, and legal scholars better suited to address certain susceptibilities within the sentencing process. For example, if this framing effect is truly only present when punitive motives are separated out and represented as different sentencing options, then concerns of framing might be ill-placed when the judge is only able to consider time in prison. On the other hand, if a judge is considering civil commitment, involuntary hospitalization, or supervised probation, these framing effects become incredibly important and pertinent. In this case, the framing of the offender’s offense can potentially alter not only his or her quality of life, but also his/her access to resources necessary for successful rehabilitation. 

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Further down the line, this research can also educate the judges making these decisions about how certain framing effects might alter their recommended sentences. It is important to note that this education doesn’t stop solely with the effect of framing of sentencing but also includes more fine grained effects on notions of moral and legal responsibility, causation, and culpability. Though the jury is out on how this education would curb these certain framing susceptibilities, an increased recognition of, and interest in, these effects have the potential to inform the creation of additional safeguards within the legal system– safeguards designed to better protect the inherent tension between offender rights and public safety. 

References 

(1) Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. R. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470–477. 

(2) McCabe, D. P., & Castel, A. D. (2008). Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107(1), 343–352. 

(3) Farah, M. J.; Hook, C. J. The Seductive Allure of “Seductive Allure.” Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 2013, 8, 88–90. 

(4) Nahmias, E. (2011). Intuitions about Free Will, Determinism, and Bypassing. The Oxford Handbook on Free Will 2nd Edition, 555–575.  

(5) Vohs, K. D., & Schooler, J. W. (2008). The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19(1), 49–54. 

(6) Shariff, A. F., Greene, J. D., Karremans, J. C., Luguri, J. B., Clark, C. J., Schooler, J. W., ... & Vohs, K. D. (2014). Free will and punishment: A mechanistic view of human nature reduces retribution. Psychological science, 25(8), 1563-1570. 

(7) Farahany, N. A. (2016). Neuroscience and behavioral genetics in US criminal law: an empirical analysis. Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 2(3), 485-509. 

(8) Greene, E., & B. S. Cahill (2011). Effects of Neuroimaging Evidence on Mock Juror Decision Making. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 30(3), 280-96. 

(9) Saks, M. J., Schweitzer, N. J., Aharoni, E., & Kiehl, K. A. (2014). The Impact of Neuroimages in the Sentencing Phase of Capital trials. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 11(1), 105-131. 

(10) Schweitzer, N. J., & Saks, M. J. (2011). Neuroimage evidence and the insanity defense. Behavioral sciences & the law, 29(4), 592-607. 

(11) Aspinwall, L. G., Teneille R. B., & J. Tabery (2012). The Double-Edged Sword: Does Biomechanism Increase or Decrease Judges' Sentencing of Psychopaths? Science, 337(6096), 846-849. 

(12) Fuss, J., Dressing, H., & Briken, P. (2015). Neurogenetic evidence in the courtroom: a randomised controlled trial with German judges. Journal of medical genetics, jmedgenet-2015.

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Allen, C. (2018). The Effects of Neuroscientific Framing on Legal Decision Making. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2018/04/the-effects-of-neuroscientific-framing.html

Oxytocin: The Hormone of Hype, Hope, and Healing

By Shweta Sahu

Due to his work interrogating the role of certain chemicals in vole behavior at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Dr. Larry Young has come across the problem of his results being portrayed hyperbolically, as the science sometimes goes to fictional lengths. Yet this work has important implications for mental health. To demonstrate this exaggeration as well as its potential, I am going to address: 1. the buildup of the oxytocin hype, 2. the translation of the research and 3. the ethical implications in humans.

Prairie voles, image courtesy of Flickr user theNerdPatrol

Oxytocin and pair bonding

Dr. Young researches oxytocin (OT), a neuropeptide known to be involved in birthing and associated with maternal bonding, and his lab utilizes voles as an experimental model. Their research was founded upon on the idea that prairie voles are highly social, bi-parental, and monogamous by nature while meadow voles are less social, uniparental, and promiscuous. They investigated differences in oxytocin receptor distribution in the brains of prairie voles and meadow voles and found that in the monogamous prairie voles, there are more oxytocin receptors in the reward system of the brain. Young and colleagues then injected oxytocin antagonists into the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), an area implicated in bonding and reward. They found that prairie voles, whose oxytocin receptors were blocked, would not bond when they mated.

In 2004, Dr. Young began studying the neuropeptide vasopressin. The vasopressin receptor gene (Avpr1a) is expressed in another reward area, the ventral pallidum, which was previously associated with pair bonding in monogamous prairie voles. He then expressed this gene into the ventral pallidum of the promiscuous meadow voles. With the "new" vasopressin receptors, the meadows voles subsequently bonded monogamously like the prairie voles. This experiment showed that a fundamental aspect of behavior can be transformed simply by altering a single gene in an animal.

By this time, Young's research with voles was published in high-impact journals such as Nature. As a result, some media articles made exaggerated claims suggesting that the research was applicable to humans, though Young and his team never said that. The media came up with several catchy titles such as "Monogamouse," and "Genetics could keep Mickey and Mini together," and "Love is a drug for prairie voles to score!" It also brought about the question of "the fidelity gene."

From voles to humans?

The results of the vasopressin and oxytocin research, along with their potential applications in products and the insights gained into the workings of the human body have inspired numerous press releases and even several further scientific studies. In an interesting turn of events, the media coverage inspired Nature to ask Dr. Young to write an essay about love. This signified a transition for Dr. Young wherein he shifted to thinking about the translatability of his work to humans: could a human mother's love be all that different from a chimp or macaque mother's love, which in turn is not all that different from a vole mother's love? Thus, his work at Yerkes shifted to a focus on humans, and his lab sought to discover whether early life experiences can affect our ability to form bonds later in life. Additional research in this area included modeling of depression-like symptoms in voles after the loss of their pair bonded partner and studies of consolation in these animals.

Maternal affection, image courtesy of Wikipedia

The research of Young and his team contributed to a growing body of data suggesting that oxytocin is the pair bonding hormone, not to be confused with the love or “cuddle hormone." In all the OT hype, Dr. Young and others realized that oxytocin had important applications beyond inducing labor and pair bonding in humans and other mammals. Oxytocin is critical in its role with social affiliation more broadly. In fact, one study found that oxytocin increases gaze and the ability to maintain eye contact. Another study showed that oxytocin enhances the brain reward system responses in men when viewing the faces of their female partner; when husbands were put in scanners and viewed pictures of their wives, the same brain regions are activated in humans and in pair bonding voles.

Oxytocin nasal spray?

One particularly interesting study discovered that the administration of intranasal oxytocin spray in humans can increase trust. This, in turn, led to the production of oxytocin-filled perfumes for people to apply externally, and these "Sniff of Trust" products are available on the market. Examples include: Attrakt, Attrakt for Her, and Connekt, though there is no scientific evidence that has supported their efficacy or even the theory that high enough doses from people's clothes are able to pass the blood brain barrier and have any kind of significant effect (the best method to reach the desired effects of oxytocin remains to spray it intranasally). Advertising descriptions include calls to "Wear Connekt and be your true, uninhibited self" and to "Enhance Personal Relationships, Enhance Workplace Bonds, Improve Confidence, Increase Positive Self-Awareness, Experience More Empathy." The ratings for Attrakt for Her got 4.1 stars on Amazon Marketplace and some high praise, most notably one by Valerie Evans:

"I have been using this secretly for about a week. I wanted to see if it affected my husband of 18 years at all. I think it did. He has been a lot more attentive and cuddly the last few days. Every time I turn around he wants a hug, or just wants to hold me. No complaints here :D There is no fragrance to this that I can smell which I love so you can wear it with your regular perfume."

Applications for autism?

Perhaps the most hot button topic in oxytocin research is that it has been implicated as a potential therapy in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which is currently untreatable with pharmacotherapy. Dr. Young notes that researchers are currently working to find a way to get the brain to stimulate an increase in release of oxytocin by means other than the use of chemical sprays. Moreover, some studies have found that increased concentrations of oxytocin in the brain have increased emotion regulation, eye gaze, and ability to interpret nonverbal facial expressions in patients with ASD.

Eye gaze, image courtesy of Wikipedia

According to Young, this, in turn, incites the ethical consideration of whether parents are justified in seeking intranasal OT to treat their autistic children and whether physicians should be allowed to prescribe intranasal OT to their patients if they deem this appropriate. He also asks, should we use oxytocin to promote sociality beyond just those with ASD? Is this a form of cosmetic pharmacology?

Some people have even begun self-administering oxytocin as well as to their children, regardless of whether they have a confirmed diagnosis or not. An Amazon commenter posted:

"We use this on our 6 year old son who maybe on the spectrum. He has terrible meltdowns and has had problems socially. This works as a miracle cure – sometimes. Sometimes he is engaging and interactive, patient, kind, loving, amazing. Others he still has meltdowns.

"This isn’t an approved treatment but works better than language or sensory therapy ever did on the same issues. Plus it helps him sleep. All in all – definitely amazing."

Experts recommend parents to wait until more is known about the long term effects of using oxytocin to treat ASD and other prosocial disorders, but still, "some parents of children with autism have asked doctors to prescribe it... or have purchased lower-dose versions of the drug over the counter." After one clinical trial, one 15-year-old patient with Aspergers was given intranasal oxytocin and he immediately started giggling. "Since then, his parents started buying low-dose over-the-counter oxytocin spray, which they keep at home and with the high school nurse." The patient even notes, “When I’m really stressed or sad, pretty quickly I start feeling a lot more calm. It sort of disrupted the thoughts that were making me nervous.”

Applications for Psychotherapy?

Another ethically controversial scenario Dr. Young raised was the possibility of using OT to promote trust in patients such as for psychotherapy. I’d add that we can venture and ask what this means for the future of healthcare. In accordance with the study that found that oxytocin increases trust, we can theoretically make anyone more trusting, and this has potential applications in all fields! If OT makes people (from any vocation or background) trust more, then patients may open up and tell their doctors and psychiatrists the full extent of their symptoms. In situations outside the medical field, it is possible that investors could look to invest their money in people or corporations they can trust; maybe we could have more effective lawyers once they have 100% trust in their clients, and perhaps everyone wins.

As expected, though, there are many ethical issues to take into consideration before we start entertaining the notion that we can chemically induce trust. Many, including patients in this context of healthcare, often have reasons to withhold trust or choose to cultivate trust over time. Would oxytocin truly enhance or deteriorate the patient-doctor therapeutic alliance? We must ask ourselves, could this actually do more good than harm? Would it be worth it in the grand scheme of things to chemically induce trust or are we fine the way we are, since we have evolved to only produce and utilize a certain amount of oxytocin in our bodies? Could oxytocin assist in positive social interactions in general, even in people who don't specifically have any diagnoses of ASD or another disorder? Might it even be used for cognitive or moral enhancement? Even now, while the science continues to evolve, there is no shortage of oxytocin consumer products. There is a risk that if consumer use continues to outpace the evidence, then the full therapeutic potential of oxytocin may never be realized. In summary, Dr. Young's research provides many examples of how creative basic science research can have a tremendous impact for human populations and the importance of scientific engagement with the media to optimize translation and communication of the key messages.

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Sahu, S. (2016). Oxytocin: The Hormone of Hype, Hope, and Healing. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2016/05/oxytocin-hormone-of-hype-hope-and.html

A plea for “slow science” and philosophical patience in neuroethics

By Richard Ashcroft, PhD

Professor Richard Ashcroft, an AJOB Neuroscience Editorial Board Member, teaches medical law and ethics at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level in the Department of Law at Queen Mary University of London.

Readers of AJOB Neuroscience will be very familiar with the range and pace of innovation in applications of neurosciences to problems in mental health and wellbeing, education, criminology and criminal justice, defense, and love and sexuality – to name but a few areas of human concern. However, there is a skeptical tendency which pushes back against such innovation and claims. This skepticism takes a number of forms. One form is philosophical: some claims made about neurosciences and their applications just make no sense. They rest on conceptual mistakes or logical fallacies. This kind of attack has been made most persuasively by neuroscientist M.R. Bennett and philosopher P.M.S. Hacker in their Neurophilosophy: Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (2003). Another form is empirical: some claims are advanced on the basis of weak or flawed evidence, and may go well beyond what that evidence could support, even if on its own terms the data are robust and obtained in methodologically sound ways. A typical instance of this is the way that newspapers regularly report neuroimaging studies which purport to describe “the autistic brain,” when at best they describe some differences in one subset of autistic people carrying out one experimental task, compared with a small control group of putatively neurotypical people. Another form is ethical: some technologies raise significant ethical challenges. And obviously some challenges are political, bearing on interests of particular social groups or on competing visions of the society we want to live in. The standard examples here are drawn from debates about neuro- or psychopharmacological enhancement.

All of this is true of other life sciences as well – particularly genetics – but there seems at the moment to be a particular backlash about “neurohype” (see previous related posts on this blog here, here, and here).

While there is a lot of enthusiasm for the potential of the neurosciences to improve our understanding of the brain, the mind and human behaviour, and to enable us to develop useful technologies for treatment and enhancement, there is also a lot of scorn for scientific and popular literature which seems, on its face, to do little more than add the particle neuro- to the name of an existing discipline, or to turn well understood findings in psychology or economics into apparently novel discoveries in the neurosciences.

It seems to me that there is a powerful need for ways to disentangle or demarcate on the one hand good from bad arguments about neurosciences and technologies and on the other hand genuinely novel findings where the “neuro-“ is genuinely central from rebranding and turf claiming on the part of neuro-enthusiasts.

This is not directly an ethical question, I think. Some scientists and commentators are, perhaps, guilty of intellectual dishonesty, or of representing themselves as having expertise they don’t really have. This is something that bioethicists have continually wrestled with, from the earliest days of the field. But most of us are not guilty of deliberately over-claiming or hyping our work, or findings in the sciences, any more than we are occasionally guilty of underestimating or misunderstanding the issues. The same is true of the scientists and clinicians working in the neuro-fields.

I think rather it is a question of intellectual responsibility. We need to take more pains over what we say. We need to slow down, to practice in discussions of neuroethics what philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers calls “slow science”.  Here I think there is a special place for philosophy in neuroethics and in interdisciplinary collaboration with neuroscientists, in seeking analytical clarity about what is being claimed, with what evidence, and to what effect. I am not making a special plea for the role of philosophy in making grand theoretical and metaphysical theories, but rather for a modest analytical patience. Wittgenstein, without Wittgensteinianism.

Incorporating philosophy in neuroethics, image courtesy

of flickr user m01229

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Ashcroft, R. (2016). A plea for “slow science” and philosophical patience in neuroethics. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2016/02/a-plea-for-slow-science-and.html

Combating neurohype

by Mo Costandi

Mo Costandi trained as a developmental neurobiologist and now works as a freelance writer based in London. His work has appeared in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, among other publications. He writes the Neurophilosophy blog, hosted by The Guardian, and is the author of 50 Human Brain Ideas You Really Need To Know, published by Quercus in 2013, and Neuroplasticity, forthcoming from MIT Press. Costandi also sits on the Board of Directors of the International Neuroethics Society.

In 2010, Judy Illes, president elect of the International Neuroethics Society, argued that neuroscientists need to communicate their research to the general public more effectively. Five years on, that message is still pertinent - and perhaps even more so.

Since then, public interest in neuroscience has continued to grow, but at the same time, coverage of brain research in the mass media is often inaccurate or sensationalist, and myths and misconceptions about the brain seem to be more prevalent than ever before, especially in areas such as business and education.

Why is this? And what can be done to remedy the situation? A handful of studies into how neuroscience is reported by the mass media and perceived by the public provide some answers – and reiterate the point made by Illes five years ago.

Several years ago, for example, researchers at University College London analysed nearly 3,000 articles about neuroscience research published in the three best-selling broadsheet and the three best-selling tabloid newspapers in the UK between 1st January 2000 and 31st December 2010.

They conclude that “research was being applied out of context to create dramatic headlines, push thinly disguised ideological arguments, or support particular policy agendas,” and that “neuroscientists should be sensitive to the social consequences neuroscientific information may have once it enters the public sphere.”

Photo courtesy of Pexels

More recently, researchers in the Netherlands examined the reporting on neuroscience in Dutch newspapers. They found that the quality of the coverage depends largely on the time a paper is released, its topic, and the type of newspaper, and that the accuracy of reporting tended to be low, with free and popular newspapers in particular tending to provide a minimal amount of detail.

Researchers sometimes criticize journalists for reporting on neuroscience inaccurately, and press officers at academic institutions and scientific journals can also be subjected to criticism about over-hyped press releases, which are often the source of bad reporting. In one recent case, a correlation between high-strength marijuana and white matter integrity was widely reported as a causal relationship (compare the paper, the press release, and the subsequent media reports). But as another recent study showed, researchers are not entirely faultless, as they sometimes contribute to these processes by providing their press office with exaggerated information about their findings.

Accordingly, there are a number of things that researchers can do to counteract misrepresentations and misunderstanding of neuroscience. Paramount among these is that they communicate their own work and that of others as accurately as possible, without overstating their interpretation of any findings, and also emphasizing any limitations and caveats the research might have.

This mostly refers to interactions with journalists who are reporting on new findings, but growing numbers of researchers are taking to social media – especially blogs and Twitter – as a way of both engaging with the general public, and with each other, directly.

By disseminating accurate information, researchers may help improve the quality of reporting about neuroscience, and help to stem the tide of misunderstanding about the brain. And it could be argued that they have a moral responsibility to do so.

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Costandi, Mo (2015). Combating neurohype. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2015/12/combating-neurohype.html

Ambivalence in the Cognitive Enhancement Debate

By Neil Levy, PhD




Neil Levy is the Deputy Director of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, Head of Neuroethics at Florey Neuroscience Institutes, University of Melbourne, and a member of the AJOB Neuroscience Editorial Board. His research examines moral responsibility and free will.



The most hotly debated topic in neuroethics surely concerns the ethics of cognitive enhancement. Is it permissible, or advisable, for human beings already functioning within the normal range to further enhance their capacities? Some people see in the prospect of enhancing ourselves the exciting prospect of becoming more than human; others see it as threatening our humanity so that we become something less than we were.




In an insightful article, Erik Parens (2005) has argued that truthfully we are all on both sides of this debate. We are at once attracted and repulsed by the prospect that we might become something more than we already are. Parens thinks both frameworks are deeply rooted in Western culture and history; perhaps they are universal themes. We are deeply attached to a gratitude framework and to a more Promeathean framework. Hence we find ourselves torn with regard to self-transformation.




When someone feels torn in this kind of way about how they should think about or respond to something, they are ambivalent. Parens thinks that ambivalence is in fact the right response to cognitive enhancement: we ought to recognize that we are torn in both directions and acknowledge and respect this fact. We should not seek to resolve the ambivalence; we ought to embrace it. While I think that Parens highlights something of great importance when he argues that we are torn, I think he is wrong that we ought to attempt to respect both frameworks.




The mere fact that we are torn is no reason to think we ought to give equal – or indeed, any – weight to both directions in which we are torn. There is plentiful evidence that many people are conflicted in their attitudes toward members of other races, for instance (Payne & Gawronski 2010). They have egalitarian beliefs but inegalitarian implicit attitudes. But they should not ‘respect’ those implicit attitudes; they should attempt to eliminate them.




If there is good reason to reject one (or both) the attitudes that we feel in response to cognitive enhancement, we ought to do so. I will not argue, here, that we ought to reject one or other attitude. Here I want to highlight the costs of ambivalence.

Image from Nature
452,
674-675
(2008)

There is a very large body of evidence that when people are strongly conflicted, they – unconsciously – seek to resolve the conflict, and they will do so even at the cost of confabulation. Consider the extensive data on cognitive dissonance (Cooper 2007). Cognitive dissonance paradigms induce people to be disposed to attribute contrary attitudes to themselves. For instance, college students may be led into a state of cognitive dissonance by gentle situational pressure to write an essay defending tuition fee rises. If they regard themselves as having willingly written the essays, and are unable to explain why they did so by reference to payment or reward, they are in a state of cognitive dissonance: they were antecedently disposed to judge that their fees shouldn’t rise, but they now have evidence that they have a different belief. In this kind of paradigm, they self-attribute the belief that fees should rise, even though matched controls (who, for instance, write an essay defending the same claim in exchange for payment) are very unlikely to agree that their tuition fees should rise.




When it would resolve cognitive dissonance to do so, people’s standards for accepting a claim are much lower than otherwise. It causes us to engage in highly motivated reasoning: for instance, accepting a weak argument just because committing to it resolves the ambivalence. Allan Buchanan (2011) is apparently puzzled that in the debate over human enhancement, incredibly intelligent and sophisticated thinkers often “substitute high-sounding rhetoric for reasoning” (Buchanan has the bio-conservatives in mind; I think the charge can be extended to some of those in the pro-enhancement camp as well). I think this is just what we ought to expect, if Parens is right. If cognitive enhancement causes ambivalence in us, then we should not be surprised to see bad arguments advanced and accepted by good thinkers.




The way forward is not to embrace ambivalence but to avoid triggering it in the first place. Just how to do that is not at all easy. One recommendation that seems to follow is that we ought to embrace a practice that we have independent reasons to adopt, in any case: avoid hype. Too often we greatly exaggerate the potential that existing drugs and other techniques of intervening in the mind have for enhancing ourselves. In fact, all the available methods seem to promise very little improvement for those who are already functioning well and what improvement they promise seems to come at a cost in other domains. Perhaps bearing these facts in mind will enable us to come to a more realistic and a more sober assessment of cognitive enhancement.






References




Buchanan, A. E. 2011. Beyond Humanity: The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement. New York: Oxford University Press.



Cooper, J. 2007. Cognitive Dissonance: Fifty Years of a Classic Theory. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.



Parens, E. 2005. Authenticity and Ambivalence: Toward Understanding the Enhancement Debate. Hastings Center Report 35: 34-41.



Payne, B. K., & Gawronski, B. 2010. A history of implicit social cognition: Where is it coming from? Where is it now? Where is it going? In B. Gawronski, & B. K. Payne (Eds.), Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications, New York, NY: Guilford Press, pp. 1–17.






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Levy, N. (2014). Ambivalence in the Cognitive Enhancement Debate. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2014/10/ambivalence-in-cognitive-enhancement_14.html

Should you read more because a neuroscientist said so?

By Lindsey Grubbs



Lindsey Grubbs is a PhD student in the English Department at Emory University, where she is also working on a certificate in bioethics. She holds a master’s degree in English and gender studies from the University of Wyoming. She is interested in the relationship between literature and science, and works with American literature from the nineteenth century until today to interrogate and complicate the boundaries between health and wellness, normalcy and aberrance, and physical and mental complaints.



As neuroscientists begin to approach topics usually falling under the purview of other specialties, how can they ethically incorporate various forms of knowledge rather than provide simplified metrics that will, in a data hungry society, be easier for most to latch onto?



In 2013, we saw the publication of at least two high profile studies claiming neuroscientific proof for the potential moral benefits of reading fiction. Greg Berns and his associates published “Short- and Long-Term Effects of a Novel on Connectivity in the Brain” in Brain Connectivity (Berns, Blaine, Prietula, & Pye, 2013), and David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano published “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind” in Science (Kidd & Castano, 2013). The Berns article makes a relatively modest claim: the day after an evening session reading a novel, test subjects had short-term increased brain connectivity in areas of the brain associated with taking perspectives and understanding narratives, and longer-term connectivity that lasted several days in the bilateral somatosensory cortex, which the authors suggest could help explain the mechanism of “embodied semantics,” the idea that there is somatosensory involvement in the processing of language, as when tactile metaphors like “I had a rough day” activate the somatosensory cortex (Lacey, Stilla, & Sathian, 2012). As suggested by its title, the Kidd and Castano piece makes a more dramatic claim: the authors conducted five experiments and write that reading award-winning literary fiction improves subjects’ theory of mind both alone and in comparison to nonfiction or popular bestselling fiction. The reaction to these studies in the press follows the trend of a mania for neuroscientific evidence and colorful images of the brain¹.  Why is it necessary, though, to grant scientific authority more weight as evidence than other forms of knowledge?

Via The Wire

Our society values information that seems objective over that which seems subjective—at times a value that makes sense, but one that is exaggerated in the case of something like responses to literature, which are inherently subjective. Writing for the New York Times, Alissa Quart writes, “The problem isn’t solely that self-appointed scientists often jump to faulty conclusions about neuroscience. It’s also that they are part of a larger cultural tendency, in which neuroscientific explanations eclipse historical, political, economic, literary and journalistic interpretations of experience” (Quart, 2012). The reading studies and the press reactions to them clarify the need for interdisciplinary work that truly engages with, rather than pays lip service to, multiple sources of knowledge—not just scientific protocol, but also generations of thoughtful work in the humanities.



Kidd and Castano’s study highlights the need for truly engaged interdisciplinary work, as it engages with literary topics without full consideration of the dynamics of reading—they perform what ought to be an interdisciplinary study without the necessary expertise, leading to a weaker study compounding the type of media “neurohype” this one received. While Kidd and Castano acknowledge literary theory by employing literary critic Roland Barthes’ differentiation between “readerly” texts, which encourage passive reading, and “writerly” texts, which engage the reader and require them to produce their own meanings (a move demonstrating that they’ve done some homework in literary theory), they use the terms imprecisely (Barthes likely would have classed all of the books in the study as “readerly”—none were “weird” enough to garner a “writerly” diagnosis, which describes text like James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake) and perhaps to the point of inaccuracy. Anyways, the terms originate over forty years ago, and hardly reflect more contemporary, nuanced understandings of how texts engage the reader.



More recent literary theory suggests that the value and substance of a text is not an inherent quality of a work; rather, the meaning of a text is created in the relationship between the reader and the page, both enmeshed in a complex context of race, class, gender, and other factors. By making the claim that “literary fiction” improves theory of mind while “popular fiction” does not—a messy distinction framed as though it were a straightforward one (it seems important to note that the results of Berns’ study—which used a “popular,” not “literary” novel—would suggest that this is wrong, and that reading need not be literary to improve empathy), Kidd and Castano’s study also risks propping up class-based distinctions. Supporting the bias that reading “high-culture” literature, which is undeniably bound up in classed, racialized, and gendered inequalities, is more morally salutary than reading other texts on the basis of one measure is irresponsible, and shows an inadequate engagement with the politics of reading. Despite a brief nod to the class-based distinctions between the two groups, the authors maintain that the notion of “literary value” has “ecological validity” because it can be detected by readers. But it is precisely this ecological validity that changes how the text will be read: we live in a culture that values certain types of writing from certain types of authors (most typically, dead white men), and this value is necessarily historically contingent—not “objective.” Today, we know when we pick up a mystery or sci-fi novel that we are supposed to read it easily, quickly, and probably with a bit of embarrassment. In contrast, when we pick up “serious” literature, we are supposed to engage and work at meaning—which we can easily imagine would impact the neural mechanisms at play.

Via stanford.edu

Incorporating an expert in literary study could have helped the experiment design avoid this problem. Consider the work of Natalie Phillips, an English professor working with neuroscientists and radiologists on a study of the neuroscience of reading and attention. Subjects read Jane Austen in an MRI and alternated between skimming casually and reading closely—revealing that the two types of reading produced very different patterns on the MRI. Her familiarity with literature allowed her to realize that there are not simply different types of texts, but also different types of reading—a key oversight in the Kidd and Castano study. Future research into the relationship between reading and the brain would be more thorough, convincing, and conceptually and ethically sound if it includes humanities scholars, who contribute a different kind of knowledge. Conversely, the growing body of work in the humanities that incorporates a cognitive approach must be vigilant about including science ethically, which is to say scientifically—not “pop-scientifically.”



As neuroscientists become more deeply engaged with social questions, as Berns and Kidd and Castano have done with these recent studies, we will need to begin sorting through a complex series of questions. Julianne Chiaet writes in Scientific American that Kidd and Castano’s study could influence educational programs, prison reform, and the treatment of autism. But how well supported does a scientific claim have to be before we use it to shape policy? Kidd and Castano acknowledge that the research is preliminary, focused on only one of a wide array of possible benefits of reading, and that much research remains—however, that doesn’t stop them from suggesting potential policy implications based on the limited knowledge they propose. They point to the new Common Core State Standards and argue that more fiction ought to be included in the curriculum (at the expense of other subjects of study). Alternatively, what are the implications of “prescribing” reading as a kind of social medication for those deemed pathologically asocial? Writing for Slate, Mark O’Connell expresses concern about looking at reading in a "morally instrumentalist" way. What are the dangers of suggesting that mandated reading programs could “fix” our criminals and children with autism at the expense of broader social reforms that would reduce the incentives to commit crimes or the stigma our culture aims at people with disabilities? Moving forward, tackling these types of questions will require the pooled expertise of those in the sciences and humanities.



¹ Berns uses neuroimaging, while Kidd and Castano use measures of theory of mind like “reading the mind in the eyes” tests.





Bibliography



Berns, G. S., Blaine, K., Prietula, M. J., & Pye, B. E. (2013). Short- and Long-Term Effects of a Novel on Connectivity in the Brain. Brain Connectivity, 3(6), 590–600. doi:10.1089/brain.2013.0166



Chiaet, J. (2013). Novel Finding: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Empathy. Scientific American. Retrieved June 16, 2014, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/novel-finding-reading-literary-fiction-improves-empathy/



Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind. Science, 342(6156), 377–380. doi:10.1126/science.1239918



Lacey, S., Stilla, R., & Sathian, K. (2012). Metaphorically feeling: Comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex. Brain and Language, 120(3), 416–421. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2011.12.016



O’Connell, M. (2013, October 28). 10 Novels to a Better You. Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/10/does_reading_fiction_make_you_a_more_empathic_better_person.2.html



Quart, A. (2012, November 23). Neuroscience: Under Attack. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/opinion/sunday/neuroscience-under-attack.html



"This is your brain on Jane Austen, and Stanford researchers are taking notes." (2012, September 7). Stanford University. Retrieved June 11, 2014, from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/september/austen-reading-fmri-090712.html







Want to cite this post?



Grubbs, L. (2014). Should you read more because a neuroscientist said so? The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2014/06/should-you-read-more-because.html