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Imagine a world that is exactly like ours, except for one difference: There exist supernatural beings that have the ability to compute the outcomes of human decision making well in advance of any given decision being made. As matter of fact, they are able to predict with 100 percent accuracy what any given individual will do at any given moment for up to six months into the future. They are not super-psychics, per se. Rather these beings have complete access to information about an individual’s history and complete access to the physical state of the world (including the physical states of the individual’s nervous system). These beings can use this information to conduct computations that allow them to predict human decision making. Not only can these beings predict human decision making with pin-point accuracy, but they know exactly how to rearrange things so that you will end up making some decision x at some time t. In other words, if these beings felt so inclined, they could interv...

In preparation for this week’s Neuroethics Journal club meeting, where we are discussing Deboleena Roy’s article “Neuroethics, Gender and the Response to Difference,” I wanted to give a short primer on some of the issues that are discussed in that article, most notably, sex, gender and feminist science studies and their relationship to neuroscience. I close with a short discussion of the complications these introduce to the study of sexuality.   One of the fundamental things we teach in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies is the difference between biological sex and the cultural construction of gender. “Sex” refers to a measurable, biological, or innate difference - such as the presence or absence of a Y chromosome or a functioning uterus. [1] “Gender” refers to all of the cultural and social meanings that are layered on top of sex and which may or may not be innately attached to one sex or another. The majority of people alive today have clearly delineated sex and gender, and ...

A number of potentially problematic themes run throughout public discussions about sexuality in this country. One such potentially problematic theme revolves around innate sex/gender differences in sexuality. I see stories in the media almost every week about how men and women are almost diametric opposites when it comes to sexuality as a result of evolutionary pressures. In these articles, which are often reporting on scientific studies, the men are invariably sex-hungry and desperate to procreate with any available woman, while the women are invariably choosy and determined to find a “good provider” (for examples, see here , here , and here ). I suspect these articles (and the studies they draw from) suffer from confirmation bias, developing elaborate evolutionary rationales to justify what seem like outdated stereotypes. Another such theme revolves around the determinative role of hormones in sexual desire and activity. In a fascinating (although now somewhat out-of-date) study , so...

I recently found myself thinking about how we would allow evidence dealing with neuroscience into the courtroom. The question interested me because I wanted to know how our judicial system would differentiate between real and useful evidence versus what may seem no better than allowing a Shaman enter to argue a point based on "evidentiary mysticism".  What I found was that there are two different legal rules for allowing use of neuroscience evidence. The first is the Frye rule and the second is the Daubert rule. Daubert applies in Federal Courts and in States that have adopted it, while the Frye rule applies in all other courts. The difference between the texts of the standards can seem nuanced but presents two different outcomes judicially. Joseph T. Walsh has a great primer on the two rules if you would like to explore them more, but the issue that I would like to deal with here is simple and does not require a complete knowledge of both rules. Basically you just have to un...

The undergraduate Neuroethics Program Creative Team embarked on making one of their first videos featuring Dr. Paul Root Wolpe .  This short 3 minute video discusses the ethical implications of using neuroimaging as evidence in the courtroom. This video is a teaser for our upcoming event on May 25th at Emory (see below for more information).  Thanks to our Neuroethics Creative Team! Giacomo Waller Sabrina Bernstein Lauren Ladov The Truth About Lies: the Neuroscience, Law, and Ethics of Lie Detection Technologies You Can’t Handle the Truth! The Neuroscience Program, Center for Ethics Neuroethics Program, and the Scholars Program in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Research (SPINR) are combining forces to hold a symposium on the intersection of neuroscience and law pertaining to the use of fMRI and other lie detection technologies in the courtroom. Drs. Hank Greely , director of the Center for Law and Biosciences at Stanford Law School, Daniel Langleben , a professor of Ps...

You won't want to miss the Second Annual Neuroscience and Ethics Award!  We are proud to announce this year's award will go to Dr. Steven Hyman. T HE N EUROETHICS P ROGRAM OF THE C ENTER FOR E THICS Y ERKES N ATIONAL P RIMATE R ESEARCH C ENTER T HE N EUROSCIENCE I NITIATIVE PRESENT THE Second Annual Neuroscience and Ethics Award TO Steven Hyman, M.D. Former Provost of Harvard and Director of NIMH SPEAKING ON : Addiction as a Window on Volitional Control Date: April, 9, 2012 Time: 4pm (followed by a reception) Location:  Woodruff Health Sciences Administration Building  Auditorium Dr. Steven Hyman is a renowned leader in neuroscience and  psychiatry, and has championed ethical inquiry in those fields. Dr.  Hyman is former director of the National Institute of Mental  Health and former Harvard University provost, where he is currently the Distinguished Service Professor of Stem Cell and  Regenerative Biology and Professor of Neurobiology. He is ...

Let me preface this by saying that Incomplete Nature is probably one of the most daring and original published scientific monographs I’ve ever read. Of course, it could also be one of the worst, it's actually impossible to tell. That said, I’ve had Terrence Deacon’s first book, The Symbolic Species , sitting on a shelf at my house for about five years now. I picked it up when I was a sophomore in college, at the second link of a five-year chain that went evolutionary biology → evolutionary psychology → cognitive neuroscience → philosophy of mind → consciousness → causality and information theory → oh-my-God-nothing-is-real. At the time I clearly wasn’t ready for the book, as I read about the first ten pages before putting it down. This was for two reasons. The first is that his books are long, dense, and convoluted, and his sentences tend to loop-the-loop back on themselves and self-cannibalize. This is certainly true for Incomplete Nature , which clocks in at over...

Feeling tired? You’re not the only one. According to a 2009 poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, 20% of Americans sleep less than six hours a night. How can people even do their jobs with less than six hours of sleep? Oh. Before you get too impressed by my ability to cite statistics, I should tell you I’m quoting directly from the article we read for the most recent meeting of the Neuroethics program’s journal club: “Examining the Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Workplace Deviance: a self-regulatory perspective” by Michael Christian and Aleksander Ellis. Dr. Gillian Hue presented the article. Not only did Gillian study sleep and circadian rhythms as a graduate student, she also has extensive experience with sleep deprivation thanks to her young son, Lucas (hey, she made that joke, not me). One of the first things Gillian asked was how many of us had gotten seven hours or more of sleep the night before. Only two people raised their hands: Kristina Gupta and Cyd Cipolla...