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Dr. Angela Willey In May I attended a great conference, the 4th biennial conference of the Association for Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies (FEMMSS) . At the conference, I heard a wonderful plenary talk by Dr. Angela Willey and her colleagues. Dr. Willey is one of our own - a recent (2010) graduate of Emory’s doctoral program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In her work, she examines the cultural assumptions underpinning contemporary neuroscience research on monogamy and the social implications of this research. At the conference, I asked Dr. Willey if she would agree to be interviewed about her work for the Neuroethics Blog, and she graciously agreed. Before sharing what she said, I am just going to give you a little background about Dr. Willey and about the neuroscience research on monogamy that she analyzes. About Dr. Willey Dr. Willey has a B.A. from Fordham University and an M.S. in Gender Studies from the London School of Economi...

Via amazon.com The Addicted Brain. The Female Brain. The Male Brain. Chemobrain. Buddha’s Brain. The Winner’s Brain. The Republican Brain . These days, it seems that everybody’s brain is being scanned and their behavior analyzed. In fact, these are all titles of books published in the past decade that communicate the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology research to lay audiences. As a budding neuroscientist, I am excited that science, and neuroscience in particular, has now flooded into popular American culture. Evidence of its expanding domain is everywhere: in magazines ( Scientific American ’s “ MIND ”), blogs ( Neuroskeptic ), radio programs (NPR’s “ Radiolab ”), podcasts ( Nature ’s “ Neuropod ”) and books. For further examination of the reasons for this cultural shift, see the discussion of the phenomenon in the new book “ Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media ,” by Davi Johnson Thorton, Southwestern University's Assistant Professor of Communication Studies....

I attended the excellent Neuroscience, Law, and Ethics of Lie Detection Technologies Symposium  in May, and as a consequence, I have spent the last month trying to answer questions I hadn’t even thought to ask before: Who owns the thoughts in my head? Could I be compelled to submit them? Can someone else decide that keeping my ideas to myself is a violation of the law or a threat to my country? If they force me to surrender them, do I lose ownership? So this week, I thought I would share some of the things I learned as I tried to find out answers. You can actually  buy this online . I am considering getting it printed on a hat. Two preliminary points: first, I want specify what I mean when I say “compelled” to undergo a brain scan. It seems, at least it seemed to me while sitting in the audience, that Americans are pretty afraid of having someone else read their minds without their permission, or, worse, being forced to have their minds read. This extends even to a si...

“It was amazing to see the first brain images of a fully awake, unrestrained dog,” Berns said. “As far as we know, no one has been able to do this previously. We hope this opens up a whole new door for understanding canine cognition and inter-species communication. We want to understand the dog-human relationship, from the dog’s perspective.” —Greg Berns, MD, PhD Recently, the Emory laboratory of Dr. Greg Berns published the first fMRI brain imaging study in unanesthetized dogs.  Popular media reports of the study touting, “What is your dog thinking?” and “Brain Scans Reveal Dogs’ Thoughts” have raised the hackles of the public who ask, “Why conduct a frivolous scientific study on something we already know?” A closer inspection of the actual study publication reveals a simpler and still significant result: The study serves as an experimental “proof of principle”, establishing a model precedent for future dog cognition studies. As a neuroscientist, I view this recent dog brain imagi...

In a column earlier this year, Psychology Today contributor Nate Kornell wrote about his annoyance with the excitement over findings that "the brain does that." Kornell's response to findings that "the brain does that" is a bit of an intellectual "duh!" Or, closer to his own words, the response is more of an exasperated "Of course it does!" And I have to admit I share his annoyance ... to a certain degree. So what if researchers "discover" there are underlying neural mechanisms of the placebo effect? Does this make the placebo effect any more "real"? (Or, for that matter, any less real?) And, if we discover that reading causes activation in the brain, does that give us a meaningful reason to engage in more reading (as was argued in a recent guardian article )? (See the Onion's take here and here .) As Kornell puts it, "every mental process is represented in the brain." Thus, according to Kornell if there i...

"Few medicines, in the history of pharmaceuticals, have been greeted with as much exultation as a green-and-white pill containing 20 milligrams of fluoxetine hydrochloride — the chemical we know as Prozac" wrote Columbia University Assistant Professor of Medicine Siddhartha Mukherjee in a recent New York Times editorial on antidepressant efficacy. As Dr. Mukherjee points out, the rise of antidepressants over the past several decades has been swift and staggering. A recent CDC study found that antidepressants are the most commonly prescribed drug for Americans between 18 and 44 years of age, with 11% of Americans over the age of twelve utilizing such medications. Original image from the Global Information Exchange Network In light of such overwhelming usage rates, one would think that pharmaceutical companies would be falling over themselves to invent the next antidepressant superdrug. As it turns out, however, exactly the opposite trend is emerging. Pharmaceutical giants Ast...