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Neurodiversity is a term that was coined by Australian social scientist and autism advocate Judy Singer. In her 1998 thesis, she wrote: “For me, the key significance of the ‘Autistic Spectrum’ lies in its call for and anticipation of a politics of Neurological Diversity, or what I want to call ‘Neurodiversity.’ The ‘Neurologically Different’ represent a new addition to the familiar political categories of class/gender/race and will augment the insights of the social model of disability.”[1] Similar to the way biodiversity is discussed as critical to the stability of the ecosystem, neurodiversity is considered to be critical for human and cultural stability. In other words, Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and other neurological differences should be a part of our community and, thus, neither cured nor subject to intense rehabilitative or normalizing efforts. Before I discuss how neurodiversity is useful to my work and to ASD-related professions, I want to quickly review ASD and my curre...

Last month, as a recipient of the Emory Neuroethics Program Neuroethics Travel Award , I had the wonderful opportunity of attending the International Neuroethics Society Annual Meeting in San Diego, California. The conference brought together leading neuroethics scholars from around the world and focused on the themes of moral enhancement, disorders of consciousness, and the role of neuroscience in the courtroom. (The conference was structured around three star-studded panels. For a full program, please visit here . For full videos of the panels, please visit here .) There were also five oral presentations and a poster session. As part of the event, I exhibited a poster entitled “Revising Weakness of Will: A Reply to Neil Levy,” where I challenged Levy’s use of the theory of ego depletion as an explanation of weakness of will and provided an alternate, neurocomputational account. Presenting my poster at INS. Photo credit: Karen Rommelfanger As a philosopher interested in th...

Neuroethics Symposium December 10, 2013 Bias in the Academy: From Neural Networks to Social Networks   This neuroethics symposia is designed to discuss the complex influence of stereotype/bias on academia and apply advances in the science of stereotype bias to university policies and practices. Through a pre-symposia seminar series and symposia, a white paper will be produced to highlight challenges and to put forth practical solutions to move toward mitigating the detrimental influence of bias and stereotyping in academia.   Presymposia seminar series 1/4: An Introduction to Bias: A Social Network Primer facilitated by Jacob Billings, Neuroscience graduate student, Emory University  Presymposia seminar series 2/4: Biased People or Biased Researchers: A puzzle for Social Psychology facilitated by Chris Martin, Sociology graduate student, Emory University    Presymposia seminar series 3/4: A Look at Power Structures and Bias in Academic Settings facilitated...

Our everyday perceptions of others can potentially be biased by cultural stereotypes. However, research has suggested that an initial, and often negative, stereotype can be downregulated via a highly connected neural network. While this regulatory process has been studied under neutral conditions, for the third journal club of the semester Neuroscience graduate student Kim Lang led a discussion about regulation of this neural network when White individuals are not under neutral conditions, but actually primed for negative African American stereotyping. A recent paper published by Forbes et al. used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex (PFC), and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), three highly interconnected brain regions important for stereotyping and bias. Studies have shown that the amygdala, involved in arousal, is activated immediately when encountering a so-called out-group member. This first response can be downregulated though if...