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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...

I made and abandoned several attempts at an opening sentence for this post and all of them included a deft way to bury the lead. The lead is this: I’m thrilled for two of my students whose video, Empathy and your Brain , was selected as one of the top submissions to the 2014 Brain Awareness Video Contest . Their video now has the chance to be selected as the fan favorite in the People’s Choice contest. But why was I burying it? I suppose I’ve become accustomed to integrating Neuroethics content and dialogue in courses that I teach, sometimes as part of the formal curriculum, but more often as implicit or hidden curriculum . Since Neuroethics courses are still not yet standard fare in most academic institutions, I generally don’t have an opportunity to explicitly test out some of the currently evolving creative techniques in Neuroethics education like those featured on NeuroethicsWomen Leaders teaching resources page . Instead, I often work the ideas and concepts into other mor...

“They said, ‘You can’t mess with my emotions. It’s like messing with me. It’s mind control.'” That’s what Cornell communication and information science professor Jeffrey T. Hancock reported in a recent New York Times article about the public outcry over the now infamous Facebook emotional manipulation study (read on for details). Hancock was surprised and dismayed over the response. He sees the advent of massive-scale sociology and psychology research on the Internet as a “new era” and he has a point. The days of mostly relying on college students as research subjects may be coming to an end. But how should research be conducted in this new online setting? Is it even appropriate to use data from web sites as it is collected now with little, if any, user knowledge and informed consent existing only in the form of privacy policies that nobody reads? 1 In this post I argue that the Internet is not the Wild West and therefore internet-based research should not be allowed to side st...

By Emily Bell, PhD Dr. Emily Bell is Researcher at the Neuroethics Research Unit, Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM). Dr. Bell’s MSc and PhD research in Psychiatry at the University of Alberta focused on investigating brain activity in mood and anxiety disorders using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Her postdoctoral work shifted her into the field of neuroethics, where she examined ethical and social challenges associated with deep brain stimulation in psychiatric disorders. As an investigator of the Neuroethics Core of NeuroDevNet , a Canadian Network of Centres of Excellence , Dr. Bell has been involved in a wide range of network activities and research in the area of pediatric ethics. This includes recent work on the implications of stigma for public health policies and practices in fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and ethical concerns associated with the transition of youth with neurodevelopmental disorders to adult health services. Dr. Bell has bee...