temp_copy

Photo credit: Anders Gade By James Burkett James Burkett is a 2014 recipient of the Emory Center for Ethics Neuroethics Travel Award. He is a graduate student in Emory's Neuroscience program, conducting research on social attachment and empathy in Dr. Larry Young's lab . This October 5 th thru the 8 th I had the pleasure of attending the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies’ (FENS) bi-annual Brain Conference , held in Copenhagen, Denmark. FENS represents the neuroscience societies of 42 different societies in 32 countries, and is the primary organization for neuroscience in Europe. The conference, titled “The Social Brain,” focused on how the brain produces and is affected by social behaviors in humans and in animals. Chaired by eminent scientists Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (Director of the University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience), Frans de Waal (world-famous primatologist at Emory University), and Giacomo Rizzolatti (discoverer of mirror neur...

As an undergraduate, I took several introductory level philosophy classes while majoring in neuroscience. Some of it I could appreciate and most of it went over my head, but a thought that kept nagging me was, “haven’t neuroscientists solved all of these issues by now?” It was only after I had worked in neuroscience laboratories for a few years that I began to realize just how qualified all of our statements had to be due to the plethora of limitations that go along with any result. I began to wince anytime I heard someone use the word “proof” (only salesmen use the term “clinically proven”, but don’t get me started on that…). It seems clear to me now that, for the most part, natural scientists, social scientists and humanities scholars are really all working toward the same goal just in different, albeit complimentary ways. At the first “Neuroscience, ethics and the news” journal club of the semester, Lindsey Grubbs, a PhD student in Emory University’s English Department, facilitated ...

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...

In a previous post , Kim Lang presented the views of several prominent neuroscientists and neurologists on spirituality and religion. With the knowledge that atheism is prevalent in the scientific community, she wondered how is it that some neuroscientists are nevertheless able to integrate their religious and scientific beliefs. One of the neuroscientists whose standpoint she surveyed was Michael Graziano , a Professor of Neuroscience at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute. Dr. Graziano believes that current research on the neurological basis of consciousness proves that spirituality is not only a natural tendency of humans, but also that its foundations are visible in the very structure of the brain [1] . Several questions arise from Dr. Graziano’s statement, and I will try to shed some light on each. To start with, is neurotheology actually studying spirituality, religion, or both? What is the difference between the two? The conceptual separation between the two terms i...