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By Sarah W. Denton Sarah W. Denton is a research assistant with the Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Wilson Center. Denton is also a research assistant with the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University. Her research primarily focuses on ethical and governance implications for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, gene-editing technology, and pharmaceuticals.  Tim Brown , University of Washington PhD student and research assistant with the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering’s (CSNE) Neuroethics Thrust , introduced the session titled, “The Brain in Context,” at the International Neuroethics Society’s 2017 Annual Meeting moderated by Husseini Manji , Janssen Global Therapeutic Neuroscience Area Head. This session provided a multidisciplinary view of the challenges we face today in understanding the context of lived experiences and how our brains impact our environments. Getting at the h...

By Emily Young In the early 1900s, psychologist Charles Spearman noticed that children who did well in one subject in school were likely to do well in other subjects as well, and those who did poorly in one subject were likely to do poorly across all subjects. He concluded that there is a factor, g, which correlates with testing performance (Spearman 1904). The g factor is defined as the measure of the variance of testing performance between individuals and is sometimes called “general intelligence”. Later on, psychologist Raymond Cattell determined that there are two subsets of g, called fluid intelligence (denoted Gf) and crystallized intelligence (denoted Gc). Fluid intelligence is defined as abstract reasoning or logic; it is an individual’s ability to solve a novel problem or puzzle. Crystalized intelligence is more knowledge based, and is defined as the ability to use one’s learned skills, knowledge, and experience (Cattell 1987). It is important to note that while c...

What if how wealthy your parents were before you were born and while you were developing changed who you are, how smart you are and how well you are going to do in life? Well, it turns out that your socioeconomic status during development really does affect your life that dramatically. In a recent review by Meany et al. the authors discuss how different aspects of low socioeconomic status affect childhood development. In the first part of this blog post I will discuss the findings of this article and in the second I will discuss the ethical issues of discussing this type of human condition as a disease. Socioeconomic status' influence on development ( source ) According to Meany et al. socioeconomic status has wide ranging and influential effects on the developmental outcomes of childhood development. These effects may be accounted for by three quantifiable variables: access to quality prenatal care, the quality of parental care, and the quality of stimulation from the home en...

The question of socioeconomic status in scientific research is an interesting one. Many experiments do not take socioeconomic status into account, yet studies show that socioeconomic status can significantly alter the human brain. The article, “Socioeconomic status and the brain: mechanistic insights from human and animal research” addresses some of these issues. However, one of the main problems I noticed with this article is the equivalence of socioeconomic status with quality of parental care. The article seems to associate lower socioeconomic status with parental neglect. Conversely, higher socioeconomic status is associated with higher quality parental care. While there may in fact be a correlation, status is by no means a perfect predictor of parental quality. Parental care in rats ( source ) One of the studies cited in the article uses lack of grooming in rats as a model for low socioeconomic status based on the idea that parental care is equated to status. However, this model s...

As we have witnessed firsthand through the recent presidential election campaign season, this topic is as electrifying as any, placing labels of “haves” and “have-nots”. With the notion held by some that this is due to a lack of effort or motivational drive alone, disdain is often an emotion conjured in the minds of many when discussing poverty; but, what if the differences between an individual of high socioeconomic status and lower status was more than just attitudes, but was actually manifestation of completely different thought process? What if just the idea of being of a lower socioeconomic status was detrimental or toxic to the long-term development of the brain? Socioeconomic status might have neural effects ( source ) Numerous studies have begun to bring to light evidence that perhaps motivation or will may not be the only difference between socioeconomic status (SES), but it may lie even more intrinsically. Some evidence exists that individuals of different socioeconomic st...

In their article, “ Socioeconomic status and the brain: mechanistic insights from human and animal research ,” Daniel A. Hackman, Martha J. Farah , and Michael J. Meaney explore how low socioeconomic status (SES) affects underlying cognitive and affective neural systems. They identify and focus on two sets of factors that determine the relationship between SES and cognitive development: (1) the environmental factors or ‘mechanisms’ that demonstrably mediate SES and brain development; and (2) those neurocognitive systems that are most strongly affected by low SES, including language processing and executive function.  They argue that “these findings provide a unique opportunity for understanding how environmental factors can lead to individual differences in brain development, and for improving the programmes and policies that are designed to alleviate SES-related disparities in mental health and academic achievement” [1]. Neuroscience can tell us how SES may affect her brain. Can ...