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By Tyler M. John Tyler John is a postbaccalaureate fellow at the National Institutes of Health Department of Bioethics interested in resource allocation, animal ethics, and moral theory. This fall, he will begin a PhD in Philosophy at Rutgers University.  The opinions expressed are the authors’ own. They do not reflect any position or policy of any U.S. governmental entity, including the National Institutes of Health or the Department of Health and Human Services.  On June 9-10, I joined a gathering of philosophers, psychologists, veterinarians, and biomedical researchers for the Animal Research Neuroethics Workshop at the Penn Center for Neuroscience and Society . The workshop, organized by neuroethicists Adam Shriver , James Serpell , and Martha Farah , focused on the ethical issues raised by new advances in neuroscience research with non-human animals. Here, researchers from many disciplines came together to share notes from the field and discuss new neuroethics problems...

by Carlie Hoffman Much of today’s neuroscience research investigating human brain diseases and disorders utilizes animal models. Animals ranging from flies, rodents, and non-human primates are routinely used to model various disorders, with mice being most commonly utilized. Scientists employ these animal models to approximate human conditions and disorders in an accessible manner, with the ultimate purpose of applying the findings derived in the animal back into the human brain. Rhesus macaques , a species of NHP often used in research. The use of animals in research has been the source of much debate, with people either supporting or objecting their use, and objections arising from animal rights activists , proponents of critical neuroscience such as Nikolas Rose and Joelle Abi-Rached , and others. A main focus of this debate has also been the use of non-human primates (NHP) in research. The cognitive functions and behaviors of NHPs are more closely related to those seen in hu...

by Frans de Waal Editor's note:  Frans de Waal, PhD , is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior at Emory University and the Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center . He is also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and a member of the AJOB Neuroscience editorial board. His research focuses on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequality aversion, and food-sharing. de Waal, a leading primatologist, makes an argument here for thinking seriously about the captivity of certain animals such as orcas. Of course, the orca also has a sophisticated mammalian brain. Is the defining criterion of our responsibility to other animals their ecological needs, as de Waal suggests, or is it their cognitive function? What do you think? There is so much to-do about orcas (killer whales) in captivity, with a drumbeat of voices against human...

By Guest Contributor Brian Dias, PhD Imagine your day starting out near the Northern Indian town of Dharamshala with thirty minutes of spiritual chanting and meditation among Tibetan Buddhist monastics. Now you follow that by spending the whole day teaching Neuroscience to these same monastics. “Bliss”, “introspection”, “questioning”, “challenging” and “why” are some of the words that may come to mind. They certainly did for me while I had the privilege of being a Neuroscience faculty member as part of the Emory Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI) this past summer in India. Other faculty members included Dr. Melvin Konner (Evolutionary Anthropology, Emory University), Dr. Ann Kruger (Developmental Psychologist, GSU) and  Dr. Carol Worthman (Medical Anthropology, Emory University). An audience with His Holiness The XIV Dalai Lama, and teaching monastics in Dharamshala, India. I intend to use this blog post to shed light on the intersection of Buddhist philosophy and western science ...

Dr. Frans de Waal By Frans de Waal, Ph.D. Frans de Waal is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior at Emory University and the Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center . He is also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and a member of the AJOB Neuroscience editorial board. His research focuses on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequality aversion, and food-sharing.  At a recent workshop on "Beastly Morality" (April 5, 2013, Emory Ethics Center), which drew participants from all over the country, I asked an innocent question. We had about sixty scholars presenting or listening to academic papers on the human-animal relationship or the place of animals in literature, and I asked how many of them worked with animals on a daily basis. The answer: no one. It was a naive question, because if I had expected half of...

When a friend accidentally burns themselves on a stove-top, their pain is usually very obvious - cursing, gesturing wildly, and even the explicit verbal pronouncement of "I am in pain."  It's also very clear from this display that their pain is viewed as a "bad" thing - they want it to stop, they will be more vigilant in the future to prevent it from happening again, and they very likely either want or even expect you to help out in these endeavors. Pain, while being a survival affirming biological phenomena, is (at least in this simple case here) also inherently ethical. We can then imagine that this same friend's nervous system might be manipulated (whether through mutation , injury, or pharmacological manipulation) to prevent them from feeling pain.  While we might initially be shocked at such a turn of events, we could be convinced of such a change if our friend stopped responding to usually painful stimuli (such as our villain the stove-top) with the sa...

The Neuroethics Journal Club videos are now available on YouTube. Watch each discussion to learn about a variety of neuroethics issues, from treatments for pedophilia to neural plasticity in mice. For each video, one presenter introduced the journal topic and opened discussion to the audience.  Neuroethics Journal Club : The Sexed Brain The Sexed Brain: Between Science and Ideology Catherine Vidal, Neuroethics, 2012  Abstract : Despite tremendous advances in neuroscience, the topic “brain, sex and gender” remains a matter of misleading interpretations, that go well beyond the bounds of science. In the 19th century, the difference in brain sizes was a major argument to explain the hierarchy between men and women, and was supposed to reflect innate differences in mental capacity. Nowadays, our understanding of the human brain has progressed dramatically with the demonstration of cerebral plasticity. The new brain imaging techniques have revealed the role of the environme...