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By Corey H. Allen Corey Allen is a graduate research fellow in the Georgia State University Neuroscience and Philosophy departments with a concentration in Neuroethics. He is a member of the Cooperation, Conflict, and Cognition Lab , and his research investigates (1) the ethical and legal implications of neuropredictive models of high-risk behavior, (2) the role of consciousness in attributions of moral agency, and (3) the impact of neurobiological explanations in legal and moral decision making. More than ever, an extraordinary amount of up-and-coming companies are jumping to attach the prefix “neuro” to their products. In many cases, this ”neurobabble” is inadequate and irrelevant, serving only to take advantage of the public’s preconceptions about the term. This hasty neuroscientific framing doesn’t stop with marketing but instead creeps into public and legal discourse surrounding action and responsibility. This leads to the question: does the framing of an issue as “neuroscientific...

By Shweta Sahu Due to his work interrogating the role of certain chemicals in vole behavior at Yerkes National Primate Research Center , Dr. Larry Young has come across the problem of his results being portrayed hyperbolically, as the science sometimes goes to fictional lengths. Yet this work has important implications for mental health. To demonstrate this exaggeration as well as its potential, I am going to address: 1. the buildup of the oxytocin hype, 2. the translation of the research and 3. the ethical implications in humans. Prairie voles, image courtesy of Flickr user theNerdPatrol Oxytocin and pair bonding Dr. Young researches oxytocin (OT), a neuropeptide known to be involved in birthing and associated with maternal bonding, and his lab utilizes voles as an experimental model . Their research was founded upon on the idea that prairie voles are highly social, bi-parental, and monogamous by nature while meadow voles are less social, uniparental, and promiscuous. They investig...

By Richard Ashcroft, PhD Professor Richard Ashcroft, an AJOB Neuroscience Editorial Board Member, teaches medical law and ethics at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level in the Department of Law at Queen Mary University of London. Readers of AJOB Neuroscience will be very familiar with the range and pace of innovation in applications of neurosciences to problems in mental health and wellbeing, education, criminology and criminal justice, defense, and love and sexuality – to name but a few areas of human concern. However, there is a skeptical tendency which pushes back against such innovation and claims. This skepticism takes a number of forms. One form is philosophical: some claims made about neurosciences and their applications just make no sense. They rest on conceptual mistakes or logical fallacies. This kind of attack has been made most persuasively by neuroscientist M.R. Bennett and philosopher P.M.S. Hacker in their Neurophilosophy: Philosophical Foundations of Neurosc...

by Mo Costandi Mo Costandi trained as a developmental neurobiologist and now works as a freelance writer based in London. His work has appeared in Nature, Science, and Scientific American, among other publications. He writes the Neurophilosophy blog , hosted by The Guardian, and is the author of 50 Human Brain Ideas You Really Need To Know , published by Quercus in 2013, and Neuroplasticity, forthcoming from MIT Press. Costandi also sits on the Board of Directors  of the International Neuroethics Society . In 2010, Judy Illes , president elect of the International Neuroethics Society , argued that neuroscientists need to communicate their research to the general public more effectively. Five years on, that message is still pertinent - and perhaps even more so. Since then, public interest in neuroscience has continued to grow, but at the same time, coverage of brain research in the mass media is often inaccurate or sensationalist, and myths and misconceptions about the brain see...

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...

By Lindsey Grubbs Lindsey Grubbs is a PhD student in the English Department at Emory University , where she is also working on a certificate in bioethics. She holds a master’s degree in English and gender studies from the University of Wyoming . She is interested in the relationship between literature and science, and works with American literature from the nineteenth century until today to interrogate and complicate the boundaries between health and wellness, normalcy and aberrance, and physical and mental complaints. As neuroscientists begin to approach topics usually falling under the purview of other specialties, how can they ethically incorporate various forms of knowledge rather than provide simplified metrics that will, in a data hungry society, be easier for most to latch onto? In 2013, we saw the publication of at least two high profile studies claiming neuroscientific proof for the potential moral benefits of reading fiction. Greg Berns and his associates published “ Short- ...