temp_copy

By Stephen J. Morse Stephen J. Morse , J.D., Ph.D., is a lawyer and a psychologist. He is Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law, Professor of Psychology and Law in Psychiatry, and Associate Director of the Center for Neuroscience & Society at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Morse is also a Diplomate in Forensic Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology. He has been working on the relation of neuroscience to law, ethics and social policy for over two decades, has written numerous articles and book chapters on these topics and has edited A Primer on Neuroscience and Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2013, with Adina Roskies). He was previously Co-Director of the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project and was a member of the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Research Network. Professor Morse is a recipient of the American Academy of Forensic Psychology’s Distinguished Contribution Award, and a recipient of the American Psy...

By Sunidhi Ramesh This post was written as part of a class assignment from students who took a neuroethics course with Dr. Rommelfanger in Paris of Summer 2016.  Sunidhi Ramesh, an Atlanta native, is a third year student at Emory University where she is double majoring in Sociology and Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She plans to pursue a career in medicine and holds a deep interest in sparking conversation and change around her, particularly in regards to pressing social matters and how education in America is both viewed and handled. In her spare time, Sunidhi is a writer, bridge player, dancer, and violinist.  In 1893, Dr. Henry Howard Holmes opened his World’s Fair Hotel to the world [1]. But what his guests did not know was that the basement was filled with jars of poison, boxes of bones, and large surgical tables. Chutes from the guest rooms existed only to slide bodies into a pile downstairs. In the few months that the hotel was open for the public, Holmes, dubbed ...

By Ethan Morris This post was written as part of a class assignment from students who took a neuroethics course with Dr. Rommelfanger in Paris of Summer 2016.  Ethan Morris is an undergraduate senior at Emory University, majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology with a minor in History. Ethan is a member of the Dilks Lab at Emory and is a legislator on the Emory University Student Government Association. Ethan is from Denver, Colorado and loves to ski.    Background and Current Research Neuroscience is a rapidly burgeoning field that is increasingly facing complex issues as scientists learn more about the human brain and by extension, about personal identity. One technology that has gained attention in the last two decades is brain imaging, a technique that uses various tools to evaluate the brain’s functional response to the world. Some of the more commonly used brain imaging devices are functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography...

By Anayelly Medina This post was written as part of a class assignment from students who took a neuroethics course with Dr. Rommelfanger in Paris of Summer 2016. Anayelly is a Senior at Emory University majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology.  If your doctor told you they could determine whether or not you would develop a neurodegenerative disease or mental disorder in the future through a brain scan, would you undergo the process? Detecting the predisposition to or possible development of disorders or diseases not only in adults but also in fetuses through genetic testing (i.e. preimplantation genetics) has been a topic of continued discussion and debate [2]. Furthermore, questions regarding the ethical implications of predictive genetic testing have been addressed by many over the past years [4,8]. However, more recently, neuroimaging and its possible use in detecting predispositions to neurodegenerative diseases as well as mental disorders has come to light. The ethic...

By Adina Roskies Adina Roskies is Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Cognitive Science Program at Dartmouth College. She received a Ph.D from the University of California, San Diego in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science in 1995, a Ph.D. from MIT in Philosophy in 2004, and an M.S.L. from Yale Law School in 2014. Dr. Roskies’ philosophical research interests lie at the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience, and include philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and ethics. Her recent work focuses on free will and responsibility. Dr. Roskies is also a member of the AJOB Neuroscience editorial board. In the last several months I’ve attended a few workshops on the topic of “cognitive ontology.” One workshop, held at the Rotman Institute at the University of Western Ontario was entitled “ Rethinking the taxonomy of psychology ”; the other, at Macquarie University was called “Reshaping the mind: New work on cognitive ontology”. The basic question raised by these workshops is whe...

By Ibrahima E. Diallo Neuromarketing image courtesy of flickr user cmcbrown  A few years ago, I read a New York Times article that really caught my attention. The article detailed the emergence of a technique that would allow marketers to “make ads that whisper to the brain.” The notion that researchers could probe my mind seemed like an exciting yet frightening proposition. As I read the article, it piqued my interest to learn more about “neuromarketing.” What is neuromarketing and how does it work? Consumer Neuroscience, also commonly referred to as Neuromarketing , is a relatively novel field, which uses neurophysiological techniques, such as brain imaging and electroencephalography, in order to gain insight on the decision-making process of the consumer. Consumer Neuroscience often utilizes not only brain imaging techniques, but also biometrics to gather data related to consumer behavior and decision-making (Ariely & Berns 2010). The data collected is used to gauge cogniti...