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By Anna Farrell  Anna Farrell is a rising second year undergraduate student at Emory University. Early on in her Neuroscience major she became interested in Neuroscience’s interdisciplinary nature and continued on to declare a second major in English.  As cyber espionage and hacking are on the rise (Watson, 2016), major corporations, governments, and financial systems have pushed for using biometrics as a more secure way to guard their data. Biometrics measures unique physical characteristics as a way of ascertaining someone’s identity. A wide range of physical characteristics are currently used in biometrics, including DNA, iris, retina, face, fingerprint, finger geometry, hand geometry, odor, vein, and voice identification ( Types of Biometrics ). Governmental uses for biometrics span border control, customs services, and online access to critical systems. However, fingerprint and iris identification results are becoming more replicable as hacker’s abilities advance (Watson,...

By Kathy Bui 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. Kathy Bui is a 4th year undergraduate at Emory University, majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and Psychology. She hopes to pursue a PhD in neurobiology after graduation. Her current interests include social justice topics of class disparities and human health rights.  Introduction: “How do you want to be remembered?”  The fear of our looming death has haunted us since human life began. It’s not hard to believe that the quest of human immortality has not changed since Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality in 22nd century BC. However, with the technological strides in conjunction with ambitious billionaires, the cure to death may be closer than we think. Life expectancy has been steadily increasing over decades, and yet, Americans seem to look forward to the inevitable prospect of immortality. According to a survey ...

Ethical issues with Lumosity and other Direct-to-Consumer Brain Training Games by Emory Neuroethics Program Director and AJOB Neuroscience Editor-in-Residence, Dr. Karen Rommelfanger and AJOB Neuroscience editorial intern Ryan Purcell. Article is open access here for the next 50 days until June 11, 2015. "Internet brain training programs, where consumers serve as both subjects and funders of the research, represent the closest engagement many individuals have with neuroscience. Safeguards are needed to protect participants’ privacy and the evolving scientific enterprise of big data."

The first Neuroethics Journal Club of the Fall 2013 semester was a discussion led by graduate student John Trimper on the ethical implications behind brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) technologies. John introduced the topic by presenting the experimental details and results from a recent paper, published by the Nicoleis lab at Duke University (Vieira et al.), where researchers utilized a BTBI to transfer sensorimotor information between two rats. The BTBI technology allowed for a transfer of information from an “encoder” rat to a “decoder” rat, not using typical bodily interactions, but instead through intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). "Rodent Mind Meld" (Via Wired) The researchers conducted three experiments that demonstrated an artificial communication channel where cortical sensorimotor signals, coded for a specific behavioral response, were recorded in the encoder rat and transmitted to the decoder rat. Once received from the encoder rat, the decoder rat was instructed...

By John Trimper Graduate Student, Psychology Emory University This post was written as part of the Contemporary Issues in Neuroethics course Remember the precogs in Minority Report ? The ones who could sync up their brains via the pale blue goo to see into the future? The precogs from the movie Minority Report Recent findings published in Scientific Reports (Pais-Vieira et al., 2013) suggest that the ability to sync up brains is no longer purely sci-fi fodder, and instead, has moved into the realm of laboratory reality. The relevant set of experiments, conducted primarily at the Nicolelis laboratory at Duke University, demonstrated that neural activity related to performance on a discrimination task could be recorded from one rat (“the encoder”) and transferred into a second rat’s brain (“the decoder”) via electrical stimulation. This brain-to-brain transfer of task-relevant information, provided the encoder rat was performing the task correctly, significantly enhanced the decoder...

“I know what you’re thinking….” It’s a common saying and one that belies any functional capacity to predict another’s thoughts. Yet our drive to uncover arguably the most secretive and private form of information – thoughts – has led to major advances in the science of “reading one’s mind.” Current technologies are able to perform generally accurate predictions about robust neurologic phenomena such as distinguishing if an individual is looking at (or imagining) a face or a home (Haynes and Rees, 2006). However, as technologies advance it may well soon be possible to detect and identify more complex and covert thoughts – lies (Langleben et al., 2005) and even subconscious thought (Dehaene et al., 1998). With this ability, we must question the ethics surrounding the pursuit of this knowledge. Figure 3 from Haynes and Rees, 2006 The foremost concern with use of this technology is the right to privacy. At what length are we able to sidestep an individual’s basic right to privacy? If an in...

With advances in neuroimaging the ability to decode mental states in humans by recording brain activity has become a reality. In a review for Nature Neuroscience that is now six years old, John-Dylan Haynes and Geraint Rees detail how fMRI can be used to accurately predict visual perception. They explain that with advanced statistical pattern recognition, not only can the perception of broadly different visual inputs be differentiated, such as faces versus landscapes, but even the perception of subtly distinct objects, such shoes versus a chair, can be recognized. Further, fine details can also be distinguished, including image orientation, direction of motion, and perceived color. Indeed, the orientation of masked images can even be discriminated by activity in the primary visual cortex despite the subject being unable to consciously distinguish the orientation of the image. Decoding unconscious processing (from Haynes and Rees, 2006 ) While the power of fMRI and other imaging te...

In addition to writing blog posts about neuroethical issues provided to each group (as posted on the blog already), Emory neuroscience graduate students in the Neuroscience: Communication and Ethics Seminar held debates on neuroethical issues of their choosing. The idea behind the debates came from trying to develop better ways for the students to be engaged with concepts of neuroethics. Whereas discussions about neuroethical issues in a classroom often become discussions between the more vocal students and leave quieter students voiceless, the debate format would allow each student a set amount of time to voice their opinions. Course director Dr. Andy Jenkins arranged an instructional session for the class with Bill Newman, coach of the Barkley Forum, Emory’s award winning debate team. At the beginning of the semester, the instructors provided a handful of potential debate topics and allowed the students to contribute ideas that they came up with throughout the semester. ...