temp_copy

By Elaine Walker Elaine Walker is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Emory University.   She leads a research laboratory that is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to study risk factors for psychosis and other serious mental illnesses.  Her research is focused on the behavioral and neuromaturational changes that precede psychotic disorders.   She has published over 300 scientific articles and 6 books.  The diagnostic process can be complicated by many factors. Most of these factors reflect limitations in our scientific understanding of the nature and course of disorders. But in the current US healthcare climate, legislative proposals concerning insurance coverage for preexisting conditions add another layer of complexity to the diagnostic process. It is a layer of complexity that is riddled with ethical dilemmas which are especially salient in the field of mental health care. The following d...

This spring, the Neuroscience Graduate Program and the Neuroethics Program at Emory University are teaming up to present the 2017 Emory Graduate Student Neuroethics Symposium entitled, The Use of Preclinical Biomarkers for Brain Diseases: A Neuroethical Dilemma.  This year’s symposium will focus on the neuroethics of preclinical detection, including discussions of the basic and clinical research being performed and the neurotechnologies being developed for the early detection of autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease.  The symposium will take place on Friday, April 28th from 10am to 4:30pm at Emory University and is free and open to the public. The symposium will be comprised of three sessions:  Session 1: Autism, with a focus on the ethics of conducting preclinical research. Session 2: Schizophrenia, with a focus on the ethics of interventions and treatment. Session 3: Alzheimer’s disease, with a focus on the ethics of delivering a preclinical diagnosis give...

By Jalayne J. Arias, JD, MA Jalayne J. Arias is the Associate Director of the NeuroEthics Program and Assistant Professional Staff in the Department of Bioethics at the Cleveland Clinic. Ms. Arias’ work incorporates empirical and conceptual projects addressing critical legal and ethical issues inherent in diagnosing, treating, and researching Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. Most recently, she served as the principal investigator for the study Stakeholders’ Perspectives on Preclinical Alzheimer’s Diagnosis: Patients, Families and Care Givers . Her recent publication, Confidentiality in preclinical Alzheimer disease studies (Neurology), addresses confidentiality concerns relevant to biomarker testing in Alzheimer’s. In 2007, Dr. Dubois and co-authors introduced the concept of prodromal Alzheimer’s disease in their Lancet article revising diagnostic criteria. In 2011, the National Institutes of Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association supported a series of...

By Guest Contributor, Jagan Pillai, MD, PhD Dr. Jagan Pillai is a neurologist at the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Cleveland Clinic and works to help people with cognitive changes from neurological disorders and to develop diagnostic and treatment strategies in neurodegenerative diseases. He trained as a medical doctor at the University of Kerala, Trivandrum, India. He obtained a PhD from Northwestern University. He trained in Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and at the University of California San Diego. As a neurologist interested in neurodegenerative disorders, I met Phil and a few others with preclinical Huntington’s disease (HD), on a trip to Phoenix, AZ to take in their perspectives. Phil is a self-appointed counselor, caretaker, and community leader of PHDs. He chuckles as he credits his accomplishments to having been born a PHD (in his lingo, Person with Huntington’s disease). HD is a neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expanded number of triplet re...