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By Tabitha Moses Tabitha Moses is a second year MD/PhD (Translational Neuro-science) Candidate at Wayne State University School of Medicine. She earned a BA in Cognitive Science and Philosophy and an MS in Biotechnology from The Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on substance use, mental illness, and emerging neurotechnologies. Her current interests in neuroethics include the concepts of treatment and enhancement and how these relate to our use of new technologies as well as how we define disability. What does it mean to be conscious? In Arthur Caplan ’s plenary session at the 2017 International Neuroethics Society annual meeting ( Neuromodulation of the Dead, Persistent Vegetative State, and Minimally Conscious ), he explored this question and how the answers may impact research and medicine.  Concerns about the capacity for consent and what defines a true consent demand conversation. Recently, for instance, the widespread story of a man with a do not resuscitat...

By Amber Green Amber Green is currently a senior in the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, double majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and Philosophy . Her majors led her to an interest in neurophilosophy and neuroethics. She hopes to pursue a MA in Bioethics and/or Neurophilosophy and go into a career as a clinical neuroethicist after graduating in May. Having a family member pronounced dead is a very heartbreaking moment. Be it your pet, your sister, your mother, or your child, the pain you feel when the doctor reports that your loved one has passed away is overwhelming. Doctors know that there are no take-backs once they inform the family of the patient’s death, which is why there are strict procedures for a doctor to follow when declaring someone dead. However, when it comes to “brain death” and the advances of life support technology, these procedures become harder to follow and leads one to ask the question: “More importantly, if the brain is dead, are we dead?” In ...

At what point can be say without a shout of a doubt that no one is left inside that lifeless corpse laying there motionless in that hospital bed? The first major problem we encounter when discussing “disorders of consciousness 1 ” is that we still don’t have a definitive definition of what consciousness even is. Is it a tangible mass in the brain? Does it light up in response to stimuli during a brain scan? We are still fighting these issues about people’s mental states and their level of consciousness yet we have no idea what that even is. It seems to be a losing battle that will only end in debate. Some are trying to go a step farther and implement modern technology into the better accessing a patient’s mental abilities and whether or not it is safe to define that as being in a vegetative state. Premotor cortex activity in a vegetative state ( Source ) The reasoning for challenging the standard operation of care is that, in 2008, it was reported that 43% of patients were diagnosed as...

Functional brain imaging techniques have become a versatile tool for peering into brain and how its activity can manifest as behavior. Nervous system injuries can leave people with varying degrees of functionality and capability. Disabilities can be of the mind such as the inability to perform cognitive tasks like math or impair memory recall or formation. Other injuries can be of the body such as in paralysis or quadriplegia. Unfortunately when it comes to brain injuries, the resulting symptoms are never easily quantifiable. Diagnosis of such patients is complicated by the fact that “There is as yet no universally agreed definition of consciousness and, to an even greater extent, no definition of ‘self-consciousness’ or ‘sense of self/being’“ (Owen and Coleman, 2008). It is thus no surprise that misdiagnosis resulting from brain imaging techniques are as high as 43% (Andrews et al. 1996, Childs et al. 1993). The progression of neuroimaging techniques being used clinically to diagnose ...

So, you’re on a first date and you’ve just finished discussing your favorite movies, how many siblings you have et cetera. The next natural topic of discussion will be “how do you feel about functional neuroimaging of the vegetative state?” Don’t be intimidated. Here are three guidelines to follow so that your discussion is intellectually stimulating and does not get stuck in a mire of cognitive biases and gaps in logic. fMRI Communication? ( Source ) Avoid the Availability Heuristic: Your date has most likely read over Owen and Coleman’s 2008 review of functional MRI’s ability to upgrade patients from vegetative states to non-behavioral minimally conscious states (Owen and Coleman 2008). It would be impossible for both of you not to think about the 43% chance of misdiagnosis if you’re in a vegetative state (Owen and Coleman 2008). Telling him/her that more recent studies have decreased these misdiagnoses to 41% probably won’t help (Schnakers 2009) It’s important to remember that just...