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As I have written before , researchers at the Marcus Autism Center are working with eye tracking technologies to identify Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in young children and infants. As Katie Strong described in this blog pos t, a recent article in Nature , titled “Attention to eyes is present but in decline in 2-6-month-old infants later diagnosed with autism,”[1] presented the Marcus team’s most recent findings related to the early identification of ASD traits. They argue that, although there are many different ‘autisms’ with many likely causal pathways, the developmental pathway to ASD is similar. This work is an effort to capture this pathway by focusing on differences in early looking patterns. In this article, they “propose that in infants later diagnosed with ASD, preferential attention to others’ eyes might be diminished from birth onwards”(p. 427). After a brief refresher on the article’s findings and background, I will provide a deeper discussion on the neuroethical concern...

Continued from Part I . In Part II, Dr. van Anders discusses her website, www.gapjunctionscience.org . How did Gap Junction Science come about? Prior to Gap Junction, how did you find and network with feminist scientists? I became really interested in the doing of feminist science – it felt very hard for me to figure things out, and there wasn’t that much community of actual feminist scientists. I wanted to develop a place where feminist science could be discussed – both practice and theory. I sometimes hear people talk about the theory as if it is practice. Of course it’s relevant, but you know what they say about theory and practice: in theory, they’re the same, in practice, they’re not. I was lucky that while I was thinking about these things, there was a call for grants at UM from our ADVANCE program for online networks in science that promote diversity. Feminism isn’t necessarily diverse, but the feminist science I envision at its heart attends to diversity. So, I wanted a space...

Dr. van Anders *Editor's note. The title of this post is the title of Sari van Anders' talk sponsored by Emory Women in Neuroscience on March 20th. This post is the first of a two-part series. Mallory Bowers, a 5th year graduate student at Emory University and President of Emory Women in Neuroscience, interviewed Dr. Sari van Anders an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, for the Neuroethics Women Leaders group. Dr. van Anders received her Ph.D. in Biological and Cognitive Psychology from Simon Fraser University. Her current research program focuses on “social neuroendocrinology, intimacy (sexuality/pair bonding, nurturance), evolution, health, gender/sex and sexual diversity, and research and feminist science practice." The interview will be published in a two part presentation. In Part I, she discusses her path to becoming a critical feminist scientist, the pitfalls of research on sex/gender differenc...

By Elisabeth Hildt, PhD Dr. Elisabeth Hildt is a Senior Researcher, Reader, and Head of the Research Group on Neuroethics/Neurophilosophy at the University of Mainz Department of Philosophy. She is also a member of the AJOB Neuroscience Editorial Board. Recently, non-medical uses of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) which aim at enhancing brain function in healthy individuals have raised public attention (Cohen Kadosh et al. 2012; Fitz & Reiner 2013; Levasseur-Moreau et al. 2013).There are companies selling tDCS devices, and one such company is foc.us , which offers a headset for $249.00 and promotes this headset as an advantage for gaming. With slogans such as: “Use the force: Let the force of electricity excite your neurons into firing faster” or “Stronger, faster, quicker: Excite your prefrontal cortex and get the edge in online gaming”, the headset is portrayed to be a cool and trendy game add-on. However, in first assessments, the benefit of the headset for gami...

Is intelligence more like height or strength? Could high school students improve their IQs in time for the college entrance exams with a few weeks of “brain training” like college students pump up their biceps before spring break? For many years, psychologists believed that intelligence, and particularly fluid intelligence , is for the most part a fixed quantity – somewhat like height. Fluid intelligence, which is thought of as the ability to perceive patterns amongst noise, understand meaningful connections, and analyze information in the moment is a strong predictor of future success yet has been remarkably resistant to training 1 . In a way, this sounds strikingly similar to what neuroscientists once said about the biology of the brain (i.e. neurons don’t regenerate after injury and they are only lost, not added throughout life). Now we know that the brain is incredibly plastic and that new neurons are produced even into adulthood 2 . So, why wouldn’t an aspect of intelligence...

By Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD Dr.  Jonathan D. Moreno is one of 14 Penn Integrates Knowledge university professors at the University of Pennsylvania , holding the David and Lyn Silfen chair. He is also Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, of History and Sociology of Science, and of Philosophy. Moreno is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC. In 2008-09 he served as a member of President Barack Obama’s transition team. He is also a member of the AJOB Neuroscience Editorial Board. In September I arrived in Geneva to keynote a conference at the Brocher Foundation on the banks of Lake Geneva, where the ghost of John Calvin still casts a long shadow over the stern ethos of the Swiss. It was a glorious day in that oasis of calm and cleanliness, where the sheer power of holding much of the world’s money in its vaults justifies a muffled smugness. Compulsively, I checked my email as my taxi glided past the Hotel President Wilson, the monument o...

Last December 2013, the neuroscience graduate students at Emory University spearheaded an effort alongside many other sponsors to organize and implement a symposium to explore the neuroscientific basis of race and gender bias. The program, entitled “Bias in the Academy: From Neural Networks to Social Networks,”  awarded the Laney Graduate School New Thinkers/New Leaders fund and support from CMBC and the Center for Ethics, aimed to provide students and faculty alike an overview of the psychological and neuroscientific research on race and gender bias and how this might be used to mitigate harmful effects of stereotype and bias in the academy. After listening to and participating in the symposium, I realized that the symposium speakers and student planners all hoped to answer a similar question regarding the nature of the brain: Is the brain “hard-wired” to categorize people into groups in a way that makes negative stereotyping inevitable or is the brain exquisitely plastic insof...