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By Yunmiao Wang Miao is a second year graduate student in the Neuroscience Program at Emory University. She has watched Black Mirror since it first came out, and has always been interested in the topics of Neuroethics.  Humans in the 21st century have an intimate relationship with technology. Much of our lives are spent being informed and entertained by screens. Technological advancements in science and medicine have helped and healed in ways we previously couldn’t dream of. But what unanticipated consequences may be lurking behind our rapid expansion into new technological territory? This question is continually being explored in the British sci-fi TV series  Black Mirror , which provides a glimpse into the not-so-distant future and warns us to be mindful of how we treat our technology and how it can affect us in return. This piece is the final installment of a series of posts that discuss ethical issues surrounding neuro-technologies featured in the show, and will compare h...

By Nathan Ahlgrim Even computer programs, like DeepDream, hallucinate. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons . Experiencing hallucinations is one of the most sure-fire ways to be labeled with one of the most derogatory of words: “crazy.” Hearing voices that no one else can hear is a popular laugh line (look no further than  Phoebe in Friends ), but it can be a serious and distressing symptom of schizophrenia and other incapacitating disorders. Anderson Cooper demonstrated the seriousness of the issue, finding the most mundane of tasks nearly impossible as he lived a day immersed in simulated hallucinations. Psychotic symptoms are less frequently the butt of jokes with increasing visibility and sensitivity, but people with schizophrenia and others who hear voices are still victims of stigma . Of course, people with schizophrenia deserve to be treated like patients in the mental healthcare system to ease their suffering and manage their symptoms, but there is a population who are at peace w...

By Andy Clark Andy Clark is Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, at Edinburgh University in Scotland. He is the author of several books including Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind (Oxford University Press, 2016). Andy is currently PI on a 4-year ERC-funded project Expecting Ourselves: Prediction, Action, and the Construction of Conscious Experience . In this post, I’d like to explore an emerging neurocomputational story that has implications for how we should think about ourselves and about the relations between normal and atypical forms of human experience. Predictive Processing: From Peeps to Phrases The approach is often known as ‘predictive processing’ and, as the name suggests, it depicts brains as multi-area, multi-level engines of prediction. Such devices (for some introductions, see Hohwy (2013), Clark (2013) (2016)) are constantly trying to self-generate the sensory stream – to re-creat...

  By Nathan Ahlgrim The Need for Allies Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons . Mental healthcare in the United States is in need of serious reform. Mental healthcare is less accessible than other services , and efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act could put adequate care out of reach for millions more Americans. Opposition to mental healthcare reform comes from all sides, with the popular talking points demanding law and order, fiscal responsibility, and moral accountability. Still, the consequences of un- or under-treated people interacting with un- or under-trained authorities are hard to ignore, most strikingly in the criminal justice system. Americans with mental illnesses are sixteen times more likely to be shot by police , and more than half of all inmates in America suffer from mental health problems. Mental health reform, then, stands to benefit the healthcare system, criminal justice, and family structure itself. Given the opposition, legislative policy victories wil...

Image courtesy of Flickr user  ellajphillips . AJOBN is proud to announce that our 8.4 Special Issue on head transplantation is live. This issue features posts from Dr. Paul Root Wolpe (“Ahead of Our Time: Why Head Transplantation is Ethically Unsupportable”) and Dr. Sergio Canavero and Ren Xiaoping  (“HEAVEN IN THE MAKING BETWEEN THE ROCK (the Academe) AND A HARD CASE (a Head Transplant)”). This issue is being published amongst a flurry of news coverage surrounding head transplantation. Though Dr. Canavero has been planning and promoting his idea for a head transplantation surgery for the last several years (watch his 2015 TedTalk entitled, “ Head Transplantation: The Future Is Now ”), the actual transplant is scheduled to occur by the end of this year . In fact, just a few days ago Canavero announced that he has successfully completed a head transplant surgery on a human corpse. Karen Rommelfanger and Paul Boshears wrote the editorial piece for the 8.4 issue and also...