Ethical Challenges in Neuroscience

Dr. Nuala Kenny presented the December 2010 Warren Frontiers in Neuroscience lecture at Laureate Psychiatric Hospital and Clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Dr. Kenny is a physician trained in pediatrics with a long interest in ethics.  She formed the Department of Bioethics at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Her presentation was titled: “Brain, Mind and the Moral: Challenges of Neuroethics”.  Several scientific publications cited in her presentation are referenced at the end of this commentary.  The following are my lecture notes:

Ethics in neuroscience or neuroethics is an important topic given the explosion in basic science as well as clinical research in neuroscience.  The neuroethics field has grown over the last decade.  Despite the development of neuroethics there is no widely accepted definition of the term.

Oklahoma is an appropriate location for a presentation on this topic.  One might say that ethics in neuroscience got started “On the wrong hoof” in Oklahoma.  Dr. Lewis “Jolly” West, the University of Oklahoma chair of Psychiatry in the 1960s performed research funded by the CIA in their portfolio of LSD research and mind control.  Dr. West famously performed an experiment on an elephant where a large bolus of LSD resulted in the collapse of the animal, seizures and death.  Not a great starting point.

Modern bioethics grew in the 1960s based on technological advances in medicine (dialysis, mechanical ventilation, transplantation) and research.  The key initial areas included issues of consent, competence, determining the risk-benefit ratio of treatments and research protocols, and the issue of justice.  Out of this work came the four key principles of medical ethics 1.) autonomy, 2.) beneficence- doing the most good, 3.) non-malfeasance—limiting risk of harm and 4.) justice.  Although these principles are helpful in addressing ethical review on an individual case basis, they do not aid in more global discussion of ethics such as that necessary in neuroscience.

A 2002 conference sponsored by the Dana Foundation in California set out an agenda to “Map the Field” of ethics in neuroscience and identified four key areas of importance—these areas are reviewed with some comments on interval neuroscience research developments:

Therapeutic interventions

• Screening has developed that allows the diagnosis of clinical neuroscience disorders where no treatment is available—how do we wisely use this technology?
• fMRI may be able to identify children and adolescents  at high-risk for developing conditions such as schizophrenia—how should this information be used and discloses
• Treatments such as deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease can dramatically reduce the motor symptoms of the condition, but may result in more disinhibited behavior and reduced decision-making ability.  How do we assess risk-benefit ratios in these types of interventions

Social policy

• Advance imaging techniques provide a wealth of information about the brain and brain function.  Imaging is commonly combined with genetic information for more powerful experiments.  Imaging technology is now available to combine two types of imaging at once (see combined MRI/PET image above). What are the key neuroethical issues involved in these more powerful imaging technologies?
• Cognitive enhancement drug research is underway the can improve concentration, memory and alertness in normal individuals.  What should be the limitations in the use of these drugs—are we devaluing normal human imperfections that define use?

Public education

• Science education is hard and neuroethics education equally hard—How do we best inform the general public on these issues?
• The media have significant power in shaping what the public knows in developing brain science and the ethical implications.  The media loves neuroscience and brain research breakthrough.  Does the media have an interest in a thoughtful discussion of the neuroethics involved in this research?

Implications of neuroscience in self, agency and moral responsibility

• Neuroscience stimulates thoughtful re-analysis of key ethical issues such as the self, agency (authenticity) and moral responsibility.  There is a strong element of neuroreductionism in some neuroscience research, i.e. “ I am what my neurons and synapses are doing”.  We need to be careful about this approach and the tendency for mind-brain dualistic thinking
• Neuroscience is focusing on how the brain makes ethical and moral decisions.  This reversal challenges ethicists to stay up-to-date on functional MRI and other brain imaging research advances in decision making, variability in processing ethical information, lying and cognitive control in psychopathological behavior.

Brain Posts Comment:  This presentation does highlight some of the key ethical challenges for basic and clinical neuroscientists.   There will need to be emphasis on public education in neuroethics and continuing study and discussion of neuroethical implications as imaging technology is more widely implemented.  You can learn more about the topic of neuroethics at this Dana Foundation website.

Image of combined PET and MRI scans from unrestricted public domain image by author Mco44.  

West LJ, Pierce CM, & Thomas WD (1962). Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Its Effects on a Male Asiatic Elephant. Science (New York, N.Y.), 138 (3545), 1100-3 PMID: 17772968

Leentjens AF, Visser-Vandewalle V, Temel Y, & Verhey FR (2004). [Manipulation of mental competence: an ethical problem in case of electrical stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus for severe Parkinson's disease] Nederlands tijdschrift voor geneeskunde, 148 (28), 1394-8 PMID: 15291423


Young L, & Saxe R (2009). An FMRI investigation of spontaneous mental state inference for moral judgment. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 21 (7), 1396-405 PMID: 18823250


Tairyan K, & Illes J (2009). Imaging genetics and the power of combined technologies: a perspective from neuroethics. Neuroscience, 164 (1), 7-15 PMID: 19409220