NeuroNews on Wired

Another driveby post: Wired Science has two stories in Neuroscience the last two days that will be sure to be of interest to bioethicists:

Modafinil May Be Addictive:

The alertness drug developed as an addiction-free alternative to amphetamines might be addictive after all.

Researchers have found that people taking modafinil experience a surge of dopamine, an important cognitive neurotransmitter. Such dopamine upswings are seen in people taking Ritalin, and are considered a chemical signature of possible addictiveness. [Link to full article here.]

AND

MRI Lie Detection to Get First Day in Court

Defense attorneys are for the first time submitting a controversial neurological lie-detection test as evidence in U.S. court.

In an upcoming juvenile-sex-abuse case in San Diego, the defense is hoping to get an fMRI scan, which shows brain activity based on oxygen levels, admitted to prove the abuse didn't happen. [Link to full article here.]

The Promise of Advancing Neurotech

[Hat tip to Adam Kolber of the Neuroethics and Law Blog] Worth the nine minutes it takes to watch through to the end:



World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Are You a Possibilitarian (or Possibilian)? Tales from the Afterlives...

Tired of the blather between Dawkins and the Discovery Institute? A refreshing and amusing voice in the debate on is-there-God-or-an-afterlife, is neuroscientist and author David Eagleman, who explains that science has taught him that 1) there are so many possibilities out there, 2) that there is a new movement, Possibilitians, who are not certain about anything, 3) the bigger point is that we really don’t know what is going on, and 4) Science teaches you not to commit yourself to anything if there is not enough evidence.

In his book, Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives, he imagines a variety of scenarios; here is an excerpt:

"In the afterlife you discover that God understands the complexities of life. She had originally submitted to peer pressure when She structured Her universe like all the other gods had, with a binary categorization of people into good and evil. But it didn’t take long for Her to realize that humans could be good in many ways and simultaneously corrupt and meanspirited in other ways. How was She to arbitrate who goes to Heaven and who to Hell? Might not it be possible, She considered, that a man could be an embezzler and still give to charitable causes? Might not a woman be an adulteress but bring pleasure and security to two men’s lives? Might not a child unwittingly divulge secrets that splinter a family? Dividing the population into two categories—good and bad—seemed like a more reasonable task when She was younger, but with experience these decisions became more difficult. She composed complex formulas to weigh hundreds of factors, and ran computer programs that rolled out long strips of paper with eternal decisions. But Her sensitivities revolted at this automation—and when the computer generated a decision She disagreed with, She took the opportunity to kick out the plug in rage. That afternoon She listened to the grievances of the dead from two warring nations. Both sides had suffered, both sides had legitimate grievances, both pled their cases earnestly. She covered Her ears and moaned in misery. She knew Her humans were multidimensional, and She could no longer live under the rigid architecture of Her youthful choices....
The most important aspect of Her new system is that everyone is treated equally. There is no longer fire for some and harp music for others. The afterlife is no longer defined by cots versus waterbeds, raw potatoes versus sushi, hot water versus champagne. Everyone is a brother to all, and for the first time an idea has been realized that never came to fruition on Earth: true equality. The Communists are baffled and irritated, because they have finally achieved their perfect society, but only by the help of a God in whom they don’t want to believe. The meritocrats are abashed that they’re stuck for eternity in an incentiveless system with a bunch of pinkos. The conservatives have no penniless to disparage; the liberals have no downtrodden to promote. So God sits on the edge of Her bed and weeps at night, because the only thing everyone can agree upon is that they’re all in Hell."

As this interview on NPR reveals, Eagleman's imagined afterlives range from the mundane to the profane. You might say that he's a member of the Church of What's Happening Now. Or a Singularitarian.
Either way, the possibilities are endless!~ And fun to consider...

To read more about Afterlives, click here.

Top Ten Neuroscience Trends in 2009

[Cross posted from Brainwaves.corante.com] Here are ten emerging areas of neuroscience that will impact the future of treatments for brain and nervous system which were published as a result of the cutting edge research being presented at the Society for Neuroscience Conference held in Washington DC last month. Top 10 Trends of 2009:

1. Epigenetics leading to new treatment targets: New research highlights the critical interactions of genes and the environment in brain health and development revealing new treatment strategies and potential therapeutic targets for obesity, memory loss, addiction and mental illness.

2. National Neurotechnology Initiative Act: Momentum for this recently introduced legislation which provides $200M a year for federal R&D aimed at accelerating translational neurotech innovation and improving the effectiveness of FDA review process for neuroscience drugs, devices and diagnostics grows.

3. New Sources of Stem Cells: The discovery of new sources of neural stem cells are opening up new avenues and potentially whole new treatment strategies for stroke, vision loss, hearing loss, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and ALS.

4. Deep Brain Stimulation: New clinical research into the use of deep brain stimulation devices for the treatment of neurological diseases and psychiatric illnesses continues to provide new hope to those suffering from drug treatment forms of these illnesses.

5. Addiction advances: New research that clarifies the role of impulsivity in treating cocaine addiction and synaptic plasticity in the control of inhibitory circuits could potentially lead to new treatment strategies for this epidemic impacting over 1.1 billion worldwide.

6. Stress prevention: New research shows that even a few hours of stress can reduce neural connectivity and that chronic stress, in particular early in life, can shrink critical areas of the brain. These findings may lead to new treatment strategies for PTSD and other anxiety-related disorders.

7. Traumatic brain injury advances: Early detection proves important for effective treatment while new research into inflammation may provide new treatments for people with brain injuries and stroke.

8. Get your sleep: More research points to the critical role that a proper night’s sleep plays in the memory consolidation, learning and mental illness further validating the need for effective therapeutics which engender healthy sleep patterns.

9. Discovery tools underpin innovation: New imaging techniques coupled with advances in neuroinformatics, image-based neural circuit analysis, and neural computation are accelerating the pace of neuroscientific discovery beyond what was imagined a decade ago.

10. Neuroscience infiltrates society: From neurofinance, neuroeconomics to neuroesthetics to neuroethics and neurolaw, the influence of neuroscience on society continues to grow.

AND if you are interested in more, check out the Neuroscience Summer Boot Camp 2009 for Non-Scientists, Aug. 2-12, 2009 at Penn.

Some bioethics stories of note this past week....

For you trekkies, could this be Data version 1.3? -
Selmer Bringsjord, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Laboratory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, spends a lot of time in Second Life, but not for recreation or entertainment -- he and his team at RPI (RPI) are the creators of synthetic agent Edd Hifeng, who they have endowed with a limited ability to converse and reason.

See the rest of the article here.

**********************

Do difficult times call for deep brain stimulation?

Brain-stimulation devices for treating depression have faced unexpected setbacks. To serve the 40 million or so sufferers who fail to respond to antidepressant drugs, a few companies have tried to treat the disorder with electronic implants and electromagnets. These therapies, however, have stumbled en route to the doctor's office.

To take a crack at those intractable cases, experiments exploring five device therapies will start this year. In total, nine different technologies are now under investigation in at least 27 human trials.

Full story here.

**********************
A Superhighway to Bliss

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR was a neuroscientist working at Harvard’s brain research center when she experienced nirvana.

But she did it by having a stroke.

On Dec. 10, 1996, Dr. Taylor, then 37, woke up in her apartment near Boston with a piercing pain behind her eye. A blood vessel in her brain had popped. Within minutes, her left lobe — the source of ego, analysis, judgment and context — began to fail her. Oddly, it felt great.

Access the rest of the story here.

*********************

Concerns about carbon nanotubes as carcinogenic

Nanotechnology experts are calling for prompt government action to ensure that carbon nanotubes are properly regulated, after researchers discovered that some carbon nanotubes can cause precancerous growths in the same way that asbestos does.

Researchers led by Ken Donaldson of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Inflammation Research, UK, found that in mice, long, straight, multi-walled carbon nanotubes can cause the same kind of damage as that inflicted by asbestos fibres when they are injected into
the lung's outer lining, called the mesothelium.

Full article accessible here.

***********************
How Our Brains are Wired for Belief

From the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, transcripts from a discussion about how recent advances in neuroscience and brain-imaging technology have offered researchers a look into the physiology of religious experiences. The whole article and transcripts accessible here.

Amen to that...

If you're a baby boomer, you gotta love this story in the NY Times :

Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.

The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, “Progress in Brain Research.”

The rest of the article can be accessed here.

The Intersection of Krispy Kremes and Neuroethics

Never thought you'd hear Krispy Kremes and neuroethics in the same sentence? An article in Science Daily reports new research from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine looks at how your brain reacts as you walk by the donut shop and inhale the wafting aromas of these oh-so-good-but-oh-so-bad-for-you toothsome treats. Does it come as a surprise to anyone that after fasting for eight hours, then being shown pictures of donuts, FMRI's show that the limbic system lights up like a Christmas tree?

As one the researchers commented, "Now I know why I can't resist walking into the bakery some days when I smell fresh scones."

The w(hole) article can be accessed here.

Prejudice and Mentalism: It's All In Your mPFC

Scientific American reports on a study that shows difference in medial pre-frontal cortex activity when distinguishing between people who are part of one's group and who are not.

The experimenters used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of Harvard and other Boston-area students while showing them pictures of other college-age people whom the researchers randomly described as either liberal northeastern students or conservative Midwest fundamentalist Christian students. The categories were a ruse.

Heightened activity in the ventral mPFC was associated with mentalization of self-similar people, whereas dorsal mPFC activity was associated with mentalization of self-dissimilar people. But when the participant pondered the subject in situations where an outsider was believed to behave in the same way as the participant would, activity in dorsal and ventral mPFC was equivalent.

With continuing advancements in the field of neuroscience, this study presents some excellent data to help us better understand the roots of prejudice and stereotyping. This study also poses potential challenges for the future since humans have a tendency to follow up discovery with manipulation - how long until someone posits the use of treatment to suppress activity in the parts of the brain responsible for prejudice, discrimination and bigotry? Are these "diseases" to be cured, deficiencies born of ignorance, or simply a part of being human?

JUST SAY ‘NOETIC”

Earlier last week, we featured a delicious (if dubious) little item titled “The Mind-Body Connection via Intentional Chocolate.” According to The Institute of Noetic Sciences, a recent study found that adding positive intentions to chocolates resulted in significantly enhanced mood in those subjects who ate the “intentional’ confection compared to the controls.

Leaving aside the question of whether this actually works (and if so, how I can get my hands on some?!), I have a question for you:

Off the top of your head, do you know what “noetics” means? At dinner Saturday evening, someone stumped me with this. None of us, all post-college educated, reasonably literate people, could do more than guess. Now I was curious. I decided to look into it, and here’s what I found out. First of all, the dictionary definition of noetic (adj.): “of, relating to, originating in, or apprehended by the intellect. [Greek noetikos , from noesis , understanding].” And then, an interesting extension noted in the Online Medical Dictionary: “noetic anxiety: In existential psychotherapy, anxiety caused by confusion or loss of meaning in life.” (Or perhaps not enough chocolate? But I digress…)

And as for the Institute of Noetic Sciences (or IONS, the evocative acronym they often use):

“IONS is a non-profit research and education institution dedicated to advancing the science of consciousness and human experience to serve individual and collective transformation. Founded in 1973 by astronaut Capt. Edgar Mitchell, IONS was created to explore the interface of science and spirituality and to promote forms of consciousness that shift humanity from separation and conflict to collaboration, forgiveness and inter-connectedness.”

I’m feeling better already!

The Mind-Body Connection via Intentional Chocolate

If you've ever wondered what makes it your mom's chicken soup so special, this study, brought to you by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, suggests that it is the intentional love that goes into making of it:




And with Valentine's Day coming up, what a great gift (I would like to think)! Or is it just a scam? I'll be curious to hear if the scientific community reacts to this as a dose of 'woo' or if the findings will be validated? Either way, those love truffles look great! Let us know what you think by taking our survey.

Why Sex Matters for Neuroethics...

There is a provocative article in the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience today which asks: "Why should we pay special attention to the neuroscience of sex differences? " Authors lay out a plethora of directions in which such research could go, posing such as questions as "How ought we disseminate this information into a sensitive social environment that has a history of bias and discrimination against women? What are the implications of this work for our understandings of what makes us women and men? How should this research be applied in educational, medical, and legal contexts, if at all?... In considering the neuroscience of sex differences, we confront a fundamental issue: how do science and society understand female-male differences, or rather, women and men?"

A little different approach than the previous post we had on Gender: Love it or Kill it?.

The full article can be accessed here, subscription required.

Questions for Our Leaders

Yesterday, we wrote about our call for a presidential debate on science policy. When pulling together potential questions for the debate, I came across a compelling series titled “American Values and the Next President” in the Los Angeles Times (December 12, 2007, Part A; Pg. 30.) It touches on a few of the incredibly important issues our political leaders need to be prepared to address:

An excerpt from the "Life" essay:
…Last month's news that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin had modified adult skin cells to behave as embryonic stem cells seemed at first to have resolved this issue, but that's only true if you believe that the debate over stem cells, cloning and genetic modification is a subset of the debate over abortion.

It is not. It is, or could become, the central life debate of our time, and depending on your perspective, the questions it raises are either exhilarating or horrifying. If you could ensure that your children would never get melanoma, should you do that? How about nearsightedness? Should we be modifying humans in hopes of making them more fit for survival in a warming climate? How about for handling complicated technology, or space exploration?

If these ideas seem excessively science-fictional, consider that when Leon Kass, the conservative University of Chicago professor who would later serve as head of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, wrote a 1972 screed against the then-novel science of in vitro fertilization, he warned that it could someday make mothers of "single women, widows or lesbians." Yesterday's absurdity is today the mainstay of many lives.

Given the expected level of discourse in a presidential campaign, we may be lucky that the candidates are not keen to explore the frontiers of life. Still, it's a missed opportunity...

I would expand the life debate beyond reproductive technologies. Advances in nanotechnology, neuroscience, and robotics, to name a few, will also play an important part in defining "what is life."

My wish for the New Year is that we get beyond paralyzing partisanship, over the top religious rhetoric and the trivializing sideshow antics of the last year and focus the debate on how we can work together to achieve social justice, equity, human dignity and cultivate a critical optimism towards science in order to shape a better future for all.

Why Look for God in the Brain?

If you've ever wondered which came first (does the brain physiologically induce spiritual experience? or do spiritual experiences physiologically affect the brain?), an article in Scientific American explains that it may not be such a crucial question:

"Such efforts to reveal the neural correlates of the divine—a new discipline with the warring titles "neurotheology" and "spiritual neuroscience"—not only might reconcile religion and science but also might help point to ways of eliciting pleasurable otherworldly feelings in people who do not have them or who cannot summon them at will. Because of the positive effect of such experiences on those who have them, some researchers speculate that the ability to induce them artificially could transform people's lives by making them happier, healthier and better able to concentrate. Ultimately, however, neuroscientists study this question because they want to better understand the neural basis of a phenomenon that plays a central role in the lives of so many. "These experiences have existed since the dawn of humanity. They have been reported across all cultures," Beauregard says. "It is as important to study the neural basis of [religious] experience as it is to investigate the neural basis of emotion, memory or language."

Author David Biello goes to explain that "Artificially replicating meditative trances or other spiritual states might be similarly beneficial to the mind, brain and body." But don't expect neuroscience to prove or disprove the existence of God, as Biello concludes: "Although atheists might argue that finding spirituality in the brain implies that religion is nothing more than divine delusion, the nuns were thrilled by their brain scans for precisely the opposite reason: they seemed to provide confirmation of God's interactions with them."

The rest of article can be accessed here .

Neuroethics galore at ASBH

Just back from the ASBH meeting in Washington, D.C., it was a fantastic meeting and neuroethics played a very prominent role in the panel presentations this year. Some of the speakers included Walter Glannon and Roberta Bondar on issues of neuroenhancement, Thomas I. Cochrane and Julie A. Tannenbaum, on how neuroscience is shaping our conceptions of moral personhood, and WBP's Robin N. Fiore and James Giordano about why neuroscience needs naturalized ethics (which brought on a very intense discussion about is there such a thing as a 'male' or 'female' brain). Pair this up with the latest in the Washington Post about how to keep an aging brain a healthy one, and you could have easily have several years worth of interesting reading and contemplation. The Women's Bioethics Project is looking forward to collaborating with the newly established Neuroethics Society and the Law and Neuroscience Project!

Mind Matters: Beliefs, Emotions & Self Identity

Check out our new series, Mind Matters --

Women should care about neuroethics because advances in neuroscience are going to pose some of the most important ethical questions yet about what it means to be human—challenging our concepts of free will, gender and genetic determinism, and what sets us apart from other species. To help us address those issues, we have developed a new program called Mind Matters: Beliefs, Emotions & Self Identity, which will include interviews, podcasts, recommendations for essential readings and the latest in neuro-news.

For more info, click here.

Harnessing the Power of Thought

From the Discovery Channel this past week -- Forget the 'clicker' the old-fashioned TV remote, where you have to manually change the station -- Hitachi's scientists are in the process of developing a brain TV remote controller which would allow users turn a TV on and off or switch channels by only thinking:

"The new technology in Japan could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity.

The "brain-machine interface" developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain's blood flow and translates brain motion into electric signals.

A cap connects by optical fibers to a mapping device, which links, in turn, to a toy train set via a control computer and motor during one recent demonstration at Hitachi's Advanced Research Laboratory in Hatoyama, just outside Tokyo...

Underlying Hitachi's brain-machine interface is a technology called optical topography, which sends a small amount of infrared light through the brain's surface to map out changes in blood flow."

Although this brain-machine interface technology has traditionally focused on medical applications (such as helping individuals with disabilities to operate electric wheelchairs, beds or artificial limbs), manufacturers such as Hitachi and Honda have been seeking commercial applications; Honda is looking to apply the interface to intelligent, next-generation automobiles.

While this technology actually has been around for several years, one major advantage to Hitachi's technology is that the technology is non-invasive; previous technologies have required implantation of a chip under the skull.

To read more, click here.

The gene/neurochemical that may separate human/ape brains: Neuropsin II

From Physorg.com this morning: Gene mutation linked to cognition is found [so far] only in humans

The human and chimpanzee genomes vary by just 1.2 percent, yet there is a considerable difference in the mental and linguistic capabilities between the two species. A new study showed that a certain form of neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning and memory, is
expressed only in the central nervous systems of humans and that it originated less than 5 million years ago. The study, which also demonstrated the molecular mechanism that creates this novel protein, will be published online in Human Mutation, the official journal of the
Human Genome Variation Society.

Led by Dr. Bing Su of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Kunming, China, researchers analyzed the DNA of humans and several species of apes and monkeys. Their previous work had shown that type II neuropsin, a longer form of the protein, is not expressed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of lesser apes and Old World monkeys. In the current study, they tested the expression of type II in the PFC of two great ape species, chimpanzees and orangutans, and found that it was not present. Since these two species diverged most recently from human ancestors (about 5 and 14 million years ago respectively), this finding demonstrates that type II is a human-specific form that originated relatively recently, less than 5 million years ago.

Jay Hughes of the IEET comments "Just wait my hairy friends - soon you will be blogging and working with the rest of us."

My Neurons Made Me Do It...

The Blossoming Field of "Neurolaw": An article in the NY Times explores the 'biology as the basis for behavior' defense in criminal cases. In a trial that opened in the last few days in a State Supreme Court in Manhattan, jurors will be asked to decide whether the defendant was a sadistic man preying on an unsuspecting woman or whether his actions were the result of mental illness.

Disease Drove Sex Attack, Defense Says
"...Now the writer, Peter Braunstein, 43, is about to go on trial, charged with a bizarre crime against a woman who worked in his own newsroom. Prosecutors say he dressed as a firefighter, staged a fire to get into her Chelsea apartment, tied her to a bed, drugged her with chloroform and sexually molested her for 13 hours...
In similar cases, lawyers have argued that their clients were in a dissociated state, much like sleepwalking. A version of this defense, said Rachel Barkow, a law professor at New York University, would be: “You know killing is wrong, but it turns out you think you’re in the middle of a video game. Because of a paranoid delusional state, you thought it was all a fantasy.”

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Are we hard-wired to believe in God?

Why do some of us feel more spiritual or religious than others? Call it science, or call it faith, or call it neurotheology, this is an interesting question posed in a article on CNN's website today:

"NEW YORK (CNN) -- "I just know God is with me. I can feel Him always," a young Haitian woman once told me.

"I've meditated and gone to another place I can't describe. Hours felt like mere minutes. It was an indescribable feeling of peace," recalled a CNN colleague.

"I've spoken in languages I've never learned. It was God speaking through me," confided a relative.

The accounts of intense religious and spiritual experiences are topics of fascination for people around the world. It's a mere glimpse into someone's faith and belief system. It's a hint at a person's intense connection with God, an omniscient being or higher plane. Most people would agree the experience of faith is immeasurable.

Dr. Andrew Newberg, neuroscientist and author of "Why We Believe What We Believe," wants to change all that. He's working on ways to track how the human brain processes religion and spirituality. It's all part of new field called neurotheology.

After spending his early medical career studying how the brain works in neurological and psychiatric conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, depression and anxiety, Newberg took that brain-scanning technology and turned it toward the spiritual: Franciscan nuns, Tibetan Buddhists, and Pentecostal Christians speaking in tongues. His team members at the University of Pennsylvania were surprised by what they found.

"When we think of religious and spiritual beliefs and practices, we see a tremendous similarity across practices and across traditions."

The frontal lobe, the area right behind our foreheads, helps us focus our attention in prayer and meditation."

To read on, click here.

Why Women Should Care About Neuroethics

Advances in neuroscience are going to pose some of the most important ethical questions yet about what it means to be human, and will challenge our concepts and viewpoints on gender and genetic determinism, free will, and what sets us apart from other species. This year, we will be launching several exciting initiatives designed to encourage women to engage on these issues.

The first, in coordination with the Dana Foundation’s Brain Awareness Week, is a lecture on Why Women Should Care About Neuroethics. Our featured expert will be Judy Illes, Ph.D., Director of the Program in Neuroethics at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, founding member of the Neuroethics Society, and editor of “An Anthology in 21st Century Neuroethics” published by Oxford University Press.

Please email info@womensbioethics.org for registration information. Seating is limited for the March 16th Seattle area luncheon. For those who can’t attend, the lecture will be available via podcast.