Neuroethics and fMRI: Mapping a Fledgling Relationship

Abstract

Human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) informs the understanding of the neural basis of mental function and is a key domain of ethical enquiry. It raises questions about the practice and implications of research, and reflexively informs ethics through the empirical investigation of moral judgments. It is at the centre of debate surrounding the importance of neuroscience findings for concepts such as personhood and free will, and the extent of their practical consequences. Here, we map the landscape of fMRI and neuroethics, using citation analysis to uncover salient topics. We find that this landscape is sparsely populated: despite previous calls for debate, there are few articles that discuss both fMRI and ethical, legal, or social implications (ELSI), and even fewer direct citations between the two literatures. Recognizing that practical barriers exist to integrating ELSI discussion into the research literature, we argue nonetheless that the ethical challenges of fMRI, and controversy over its conceptual and practical implications, make this essential.

Neuroethics 1995–2012. A Bibliometric Analysis of the Guiding Themes of an Emerging Research Field

“…Our empirical, bottom-up analysis revealed not only a constant quantitative increase in the neuroethics literature over the years but also a constant relative size of the different subject categories. Hence, our study confirmed for neuroethics as a whole what has been reported by previous studies with a more limited focus (Seixas and Ayres Basto, 2008; Lombera and Illes, 2009; Garnett et al, 2011; Gooray and Ferguson, 2013). It also shows that most issues now discussed under the label of Neuroethics have indeed gained much more attention since the middle of the 2000s than they have gained in the antecedent decade and that the issues as such are not new and have not changed much over the years.…”

“…Similarly the strong connection of Neuroimaging with Legal Studies could be seen as mirroring an ongoing debate by law scholars and neuroscientists about the ethical and legal problems of mind-reading and incidental findings during neuroimaging procedures. This finding is in line with work by Garnett et al (2011), who found that from a quantitative point of view, there is only a limited number of articles relating to neuroimaging via fMRI that also treat ethical issues of the use of this technology. Other quantitatively important branches of neuroethics are represented by those subject-categories concerned with issues closely related to medical ethics, specifically those concerned with ethical issues in psychiatry.…”

“…These investigations will help to highlight the main differences and similarities of neuroethics and adjoining scientific disciplines and contribute to a better understanding of the current state of neuroethics. Previous bibliometric work on this field has drawn on much smaller subsets of literature (Racine, 2010; Gooray and Ferguson, 2013), has addressed only very particular research fields within the much broader spectrum of neuroethics literature (Seixas and Ayres Basto, 2008; Lombera and Illes, 2009; Garnett et al, 2011, 2013; Boelsen, 2016) or has provided structured compilations of neuroethics literature without any quantitative further analysis (Buniak et al, 2014; Darragh et al, 2015). With this paper we offer the first comprehensive empirical analysis of the development and current state of neuroethics.…”

Advanced Personnel Vetting Techniques in Critical Multi-Tennant Hosted Computing Environments

“…As with lying, several brain regions show significant increases and light up on during scanning when a person sees a familiar object or image or during deception compared to truth telling [23]. For instance, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), ventroletral (VLPFC) and left and right cerebral hemispheres increases activity when people tell lies [31].…”

Resisting the revelatory scanner? Critical engagements with fMRI in popular media

“…If a brain scan labelled 'normal' is placed alongside one labelled 'depressed' in a pharmaceutical advert, does this encourage readers to label themselves in this way, and if so does this impact the ontological status of such designations? In the last 10 years, such questions have been much discussed among journalists, philosophers, ethicists and neuroscientists themselves (for example, Fukuyama, 2002;Check, 2005;Illes et al, 2006;Levy, 2007;Farah, 2008;Giordano and Gorbijn, 2010;Racine, 2010;Garnett et al, 2011), and in the context of broader questions about the rise and historical precedents of biological modes of understanding personhood (for example, Rose, 2006Rose, , 2007Frazzetto and Anker, 2009;Vidal, 2009;Abi-Rached and Rose, 2010;Pickersgill and van Keulen, 2011). A series of neologisms have been coined to describe the potential effects of siting psychological concepts in the brain.…”