One of the primordial functions of the brain is the acquisition of knowledge. The apparatus that it has evolved to do so is flexible enough to allow it to acquire knowledge about unambiguous conditions on the one hand, and about situations that are capable of two or more interpretations, each one of which has equal validity with the others. However, in the latter instance, we can only be conscious of one interpretation at any given moment. The study of ambiguity thus (...) gives us some insights into how activity at different stations of the brain can result in a micro-consciousness for an attribute, and also tell us something about interactions between different cerebral areas that result in several potential micro-conscious correlates, though only one predominates at any given time. Finally, the study of ambiguity also gives us insights into the neurological machinery that artists have tapped to create the ambiguity that is commonly a hallmark of great works of art. (shrink)

As our knowledge of the functional and pharmacological architecture of the nervous system increases, we are getting better at treating cognitive and affective disorders. Along with the ability to modify cognitive and affective systems in disease, we are also learning how to modify these systems in health. “Cosmetic neurology,” the practice of intervening to improve cognition and affect in healthy individuals, raises several ethical concerns. However, its advent seems inevitable. In this paper I examine this claim of inevitability by (...) reviewing the evolution of another medical practice, cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery also enhances healthy people and, despite many critics, it is practiced widely. Can we expect the same of cosmetic neurology? The claim of inevitability poses a challenge for both physicians and bioethicists. How will physicians reconsider their professional role? Will bioethicists influence the shape of cosmetic neurology? But first, how did cosmetic surgery become common? (shrink)

We are developing the Neurological Disease Ontology (ND) to provide a framework to enable representation of aspects of neurological diseases that are relevant to their treatment and study. ND is a representational tool that addresses the need for unambiguous annotation, storage, and retrieval of data associated with the treatment and study of neurological diseases. ND is being developed in compliance with the Open Biomedical Ontology Foundry principles and builds upon the paradigm established by the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS) (...) for the representation of entities in the domain of disease and medical practice. Initial applications of ND will include the annotation and analysis of large data sets and patient records for Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and stroke. (shrink)

A new view of the functional role of the left anterior cortex in language use is proposed. The experimental record indicates that most human linguistic abilities are not localized in this region. In particular, most of syntax (long thought to be there) is not located in Broca's area and its vicinity (operculum, insula, and subjacent white matter). This cerebral region, implicated in Broca's aphasia, does have a role in syntactic processing, but a highly specific one: It is the neural home (...) to receptive mechanisms involved in the computation of the relation between transformationally moved phrasal constituents and their extraction sites (in line with the Trace-Deletion Hypothesis). It is also involved in the construction of higher parts of the syntactic tree in speech production. By contrast, basic combinatorial capacities necessary for language processing – for example, structure-building operations, lexical insertion – are not supported by the neural tissue of this cerebral region, nor is lexical or combinatorial semantics. The dense body of empirical evidence supporting this restrictive view comes mainly from several angles on lesion studies of syntax in agrammatic Broca's aphasia. Five empirical arguments are presented: experiments in sentence comprehension, cross-linguistic considerations (where aphasia findings from several language types are pooled and scrutinized comparatively), grammaticality and plausibility judgments, real-time processing of complex sentences, and rehabilitation. Also discussed are recent results from functional neuroimaging and from structured observations on speech production of Broca's aphasics. Syntactic abilities are nonetheless distinct from other cognitive skills and are represented entirely and exclusively in the left cerebral hemisphere. Although more widespread in the left hemisphere than previously thought, they are clearly distinct from other human combinatorial and intellectual abilities. The neurological record (based on functional imaging, split-brain and right-hemisphere-damaged patients, as well as patients suffering from a breakdown of mathematical skills) indicates that language is a distinct, modularly organized neurological entity. Combinatorial aspects of the language faculty reside in the human left cerebral hemisphere, but only the transformational component (or algorithms that implement it in use) is located in and around Broca's area. Key Words: agrammatism; aphasia; Broca's area; cerebral localization; dyscalculia; functional neuroanatomy; grammatical transformation; modularity; neuroimaging; syntax; trace deletion. (shrink)

This article proposes a novel approach to bioethics, referred to as “affective bioethics”, which draws on traditions in anthropology, science and technology studies, disability studies, and Spinozist materialism. By focusing on the case of Michael and Terri Schiavo, in which Terri’s personhood and subjectivity are challenged by dominant forms of neurological reductivism in the USA, this article suggests that approaching her condition as a set of relations with the people in her life and her socio-technical environment may have helped to (...) develop new ways to conceptualise personhood and subjectivity moving beyond the view of her as a non-person. Drawing on Michael Schiavo’s memoir of his legal battles, and Terri’s diagnosis and care, this article shows how Terri’s connections to the world disrupt American ideas about the isolatable individual as the basis for personhood and subjectivity. Attending to these interpersonal and socio-technical connections focuses bioethical attention on the worlds that individuals inhabit, and how those worlds might be designed to make more kinds of life livable and new forms of personhood and subjectivity possible. (shrink)

In an editorial to a recent issue of Neurology, Richard Dees expresses the same criticism in an even more rigorous epistemic tone: Veikko Launis, Ph.D., is Professor of Medical Ethics and Adjunct Professor of Ethics and Social Philosophy at the University of Turku, Finland.FootnotesThis article is part of the Neuroethics of Brainreading research project, directed by myself and funded by the Academy of Finland. I am grateful to Olli Koistinen, Pekka Louhiala, Helena Siipi, and an anonymous referee for helpful (...) comments, criticism, and suggestions. (shrink)

This article examines the imagination by way of various studies in cognitive science. It opens by examining the neural correlates of bodily metaphors. It assumes a basic knowledge of metaphor studies, or the primary finding that has emerged from this field: that large swathes of human conceptualization are structured by bodily relations. I examine the neural correlates of metaphor, concentrating on the relation between the sensory motor cortices and linguistic conceptualization. This discussion, however, leaves many questions unanswered. If it is (...) the case that the sensory motor cortices are appropriated in language acquisition, how does this process occur at the neural level? What neural preconditions exist such that this appropriation is possible? It is with these questions in mind that I will turn my attention to studies of neural plasticity, degeneracy and the mirror neuron activation. Whereas some scholarship in philosophy and cognitive neuroscience has aimed to identify the neurological correlates of consciousness, examining plasticity, degeneracy and activation shifts the discussion away from a study of correlates toward an exploration of the neurological dynamics of thought. This shift seems appropriate if we are to examine the processes of the “imagination.”. (shrink)

I much appreciate the honour of being invited to deliver the first Manson lecture, which, its founder has laid down, is to be devoted to the consideration of some subject of common interest to philosophy and medicine. I cannot think of anything which better fulfils that condition than the neurological approach to the problem of perception. The neurologist holds the bridge between body and mind. Every day he meets with examples of disordered perception and he learns from observing the effects (...) of lesions produced by disease, or by the physiologist's experiments, something of how the neural basis of perception is organized. It is possible to study perception as though this was largely irrelevant. How far that view is right will be for you to judge when I have finished. (shrink)

It is the impression of neurologists who deal with cancer patients that the incidence of neurologic complications of cancer is increasing (Posner 1995). ...

In an age of modern technology and an increasing movement towards a 24-h working culture, life for many is becoming more stressful and demanding. To help juggle these work commitments and an active social life, nootropic medication, (the so-called ‘smart pills’) have become a growing part of some people’s lives. Users claim that these drugs allow them to reach their maximal potential by becoming more efficient, smarter and requiring less sleep. The use of these medications and the role of health (...) professionals in their distribution raises many ethical questions. (shrink)

Over the past decades, mood enhancement effects of various drugs and neuromodulation technologies have been proclaimed. If one day highly effective methods for significantly altering and elevating one’s mood are available, it is conceivable that the demand for them will be considerable. One urgent concern will then be what role physicians should play in providing such services. The concern can be extended from literature on controversial demands for aesthetic surgery. According to Margaret Little, physicians should be aware that certain aesthetic (...) enhancement requests reflect immoral social norms and ideals. By granting such requests, she argues, doctors render themselves complicit to a collective ‘evil’. In this paper, we wish to question the extent to which physicians, psychiatrists and/or neurosurgeons should play a role as ‘moral gatekeepers’ in dealing with suspect demands and norms underlying potential desires to alter one’s mood or character. We investigate and discuss the nature and limits of physician responsibilities in reference to various hypothetical and intuitively problematic mood enhancement requests. (shrink)

This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of behavioral neurology, dividing it roughly into six eras. In the ancient and classical eras, emphasis is placed on two transitions: firstly, from descriptions of head trauma and attempted neurosurgical treatments to the exploratory dissections during the Hellenistic period and the replacement of cardiocentrism; and secondly, to the more systematic investigations of Galenus and the rise of pneumatic ventricular theory. In the medieval through post-Renaissance eras, the scholastic consolidation of knowledge (...) and the role of compendia are emphasized, along with the use of new methods from within a mechanistic framework. With the discovery of electrical conductance and the rise of experimentalism, we frame the modern era as period of intense debate over localization, decomposition, and other mechanistic principles, and marked by rapid discovery about the brain. The chapter ends with a discussion of the contemporary era, focusing on the establishment of behavioral neurology research on aphasia, apraxia, and neuropsychiatric conditions. (shrink)

English Political scientists have access to a number of competing methodologies that marshal different forms of evidence for their arguments about political phenomena. Recently a new form of evidence has appeared in political science research and, more frequently, economics: spatially explicit and time-varying neurological activity of human subjects engaged in political or economic decision-making. As with any of the more standard methodologies, this approach carries with it a set of orienting theories linking hypotheses with the types of data induced to (...) support or falsify these theories. While this new form of evidence is exciting, especially for the empirically minded social scientist, it deserves the utmost scrutiny. I provide a review of how neurological imaging is being used in the social sciences and consider several problems and prospects of using neuroimaging data in political science. French Les sciences politiques ont recours à des méthodes de recherche et à des évidences empiriques diverses pour étudier les phénomènes politiques. Récemment, les chercheurs en sciences politiques et plus souvent encore en économie se sont tout particulièrement intéressés à l'activité cérébrale, objectivable dans l'espace et variant dans le temps, de sujets humains en situation de prise de décision politique ou économique. Comme toute autre méthode de recherche, cette approche s'appuie sur des orientations théoriques, qui font le lien entre les hypothèses de recherche et les données destinées à étayer ou invalider ces théories. Si cette approche nouvelle semble prometteuse, tout particulièrement pour les chercheurs à l'esprit empirique, elle mérite d'être examinée en profondeur. L'article fait le point sur l'utilisation des résultats de l'imagerie cérébrale fonctionnelle en sciences sociales et considère les différents problèmes qu'elle pose ainsi que les perspectives nouvelles qu'elle peut offrir en sciences politiques. (shrink)

The Brain and the Meaning of Life Paul Thagard Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010 274 pages, ISBN: 9780691142722 (hbk): $29.95 This paper criticizes central arguments in Paul Thagard's The Brain and the Meaning of Life, concluding, contrary to Thagard, that there is very little that we can learn from brain research about the meaning of life. The paper offers a critical review of Thagard's argument against nihilism and his argument that it is love, work, and play, rather than other activities, (...) that make life meaningful. Moreover, the paper argues that the rich neurological information Thagard presents throughout the book does not contribute at all to his arguments and, more generally, that neurological research is irrelevant also to almost all other aspects of meaning of life research. (shrink)

Although death by neurologic criteria is legally recognized throughout the United States, state laws and clinical practice vary concerning three key issues: the medical standards used to determine death by neurologic criteria, management of family objections before determination of death by neurologic criteria, and management of religious objections to declaration of death by neurologic criteria. The American Academy of Neurology and other medical stakeholder organizations involved in the determination of death by neurologic criteria have undertaken concerted action to address (...) variation in clinical practice in order to ensure the integrity of brain death determination. To complement this effort, state policymakers must revise legislation on the use of neurologic criteria to declare death. We review the legal history and current laws regarding neurologic criteria to declare death and offer proposed revisions to the Uniform Determination of Death Act and the rationale for these recommendations. (shrink)

Lehar argues that a simple Neuron Doctrine cannot explain perceptual phenomena such as size constancy but he fails to discuss existing, more complex neurological models. Size models that rely purely on scaling for distance are sparse, but several models are also concerned with other aspects of size perception such as geometrical illusions, relative size, adaptation, perceptual learning, and size discrimination.

Neurological diseases, particularly in the context of aging, have serious impacts on quality of life and can negatively affect bone health. The brain-bone axis is critically important for skeletal metabolism, sensory innervation, and endocrine cross-talk between these organs. This review discusses current evidence for the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which various neurological disease categories, including autoimmune, developmental, dementia-related, movement, neuromuscular, stroke, trauma, and psychological, impart changes in bone homeostasis and mass, as well as fracture risk. Likewise, how bone may (...) affect neurological function is discussed. Gaining a better understanding of brain-bone interactions, particularly in patients with underlying neurological disorders, may lead to development of novel therapies and discovery of shared risk factors, as well as highlight the need for broad, whole-health clinical approaches toward treatment. (shrink)

Neurological syndromes in which consciousness seems to malfunction, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, visual scotomas, Charles Bonnet syndrome, and synesthesia offer valuable clues about the normal functions of consciousness and ‘qualia’. An investigation into these syndromes reveals, we argue, that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia’. First, they are irrevocable: I cannot simply decide to start seeing the sunset as green, or (...) feel pain as if it were an itch; second, qualia do not always produce the same behaviour: given a set of qualia, we can choose from a potentially infinite set of possible behaviours to execute; and third, qualia endure in short-term memory, as opposed to non-conscious brain states involved in the on-line guidance of behaviour in real time. We suggest that qualia have evolved these and other attributes because of their role in facilitating non-automatic, decision-based action. We also suggest that the apparent epistemic barrier to knowing what qualia another person is experiencing can be overcome by using a ‘bridge’ of neurons; and we offer a hypothesis about the relation between qualia and one's sense of self. (shrink)

Apotemnophilia, a disorder that blurs the distinction between neurology and psychiatry, is characterized by the intense and longstanding desire for amputation of a speci¢c limb. Here we present evidence from two individuals suggestive that this condition, long thought to be entirely psychological in origin, actually has a neurological basis. We found heightened skin conductance response..

This paper examines neuroethics as a discipline in which ongoing formation and development in both ethics and medicine are shedding new light on the care of patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. From the perspective of the Catholic moral tradition, the author proposes that ethics and recent developments in functional neuroimaging form a complementary relationship that gives rise to an ethical imperative: because we can care for patients in a vegetative state, we should do so. This imperative for (...) care finds a particular expression in the ethical debate in light of the 2004 statement of Pope John Paul II that assisted nutrition and hydration for patients in a vegetative state should be considered, in principle, ordinary care. What do neurology and developments in scientific research teach us about patients in a vegetative state? Neuroethics is providing a unique opportunity for both medicine and ethics to discover more completely not only who we are as human beings but also how we should act. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.3 : 477–488. (shrink)

The so-called “mind-brain” problem affords the greatest opportunity for the cooperation of philosophy and science in the advancement of knowledge. In this paper we will outline pertinent facts already learned about the human mind from neurological disciplines, and, using some hypotheses from outstanding workers in neurobiology, we will relate this material to some important philosophical problems. Our proposal is to examine these problems in the light of knowledge gathered from the scientific disciplines, and we hope to demonstrate how this method (...) may eventually clarify some of the confusion and suggest certain solutions. (shrink)

Many activities in Cognitive Science involve complex computer models and simulations of both theoretical and real entities. Artificial Intelligence and the study of artificial neural nets in particular, are seen as major contributors in the quest for understanding the human mind. Computational models serve as objects of experimentation, and results from these virtual experiments are tacitly included in the framework of empirical science. Cognitive functions, like learning to speak, or discovering syntactical structures in language, have been modeled and these models (...) are the basis for many claims about human cognitive capacities. Artificial neural nets (ANNs) have had some successes in the field of Artificial Intelligence, but the results from experiments with simple ANNs may have little value in explaining cognitive functions. The problem seems to be in relating cognitive concepts that belong in the `top-down' approach to models grounded in the `bottom-up' connectionist methodology. Merging the two fundamentally different paradigms within a single model can obfuscate what is really modeled. When the tools (simple artificial neural networks) to solve the problems (explaining aspects of higher cognitive functions) are mismatched, models with little value in terms of explaining functions of the human mind are produced. The ability to learn functions from data-points makes ANNs very attractive analytical tools. These tools can be developed into valuable models, if the data is adequate and a meaningful interpretation of the data is possible. The problem is, that with appropriate data and labels that fit the desired level of description, almost any function can be modeled. It is my argument that small networks offer a universal framework for modeling any conceivable cognitive theory, so that neurological possibility can be demonstrated easily with relatively simple models. However, a model demonstrating the possibility of implementation of a cognitive function using a distributed methodology, does not necessarily add support to any claims or assumptions that the cognitive function in question, is neurologically plausible. (shrink)

Investigates the cerebral mechanisms behind emotions and feelings to explain the role between emotion, survival, and cultural accomplishment.

Spanish culture has recently shown interest about Neuroethics, a new line of research and reflection. It can be said that two general, and somewhat opposing, perspectives are currently being developed in Spain about neuroethics-related topics. One originates from the neuroscientific field and the other from the philosophical field. We will see, throughout this article, that the Spanish authors, who I am going to select here, deal with very diverse neuroethical topics and that they analyse them from different intellectual assumptions. However, (...) I consider that there is one constant concern, which emerges extensively or briefly in each one of the books that I am going to present. I am referring to the problem of freedom. Spanish neuroscientists, in general, stress and accept the new determinism that emanates from recent research about the brain, whilst those who engage in the study of philosophy usually point in their texts to the limitations of empirical research that purport to "demonstrate" the new neurological determinism. I will dedicate the last section, which is more extensive in length, to the work that I consider the most valuable, at least until the present day, and whose title is Neuroética y Neuropolítica (Tecnos, Madrid, 2011). Professor Adela Cortina (chair of Moral Philosophy at Valencia University and member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Moral and Political Science) is its author. But, firstly, I am going to refer to the works written by neuroscientists, and then to those written by philosophers. This will enable us to obtain a global view of the neuroethics models that are being constructed in Spain. (shrink)

Advances in cognitive neuroscience make cosmetic neurology in some form inevitable and will give rise to extremely difficult ethical issuesConsider the following hypothetical case study. A well heeled executive walks into my cognitive neurology clinic because he is concerned that he is becoming forgetful. It turns out that he is going through a difficult divorce and my clinical impression is that his memory problems stem from the stress he is experiencing. I place him on a selective seratonin reuptake (...) inhibitor, sertraline, and in a few weeks he feels better. Around this time his 13 year old daughter has difficulty at school and is diagnosed by the school psychologist as having attention deficit disorder. I place her on adderall, a stimulant combination drug, which seems to help with her behaviour in school. My patient then comes to me because he is experiencing the “tip of the tongue” phenomena more frequently. He is concerned that his word finding difficulty interferes with his ability to function in high level meetings. I suggest we try a cholinesterase inhibitor to see if this helps. I am careful to explain that the Food and Drug Administration does not approve such a use for this medication. He wants to try it and is pleased with the results.A few months later, this patient visits me with his 16 year old son, a talented middle distance runner. His father thinks if he were just a bit better, among the elite high school runners in the state, he would be far more competitive as an applicant for selective colleges. We discuss various options. Because of a recent report that sildenafil, which is used conventionally for male impotence, may improve oxygen carrying capacity, I prescribe this medication. The son does not object.Encouraged by these pharmacologic successes, my patient …. (shrink)