What Is Neuroethics (and What Questions Does It Investigate)?
Neuroethics is a part of bioethics that is responsible for studying the ethical, legal and social impact of knowledge and research on the brain, and the practical applications that these have in medicine and, finally, in the lives of people. people.
In this article we will see in more detail What is neuroethics? how research is done in this discipline, what are the big questions that are asked and their answers, as well as the problems and challenges that the future holds.
The term “neuroethics” refers to the study of the ethical, legal and social issues and implications arising from scientific findings involving manipulation of the brain for medical purposes.
William Safire, a 1978 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, defined this discipline as “the examination of what is right and wrong, good and bad, in clinical and/or surgical treatment and manipulation of the human brain.”
Advances in research in the field of neuroscience imply increasing knowledge of the neurobiological bases of issues related to human consciousness, morality, decision making or the concept of “I” and personality. And in this sense, neuroethics will play a decisive role in the years to come.
Improvements in neuroimaging research methods, e.g already allow us to monitor the functioning of the brain practically in real time, so that we can “know” what a person thinks or feels, and even manipulate those thoughts or feelings through techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Advances in other disciplines such as psychopharmacology or biochemistry are already showing that the possibility of manipulating a human being, their mood or their cognitive skills and abilities is already a verifiable reality.
And to put a stop (or not) to a future dystopia in which we end up being remote-controlled or neuroidiotized puppets, neuroethics is emerging as a useful discipline for discussing laws, norms and social implications that emerge from the good or bad use of neurotechnologies and neurosciences.
Scientific research in the neuroscience of ethics or neuroethics has been interested in two aspects of it: the empirical and the theoretical. Empirical neuroethics would be based on neuroscientific data related to ethical matters and concepts, data based on experience and the scientific method, as conceived in the natural sciences.
Theoretical neuroethics, for its part, would focus on methodological and conceptual aspects that serve to link neuroscientific facts with ethical concepts, at both a descriptive and normative level.
Researchers encounter the problem of not having correlates that, methodologically, allow certain concepts to be explored from an empirical point of view, as happens with terms such as goodness, justice or equity. What are its methodological correlates? Or… what would be the technically appropriate design to be able to investigate these concepts in neuroethics?
A second problem lies in the theoretical part of neuroethics Any ethics or morality would have several functions: clarify what is meant by “morality”, try to discover what its foundations are, and determine what the principles of what is called morality would be, in order to apply them in society and in everyday life. . However, it is not possible to rely solely on neuroscientific data to clarify these doubts, since what is considered moral does not only concern science, but also philosophy.
Questions such as, what is meant by moral philosophy? or what type of regulation would be necessary to research in neuroscience? are some of those that have interested many researchers, who have tried to resolve them through various avenues of argument.
Answers to how to research in neuroethics
The answers that have emerged to the question: what type of technically adequate designs must be carried out to be able to do research in neuroethics?, have pointed to functional neuroimaging studies and their main techniques: quantitative electroencephalography, emission tomography positron imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging, tractography and magnetoencephalography.
These neuroimaging techniques capture the brain in action and researchers interpret them by associating an activity (motor, perceptual or cognitive) with the brain image produced, so that it is deduced that the image would indicate the neural network where said activity originates; that is, the correlate would be assumed as a cause (neurodeterminism).
Although these types of techniques are excellent for exploring the nervous system, It is somewhat risky to think that we can rely solely on the results and statistical data of these tests to draw unitary conclusions about concepts and issues as controversial as morality or free will, for example.
Regarding the question of how moral philosophy is understood, there are authors such as the doctor in psychology Michael Gazzaniga who propose the existence of a universal ethics, which would have a concrete neurobiological and non-philosophical basis. For his part, the neuroscientist Francisco Mora assumes that the concept of ethics always implies the relationship we have with others and believes that there are no differences between ethics and morality, since both terms are used interchangeably.
Finally, when asked what the necessary regulation would be for research in neuroethics, the response that researchers have given has been to appeal to the ethics of neuroscience; that is to say, resort to the ethics of the work carried out by neuroscientists: the notion of capacity, free and voluntary expression of informed consent, respect for the dignity and integrity of research subjects, etc.
Future problems and challenges
Current problems in neuroethics can be posed in two broad categories: those related to technical advances in neuroscience, that is, the implications of the development of neuroimaging techniques, psychopharmacology, brain implants or the brain-machine interface; and those related to philosophy and the understanding of the neurobiological bases of consciousness, personality or human behavior.
In recent years, psychopharmacological research has invested considerable sums of money in drugs intended for the treatment of cognitive disorders, and more specifically attention and memory disorders. Drugs such as methylphenidate and its use for attention deficit disorders; or ampakine, which favors long-term potentiation mechanisms, improving performance in memory tests in healthy subjects, are just some examples.
This increase in drug consumption especially in healthy subjects, entails several ethical problems such as those cited below:
Health problems: medium and long-term adverse effects in healthy subjects are unknown.
Social consequences: questions are raised related to how the use of these drugs could affect social relationships or what situation individuals who do not consume them are in, compared to those who do, in terms of class or inequality. And it seems evident that, In highly competitive and stressful contexts, the freedom not to consume them would be relative
Philosophical implications: the use of these drugs calls into question and alters the vision we have of concepts such as personal effort, autonomy or the ability to improve. Is it ethical to rapidly and artificially improve cognitive abilities?
On the other hand, advances in understanding the neurobiological bases of social behaviors, morality or decision making, They have direct implications on our way of conceiving notions of our lives such as personal responsibility or the imputability of a person, key aspects for neuroethics.
In the future, this discipline will continue to discuss relevant questions, such as: can we judge an adolescent in the same way for a crime committed if we know that at his age the neurobiological bases of moral reasoning have not yet been installed? If free will is just a cognitive illusion and does not exist as such, does it make sense for people to be blameworthy? Should we put barriers to brain research and manipulation? Questions that still today still do not have a clear answer.
