Neuroethics conference podcasts

The Dalhousie University-based Novel Tech Ethics group recently hosted a conference called Brain Matters: New Directions in Neuroethics.  You can read descriptions of the conference at the Dana Foundation's website and in the neuroethics newsletter.  They've also made six plenary talks available as video podcasts.  Here's the list of speakers along with the titles and abstracts for their talks:
Are brain dead patients really dead?
James L. Bernat
Whether brain death accurately represents the biology of human death remains controversial. I review and respond to the arguments against the validity of brain death and critically review the recently published study, "Controversies in the Determination of Death" by the U.S. President's Council on Bioethics. I conclude that brain death remains the most accurate concept of human death.

Neuroscience, Free Will and Responsibility
Walter Glannon
Many cognitive neuroscientists have claimed that our knowledge of the brain shows that our belief in free will is an illusion. If true, this would challenge our practice of holding people morally and criminally responsible for their behavior. I argue that free will and responsibility are not threatened by, but are compatible with neuroscience. 


Bioethical Devils and Neuroscientific Details
David Healy
In the late 1990s, treatments like Prozac and research on the human genome project appeared to usher in a new human reality with associated bioethical dilemmas. Are bioethicists as likely to be co-opted into the marketing of the new neuroscience and its treatments as they were into the marketing of the SSRIs?   Contrasting current neuroimaging with quantitative electroencephalography, recent deep brain stimulation treatments with the brain stimulation treatments run in Tulane in the 1960s, the emergence biofeedback in the 1960s and neurofeedback this decade this paper will attempt pinpoint the dynamics shaping what happens. Using LSD, ECT and apotemnophilia it will also attempt to mark out the boundaries within which any debate is constrained.

Neuroethics and Intuitions
Neil Levy
As well as reflecting on important issues in applied ethics, neuroethics offers new opportunities for reflection on how we do ethics. Ideally, I suggest, these two branches of neuroethics should interact: we should attempt to resolve ethical issues in ways that are sensitive to findings on moral cognition. One goal of much research on moral cognition is the measurement of the reliability of the intuitions which play so central a role in moral enquiry. I will give some examples of the kinds of findings that suggest that some intuitions are unreliable. I will illustrate how this research might lead us to better assessment of issues in applied neuroethics by examining the question of the permissibility of cognitive enhancement.

A Neuroskeptic's Guide to Neuroethics and National Security
Jonathan H. Marks
The neuroethics literature is replete with claims about the potential for recent developments in neuroscience to transform various fields of human endeavor, not least national security. I argue that a healthy dose of neuroskepticism informed by science studies critiques is necessary if we are to understand the real ethical challenges neuroscience presents, particularly in national security contexts where there may be great pressure to achieve results and judicial oversight is minimal or absent.

Medical morality and the local worlds of Indigenous peoples: Situating the ethical gaze across the broad spectrum of health care delivery
Caroline Tait
Emerging and evolving fields of neuro-, bio- and public health ethics largely configure questions of medical morality within the context of high-priced, high-tech, high-drama biomedical settings. However, for the majority of First Nations and Métis peoples, illness episodes are experienced, interpreted, and responded to in the context of the family or community, shaped by cultural values, Indigenous identity, gender roles and socioeconomic status. I call for an "ethical space" in which local Indigenous world views, inlcuding ideas of moral responsibility are given equal consideration to that of Western ethical principles.

What can we learn about human brains by studying non-human animals?
Jason Scott Robert
The human brain is fairly complicated, and studying the human brain and human behavior directly is often methodologically, epistemically, politically, and ethically fraught. There are many strategies to overcome these challenges, from many disciplinary perspectives. How much do we, and how much should we, rely on studies with non-human animals to understand our brains? What can we - and what can't we - learn about the human brain by studying non-human animals, whether in the mode of model organism-based research, or in a more comparative mode? This presentation will explore epistemological, methodological, and ethical dimensions of debates about the putative limits of studies with non-human animals in understanding our brains, our selves, and our place in nature.