What is Neuroethics (and what issues does it investigate)?

Neuroethics is a part of bioethics that is responsible for studying the ethical, legal and social impact of knowledge and investigations on the brain, and of the practical applications that these have in medicine and, finally, in the life of the people.

In this article we will see in more detail what is neuroethics, how research is carried out in this discipline, what are the big questions being asked and their answers, as well as the problems and challenges that the future holds.

• Related article: "What problems does neuropsychology treat?"

What is Neuroethics?

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 in brain manipulation human".

Advances in research in the field of neuroscience imply a growing knowledge of the basics neurobiological aspects of issues related to human consciousness, morality, decision-making or the concept of "self" and the personality. And in this sense, neuroethics will play a decisive role in the years to come.

Improvements in neuroimaging research methods, for example, already allow us to monitor the functioning of the brain practically in real time, so that we can "know" what it thinks or feels a person, and even manipulate those thoughts or feelings through techniques such as magnetic stimulation transcranial.

Advances in other disciplines such as psychopharmacology or biochemistry are already showing that the possibility of manipulating a human being, his state of mind or his abilities and cognitive abilities is already a reality evident.

And to put a stop (or not) to a future dystopia in which we end up being remote-controlled or neuro-idiotized 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.

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Scientific research in neuroethics

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.

The researchers find the problem of not having correlates that, methodologically, allow them to explore certain concepts from an empirical point of view, as happens with terms such as goodness, justice or equity. What are its methodological correlates? EITHER... What would be the technically adequate design to be able to investigate these concepts in neuroethics?

A second problem lies in the theoretical part of neuroethics. All ethics or morality would have several functions: to clarify what is meant by "morality", to try to discover what its foundations are, and determine what would be the principles of what is called morality, in order to apply them in society and in life daily. However, it is not possible to start only from neuroscientific data to clarify these doubts, since what is considered moral does not only concern science, but also philosophy.

Questions like, what is understood by moral philosophy? or what type of regulation would be necessary to investigate in neuroscience?, are some of the ones that have interested many researchers, who have tried to solve them in various ways. argumentation.

Answers to how to research neuroethics

The answers that have arisen to the question of: what type of technically appropriate designs must be carried out in order to investigate neuroethics? have pointed to studies of functional neuroimaging and its main techniques: quantitative electroencephalography, positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance, 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 it can be deduced that the image would indicate the neural network where said brain image originates. activity; that is, the correlate would be assumed as a cause (neurodeterminism).

While 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 of psychology Michael Gazzaniga who propose the existence of a universal ethic, which would have a specific neurobiological basis and not philosophical. For his part, neuroscientist Francisco Mora assumes that the concept of ethics always implies the relationship we have with others and he believes that there is no reason to differentiate between ethics and morals, since both terms are used indistinctly.

Lastly, when faced with the question of what regulation would be necessary to conduct research in neuroethics, the response given by researchers has been to appeal to the ethics of neuroscience; that is to say, resort to the ethics of the work performed 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

The current problems of 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 interface brain-machine; 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 pharmaceuticals 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 ampakina, which promotes long-term potentiation mechanisms, improving performance in memory tests in healthy subjects, are just a few examples.

This increase in drug use, especially in healthy subjects, raises several ethical issues such as the following:

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 relationships or in what situation are the individuals who do not consume them, compared to those who do, in terms of class or inequality. And it seems clear 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 behavior, morality or decision-making, have direct implications in our way of conceiving notions of our life, 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 equally 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 doesn't exist as such, does it make sense that people are imputable? Should we put barriers to brain research and manipulation? Questions that still today do not have a clear answer.

Bibliographic references:

• E bonnet Practical neuroethics. Bilbao: Desclée de Brouwer; 2010.
• Curtain, a. (2010): "Neuroethics: the cerebral bases of a universal ethics with political relevance?", in Isegoría, nº 42, 129-148.
• Farah M J. Neuroethics: the practical and the philosophical. Trends Cogn Sci 2005; 9 (1): 34-40.