Instructor: Michelle R. Greene, Ph.D
Email: mgreene2@bates.edu
Office hours: TTh 8-9am, 4-6pm (Hathorn 106) If neither of these times work, please know that I’m happy to meet when my door is open!
Logistics: T/Th 7:30pm - 9:00 (P’Gill G65)
Prerequisites: NRSC 130, NS/PH 117, NS/PY 160, or PSYC 215.
As our ability to measure, predict, and manipulate brain function progresses, so too does our need to grapple with the societal consequences of neuroscientific discovery. This course invites critical examination of the ethics surrounding real-world neuroscience applications in private and public sectors. With topics that include psychopharmacology and cognitive liberty, neuroimaging for lie detection, weaponization of neurotechnology, and neuroprivacy in an era of data mining, students engage two overarching questions: How does the practice of neuroscience simultaneously mirror and mould social attitudes and policy-making agendas? What does it mean to be a responsible consumer and/or producer of neuroscientific knowledge?
The alternative title for this course is “Neuroscience for Future Presidents”. This title was loosely inspired by Richard Muller’s “Physics for Future Presidents” at UC Berkeley. Unlike the policy issues that involve physics, the ethical issues in neuroscience cut deep into the heart of human identity. Findings in neuroscience are being used to advocate for policies on education, criminal justice, drugs, abortion, and many others. These issues affect both public policy decisions as well as personal choices: to whom do we afford rights and how we preserve these rights in the face of new technologies? How do we preserve Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights when we can “read” the thoughts of another person? As we become better able to predict future psychiatric disease or criminal behavior, how do we act on this knowledge to preserve individual rights? Can we improve our brains? Should we?
Citizens of the future (including Presidents, and including you, whether or not you become President) will face critical decisions that involve neuroscience. The purpose of course is to give you the cognitive tools to evaluate these critical decisions.
By the end of the course, you should be able to:
Describe emerging ethical issues that accompany nascent technologies associated with studying and altering brain function.
Use current scholarly literature to critically assess the claims made about measuring and altering brain activity.
Work effectively within a team to compile, discuss, interpret, and present multiple perspectives on neuroethical issues.
Acquire a personal framework for bioethical thought that allows the justification of one’s moral beliefs.
I expect all students to be respectful of the widely varied experiences and backgrounds represented by the classroom members as a group. Disrespect or discrimination on any basis will not be tolerated. Whether inside or outside the classroom, if you encounter sexual harassment, sexual violence, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, age, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, or disability, you are encouraged to report it to Gwen Lexow, Director of Title IX and Civil Rights Compliance at Bates at glexow@bates.edu or 207-786-6445. Additionally, please remember that Bates faculty are concerned about your well-being and development, and we are available to discuss any concerns you have. Students should be aware that faculty are legally obligated to share disclosures of sexual violence, sexual harassment, relationship violence, and stalking with the college’s Title IX Officer to help ensure that your safety and welfare are being addressed.
This course will touch challenging topics including mental and physical illness, discrimination, trauma, and privacy. It is essential that we build our class community into a place where everyone is entirely comfortable in participating, questioning, and intellectually experimenting without fear of retribution or overly harsh, judgmental, or critical responses. To this end, your continued participation in this course requires your commitment to challenge ideas rather than people, and to treat any personal information shared in the course as completely confidential.
Please remind yourself of the Bates College policy on academic integrity. Please read this guide and its definitions of plagiarism, use/misuse of sources, and cheating. Students’ work will be closely scrutinized for plagiarism and violations of the College policy will not be tolerated. If you are concerned that your collaboration might put you at risk of an academic integrity violation, please come see me during office hours as soon as possible.
If you have a condition or disability that creates difficulties with the assignments, please notify me as soon as possible. You will need to create documentation with the Office of the Dean of Students, so if you need accommodation, please do this as soon as possible.
Policy Briefs: 30% total
1000 words (hard limit) paper designed to give an overview of a situation to a non-expert, such as a CEO, Senator, or President. Each paper is worth 10% of your final grade.
Participation: 30% total
What you get out of this class is in direct proportion to what you put in. Thoughtful participation is critical. That said, we all have different personalities and strengths, and participation need not come in the form of in-class speaking. Your participation grade will come from your engagement in several venues. Excellence in one can make up for sparse participation in another:
Final Project: 40% total
The goal of the final project is to give you the opportunity to take a deep dive in one of the course’s topics, and to express this learning in a manner that is congruent with your background, goals, and talents. The project consists of two parts: a 15-minute TED-style talk that will be given in the last week of class, and a written piece. The written component can take the form of a traditional research paper (4000-5000 words), or it could be an interdisciplinary piece (examples: a screen play or novella in which characters grapple with a neuroethics-related issue; proposed legislation on a neuroethics-related issue). The grade for the final project will be distributed as:
Your final percentage score will be assigned a letter grade on the following scale:
Grade | Percentage | Grade | Percentage | |
---|---|---|---|---|
A+ | >95% | B- | 71-74% | |
A | 87-94% | C+ | 67-70% | |
A- | 83-86% | C | 63-66% | |
B+ | 79-82% | D | 50-62% | |
B | 75-78% | F | <50 |
All required papers will be available on this website and Lyceum, and should be done before class.
For all of our deadlines, if you turn in a component late, you will lose 10% of the total score per day. For example, the maximum possible percentage for a paper turned in one day late is 90. This policy does not apply to a documented personal or family emergency.
If I must cancel class due to weather or an emergency, I will inform you via the class email list. Please consider your Bates email to be the default place to look for class-related information and get into the habit of checking it daily.
Please silence your cell phone upon entering class, and be mindful of your use of technology in class. Although I encourage you to make use of backchannel chat for course discussions, please limit your in-class online activity to this venue. Off-topic online browsing not only hurts your own learning, but is associated with lower learning for those around you.
Read the Introduction of this paper. Keyes, C.L. (2005) Mental illness and/or mental health? Investigating axioms of the complete state model of health. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 73(3), 539.
Read Rosenhan (1973) On Being Sane in Insane Places. Science
Read: Chatterjee (2006) The promise and predicament of cosmetic neurology. Journal of Medical Ethics
Read: Caplan & Elliot (2004) Is it ethical to use enhancement technologies to make us ‘better than well’? PLoS Medicine
Read: Wong (2017) Microdosers say tiny hits of LSD make work and life better. New Scientist
Read: Cabrera & Reiner (2015) Understanding public (mis)understanding of tDCS for enhancement. Frontiers of Integrative Neuroscience
Skim: Ly et al., (2018) Psychedelics promote structural and functional neural plasticity Cell
Spend some time looking at SubReddits relating to microdosing and transcranial direct current stimulation
Read: Poldrack (2008) The role of fMRI in cognitive neuroscience: where do we stand? Current Opinion in Neurobiology
Optional, but highly recommended: Pereira et al (2009) Machine learning classifiers and fMRI: A tutorial overview. NeuroImage
Policy paper #1 due
Read: Grubin & Madsen (2005) Lie detection and the polygraph: a historical review. The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology
Read: Forward to Everybody Lies by Steven Pinker.
Read: Heeger (n.d.) Signal Detection Theory
Read: Villasenor (2013) Could the government get a search warrant for your thoughts? The Atlantic
Read: Martinovic et al (2012) On the feasibility of side-channel attacks with brain-computer interfaces. USENIX Security Symposium
Optional listen: “Rap on Trial: How an Aspiring Musicians Words Led to Prison Time” NPR’s Hidden Brain
Read: Talwar et al (2002) Behavioural neuroscience: rat navigation guided by remote control. Nature
Read: Hoag (2003) Neuroengineering: Remote control. Nature
Read: Winter (2005) The making of “truth serum” Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Read: Beck, D (2010) The appeal of the brain in the popular press. Perspectives in Psychological Science
Read: This is your brain on politics New York Times
Bring to class: an example of a recent appeal to neuroscience in the popular press.
Final project proposal due
Read: Lamperello (2011) Using congitive neuroscience to predict future dangerousness. Columbia Law Review
Policy paper #2 due
Justices on the United States Supreme Court have lifetime appointments. When a new justice is nominated, should they be impelled to take a test that would predict future Alzheimer’s disease? If so, how should the test results be interpreted and used? Come prepared to argue both sides of the issue. The following resources may be helpful:
Nakamura et al (2018) High performance plasma amyloid- \(\beta\) biomarkers for Alzheimer’s Disease. Nature
Laske et al (2015) Innovative diagnostic tools for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease Alzheimer’s & Dementia
Read: Kolber (2006) Theraputic Forgetting: Legal and Ethical Implications of Memory Dampening. Vanderbilt Law Review (Section I optional)
Read: Excerpt from Moreno (2006) Mind Wars
Read: Dittrich (2016) The Brain that Couldn’t Remember
Read: Begley (2016) MIT challenges the New York Times over book on famous brain patient
Policy paper #3 due
Read: Kean (2016) The Audacious Plan to Save this Man’s Life by Transplanting His Head
Read: Hofstadter (1981) A Conversation with Einstein’s Brain.