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...Stanford neuroscientist Brian Knutson has zeroed in on a more primitive aspect of making choices. "We come equipped to assess potentially good things and potentially bad things," he says. "There should be stuff in your brain that promotes your survival, whether you have learned those things or not--such as being scared of the dark or the unknown." Knutson calls these anticipatory emotions, and he believes that even before the cognitive areas of the brain are brought in to assess options, these more intuitive and emotional regions are already priming the decision-making process and can foreshadow the outcome. Such...
Welcome to the exploding new field of neuroethics, the study of the ethical and philosophical dilemmas provoked by advances in brain science. It's only since a seminal conference in 2002 that the field has even existed; shortly thereafter, Penn and Stanford founded the first academic centers for neuroethics in the country. Last year a multidisciplinary group--including philosophers, lawyers and psychologists--created the Neuroethics Society to explore the issues in a formal...
These technologies may become an intimate part of our lives sooner than we think. "It's not so futuristic," says Stanford neuropsychologist Judy Illes, "to imagine an employer able to test for who is a good team player, who a leader or a follower." Before such scans are used, neuroethicists warn, we must understand what they can and cannot do. A device that might be helpful in personnel testing, for example, might not be rigorous enough to be used in a criminal trial, where the standard of proof is higher. That's currently the case with the polygraph. But Farah...
...after a suspected drunk driving accident. But not always. Americans, for example, can't currently be compelled to give a DNA sample. Nor can they be forced to submit to an MRI or have electrodes fixed to their skulls without consent or a court order, says Hank Greely, a Stanford law professor. But it's conceivable that prosecutors might become much more aggressive in demanding brain scans--"like a search warrant for the brain," he suggests. "There's little precedent, and we're moving into new and scary territory...
Kennedy is a history professor at Stanford University and a 2000 Pulitzer prizewinner