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Contemporary Debate: The Ethics of Neuroscience
Neuroscience Is Ethical As It Provides Answers
Understand Consciousness
 Francis Crick (1998) proposed that the claustrum, a thin sheet of neurones
found in the centre of the brain, is the seat of consciousness
 They believe the claustrum combines information from distinct brain
regions
 Experiences of 54-year-old woman support this: She suffered from severe
epilepsy and an electrode was placed near the claustrum (electrically
stimulated)
 The women stopped reading, stared blankly and didn't respond to visual or
auditory commands
 When stimulation stopped, she regained consciousness with no
recollection of the event (repeated=same effect)
 This knowledge helped us make decisions about patients who are in a
persistent vegetative state – the decision to end their life could be based
on whether they remain conscious or not
Treat Criminal Behaviour
 The role of any Criminal Justice System is to rehabilitate officers to prevent
further criminal behaviour – one solution could be neuroscience
 Some believe that criminal behaviour stems from abnormal levels of
certain neurotransmitters – if this is true, then drugs can “treat” criminals
 Cherek et al (2002): investigated levels of impulsivity and aggression in
males with a history of conduct disorder and criminal behaviour
 ½ received placebo for 21 days, the other half were administered
paroxetine (SSRI depressant)
 Those who received paroxetine showed a significant decrease in impulsive
responses, and aggression declined by the end of the study
 Offering pharmacological treatments to criminals could, therefore, reduce
recidivism and make society safer for all
Enhance Neurological Function
 Neuroscience could be used to improve the abilities of “normal”
individuals – such as improved performance on complex academic tasks
 Transcranial Direct Current (TDCS) – involves passing a small electric
current across specific areas of the brain
 Cohen Kadosh (2012): found TDCS leads to improvements in problemsolving and mathematical, language, memory and attention capabilities

Neuroscience Is Not Ethical
Understand Consciousness
 If neuroscientists can locate consciousness in the brain
 One is of contention is whether those individuals in persistence vegetative
state should have support withdrawn
 Doubt about the soundness of the evidence as it is derived from the case
study of one “abnormal” brain (a person suffering from severe epilepsy)

Treat Criminal Behaviour
 Neuroscientists may link criminal behaviour to neurological imbalance –
many see crime as a response to the social context
 There is a question about whether it is acceptable to include mandatory
neurological interventions for prisoners
 Martha Farah (2004): argues that if courts use neurological interventions, it
signals denial of an individual’s freedom, something that prisoners have
not been denied previously (i
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freedom to have your own personality and
to think your own thoughts)
 A court may offer a convicted criminal the choice of a prison term or a
course of medication – introduces the ethical issue of implicit coercion –
the criminal is left with very little choice about medication
Enhance Neurological Function
 Coden Kadosh warns of ethical implications to TCDS technology:
1) There are no training or licensing rule for practitioners – poorly
qualified clinicians at best administering ineffective treatment or at
worse cause brain damage to patients
 Comparatively cheap – TDCS apparatus is not available to everyone – may
not be fair to allow some individuals to benefit from a treatment not

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Students could use the TDCS apparatus in preparation for exams
Neuroenhancement could be argued to be not new – students
“neuroenhancer” themselves when they use caffeine-based drinks to block
adenosine receptors in the brain, making it more alert to revise
Improve Marketing Techniques
 Recent application of neuroscience is been in the world of advertisings and
marketing – “neuromarketing”
 When interviewed by market researchers we may not give our true
opinions as we want to appear in a “good light” – SDB can be avoided by
using eye tracking watching ads
 EEG can be used to analyse neurological responses
 Sands Research used this kind of neuromarketing research when devising
the highly successful as “The Force” (Volkswagen)
 Doug Van Praet, notes that it “upped traffic to the VW website by half, and
contributed to a hugely successful sales for the brand”

Ethical Implications
 Society us already using mood-altering drugs,
both in the form of prescription medicines
such as anti-depressants and illicit substance
such as MDMA – can sketch brains
electrochemical functions
 Studies using fMRI have revealed that
particular areas of the brain associated with
particular cognitive events, such as our moral
emotions and ethical reasoning
 “love drugs” can help maintain intimate
relationships – can use substances to
predispose us towards feeling, judgements
and behaviours that make us more social
 If criminal tendencies are detected earlier
this can prevent later tendencies
 Early detection of psychopathic tendencies

available to all
 Therefore, we maybe should consider banning the use of neuro-enhancing
technologies in the same way as performance-enhancing substance are
banned in sport
Improve Marketing Techniques
 Accessing information about consumer preferences and behaviours is not
new – loyalty cards and analysing the online browsing records of
individuals have helped make product marketing more effective
 However, neuromarketing has access to our inner thoughts
 Wilson (2008): believe that commercial integration of neuromarketing
research allows the advertiser to deliver individualised messages where our
free will is potentially manipulated by big brands
 Currently, neuromarketing is not obliged to follow the ethical codes of
practice
 In fact, Nelson (2008) found that 5% of the brain scans recorded by
marketing firms produced “incidental findings” – e
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researchers may see
evidence of a tumour, as they are not “board certified”, they are not
obliged to follow appropriate ethical codes, such as advising the person of
their findings

Social Implications
 Research by Raine demonstrates the effect
that early intervention could have if the
prevention of crime
 Shoppers may find they are subject to
marketing strategies that are more
personalised and culturally targeted, further
reducing customers effect and time in making
choices

Economical Implication
 Improving marketing techniques can aid the
economy by stimulating sales and profits
 For example, Nuffield Trust (2014) points out
that since the financial crisis started in 2008 –
there has been an increase in the number of
antidepressants being prescribed
 The Trust noted a greater rise in
antidepressant usage amongst areas of the
population with higher rates of
unemployment
 Thomas and Morris (2003) estimated the total
costs of depression in adults in England alone
was £9
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It has offered a deeper and greater understanding of how the brain works, allowed
development of explanation of normal and abnormal behaviours
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This has led to programmes in schools and work to improve happiness levels
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g
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go-to-work
mums began
 March 2014: Family and Childcare Trust reported
that the average annual cost to parents sending
an infant to nursery school full-time in £9,850
 The government introduced the scheme that
allows parents to claim tax relief on childcare
costs, therefore incentivising parents to work

Conclusion: There is an importance of there being a primary caregiver for an infant in order to have a healthy development
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Also, what is best for the infant may be depended up their particular circumstances and culture
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g
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They found that 7% of those asked “Did you see a broken
headlight?” reported seeing one, whereas 17% of those asked “did you see
 Loftus (1979b) “Red Purse Study” – was told the purse was “brown” 98%
the broken headlight?” reported seeing one
remembered correctly the purse they had seen was “red”
 The post-event information was the word “a” or “the”
 This suggests that the eye-witness recollection for central or key details
may be more resistant to distortion from post-event information than
 This research clearly demonstrates that subtle changes in wording can
previously suggested
influence the recollection of the participants
 Therefore, whenever a witness is questioning their recollection of the
actual event may be distorted
Crimes Are Emotive Experiences
Crimes Are Emotive Experiences
 When we experience emotionally traumatic which hold personal
 Crime EWT experience is unexpected and emotionally traumatising
significance we create an accurate and long-lasting memory – “flashbulb
 Freud argued that extremely painful or threatening memories are forced
memory”
into the unconscious mind – “repression”, an ego-defence mechanism
 Evidence that hormones are associated with emotion, such as adrenaline –
 Therefore, unreliable because the memory of the crime is too traumatising
may enhance storage of memory (Cahill and McGaugh, 1995)
 Suggesting that the emotion surrounding a crime may lead to more reliable
memories
Child Witnesses Are Reliable
Child Witnesses Are Not Reliable
 Davies (1989): review the literature review discussing children were used
 Children as eye-witnesses are often regarded as being unreliable because
as witnesses
they are prone to fantasy – their memories may be affected by the
suggestion of others – therefore, research into identifying the perpetrator
 Children between ages of 6-7, and 10-11 are fairly accurate in memories of
from a lineup
an event – they don’t usually “make thing up” and do not deliberately lie
when giving testimony
 Line ups don’t always include the target individual as otherwise a suspect
could be selected because they fit the description
 Their memory for important details is not significantly altered by adult
suggestion after the even – these conclusions can challenge many of the
 Therefore, eye-witnesses are often told that the line up may or may not
claims made by other researchers
include the target
 It is not fair to claim child eye-witnesses are unreliable as much of the
 A meta-analysis (by Pozzulo, 1998) drew data from several studies –
research is conducted on adults as the “target” individuals
researchers found that under the age of 5 were less likely than older
children or adults to make correct identification when the target was
 Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) found all age groups are most accurate when
present
recognising an offender from their own age group
 But more likely to make a choice in the target-absent conditions (inevitably
 Suggesting that if children saw someone from their own age group
wrong)
committing a staged crime – they would be more reliable in identifying

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them
Memory May Be Reconstructive, But It Doesn’t Mean It Is Unreliable
 In many crimes, eye-witnesses know the perpetrator of the crime – so
don’t need to refer to schemas
 For example, Rape Crisis reports that 90% of rapists are known to their
victims
 Therefore, eye-witnesses ability to identify the assailant is likely to be very
reliable – even when traumatic
 When research is conducted with eye-witnesses to real-life crimes their
accuracy is much higher than suggested by lab based-research
 If the memory was constructive, you would have expected the eye-witness
recollections to have faded over time – been susceptible to the leading
question – however, this was not the case in Yullie and Cutshall’s research

Ethical Implications
 Huff (1986) found that 60% of 500 cases of
wrongful convictions involved eye-witness
identification – suggesting that too much
reliance on EWT has major ethical issues
 A more effective and ethical way of
interviewing children have been developed as
a result of research – first put the child at ease
and building rapport with them (also
understand the complexity of language and
level of understanding before interviewing
them)
 Risk of the real perpetrator remaining free
within society

This was due to children being more sensitive – they feel they can’t say
“no” and have to give an answer (false positive)
Memory Is Reconstructive
 Schemas are used to help process information quickly – but information
already held in schemas may distort our the memory of an event
 For example, in your “criminal schema,” you will have an expectation of
what a criminal will look like
 These expectations are derived from media, movies or tv programmes
 When we have to recall the information later, these expectations may have
been incorporated into our memory – leading to inaccurate recall
 Yarm (1993) asked 240 students to look at videos of 30 unknown males and
classify them as “good guys” and “bad guys” – high agreement amongst the
student
 Suggesting that there is similarity in the information stored in the “good
guy” and “bad guy” schemas
 This suggests that eye-witnesses may not select the actual criminal, but the
individual who looks most like a criminal

Social Implications
 Research has led to changes in a social policy
designed to improve criminal justice systems
 Devlin Committee Report (1976):
Recommended that no individual should be
convicted based on eye-witnesses testimony
alone
 However, this was never made law as it could
have let guilty roam free

Economical Implications
 Unreliable eye-witness testimony has big costs
in terms of retrial and compensation for those
wrongly convicted
 In the UK crime costs are indicated about £124
billion per year – 7
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However, there have been methods developed such as cognitive interviews (a method of
questioning to increase recollection accuracy) and sequential line-ups (see suspects one by one) – reducing the risk of false convictions
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incredibly costly
3) Anderson (1987) found that 20 hours per week is enough to allow
significant improvement
 Conditioning techniques only treat symptoms – undesirable behaviour
may re-emerge once the reinforcement is removed

Ethical Implications
Social Implications
Economical Implications
 Is it ethical to pay or reward students for their
 Levitt (2010) reviewed programmes where
 Vulnerable children may benefit from
performance when that money can be better
children were offered financial incentives to
conditioning techniques – by making their
spent – schools may have diminishing budgets
improve, resulting in modest gains in
behaviour more normal
(so can use low budget rewards, i
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free-time)
performance – benefits out society because
 Making their behaviour more “normal”
school leavers would be better educated
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However, there are important ethical issues that need to be
considered, for example, manipulation of children’s behaviours (are vulnerable)
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