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Neuroethics Program
Tremendous advances in neuroscience, along with the attention that the “Decade of the Brain” in the 1990s brought to them, sparked heightened focus on public awareness of brain research. An already fast paced field was met with new demands on innovation and discovery. Along with progress in genomics, molecular medicine and other disciplines, new windows were opened on to the understanding of many brain disorders such as depression, addiction, and dementia, and hope for new interventions realized. Today, we are poised to launch a new decade – one focused on mind – and with all the complexity that the notion of mind brings forth, the implications of new research in neuroscience for individuals, society, and culture are profound: How shall society respond as a better understanding of brain biology changes fundamental perceptions of self, moral responsibility, and beliefs? What guidelines are needed to manage staggering, and potentially life-endangering, increases in the use of medicines for children diagnosed with new or poorly understood variants of attention and mood disorders? What policies are needed to respond to a diversion of already scarce medical resources from quality and respectful care for the elderly? How will our privacy be protected in an ever-expanding information age? What hope can we expect from progress, and what should we fear?
It is at this juncture of ethics, human values, and neuroscience that neuroethics fulfills its critical role. Neuroethics is a relatively new discipline that has deep roots in ancient philosophical discussions of mind and brain, and has joined this history with contemporary thinking in biomedical ethics and neuroscience. Many issues in neuroethics have the same starting points as other fields of bioethics – predicting disease, dealing with unexpected findings and unintended consequences of research, drawing attention to areas of potential concern. Neuroethics, though, is distinguished by wrestling with challenges that probe and touch us most deeply: free will, personal responsibility, personhood, and more. Diversity of culture and language, gender and ethnicity, also all factor into the equation of what defines brain health versus brain disease, risk versus benefit, acceptable versus unacceptable. The task, therefore, is to close the gap between the traditionally lagging consideration of the ethical and social implications of frontier brain technology, and the development of the technology itself.
The National Core for Neuroethics ("Core") is committed to tackling ethical, legal, policy and social implications of frontier neuroscience through high impact research, education and outreach programs to ensure close alignment of neuroscience innovations and human values. The Core's goal is to ensure that neuroscience is applied for maximum knowledge, health and well-being through the early integration of ethics and research, a collective understanding of neuroethics, and by informing policy as the science unfolds. Areas of forcus for the Core include ethics in neurodegenerative disease and regenerative medicine, international and cross cultural challenges in brain research, neuroimaging and ethics, the neuroethics of enhancement, and personalized medicine.
The Core is known on both the national and international stage as a forerunner in the field of neuroethics. Considerable attention has been given to the Core by both the scholarly and non-academic media. The Core was recently featured in the New York Times, the Vancouver Sun, on the Global Newshour, and in the journal Science, amongst many others.
Please see the Core's website for more information.
To be sure, there will be no “one size fits all” answers to these thorny questions. But there is a time to ask them and to be proactive, and that time is now. Inaction is the greatest risk. As neuroscience advances to define and redefine how we think and why, it will most assuredly take us out of our comfort zone. Neuroethics addresses all these zones - personal, cultural and societal – so that we may better understand where neurobiology intersects with human values, and use those insights to help shape and empower both neuroscience and science policy of the future.
Research Activities
The Core’s major research projects are focused on high impact, high visibility areas. These include challenges associated with:
predicting dementia, depression and addiction
identifying signs of consciousness in patients with severe brain injury
developing the resources needed by children with behavioral and cognitive disorders
“peering” into the brain of individuals to assess guilt or innocence
embracing multicultural differences in perceptions of brain health and disease
enhancing the performance of the human brain
commercializing advanced neurotechnology
Members
Director
Dr. Judy Illes, PhD, Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics and Professor of Neurology
Senior Faculty Member
Dr. Peter Reiner, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry
Other Members
Senior Research Fellow: Kate Tairyan, MD, MPH
Research Fellow: Daniel Buchman, BA, MSW
Administrator, Finance and Research: Neil Chahal, BSc
Manager for Research and Global Partnerships: Sofia Lombera, BSc
Graduate Students:
- Kevin Comerford, MFA, MIS, in collaboration with the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies
- Mohsen Sadatsafavi, MD, MHSc, in collaboration with the Department of Health Economics.
Research Coordinators:
- Carole Federico, BA for our neuroimaging and neurodegeneration/regenerative medicine work
- Ranga Venkatachary, PhD, as part of the leading our dementia education effort
- Joanne Reimer, as the lead on our project exploring functional recovery in patients with spinal cord injury.
Visiting Scholar: Dr. Umamon Puang Thong will focus on the challenges of human subjects research that involves multicultural populations.