Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Neurobiology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neurobiology. Show all posts

Monday, May 4, 2020

Suggestions for a New Integration in the Psychology of Morality

Diane Sunar
Social and Personality Psychology Compass
(2009): 447–474

Abstract

To prepare a basis for a new model of morality, theories in the psychology of morality are reviewed, comparing those put forward before and after the emergence of evolutionary psychology in the last quarter of the 20th century. Concepts of embodied sociality and reciprocal moral emotions are introduced. Three ‘morality clusters’ consisting of relational models (Fiske, 1991), moral domains (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997) and reciprocal sets of other-blaming and selfconscious emotions are linked to three evolutionary bases for morality (kin selection, social hierarchy, and reciprocal altruism). Evidence regarding these concepts is marshaled to support the model. The ‘morality clusters’ are compared with classifications based on Haidt’s moral foundations (Haidt & Graham 2007). Further evidence regarding hierarchy based on sexual selection, exchange and
reciprocity, moral development, cultural differences and universals, and neurological discoveries, especially mirror neurons, is also discussed.

An Alternative Model

Alternative combinations of these elements have been suggested, most notably by Haidt and his colleagues (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, forthcoming; Haidt & Joseph, 2008), mapping Shweder’s three ethics or moral domains, and Fiske’s relational models, onto Haidt’s moral foundations. As described above, these authors match community with ingroup/loyalty and authority; autonomy with harm/care and fairness/reciprocity; and divinity with purity/sanctity. In addition, they suggest that three of the foundations can be matched with three of Fiske’s relational models (leaving out MP). In this scheme, fairness/reciprocity is linked with EM, care and ingroup morality with CS, and authority/respect with AR. Harm and purity as moral foundations are not linked with relational models, as they argue that these two foundations ‘are not primarily modes of interpersonal relationship (Haidt & Joseph, 2008; p. 386). Similar to my proposed clusters, they also link the morality of harm and care to kin selection and that of fairness to evolved mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, but in contrast see purity as a derivative of disgust mechanisms without a specific social basis.

The paper is here.

Friday, February 12, 2016

Growing use of neurobiological evidence in criminal trials, new study finds

By Emily Underwood
Science
Originally posted January 21, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Overall, the new study suggests that neurobiological evidence has improved the U.S. criminal justice system “through better determinations of competence and considerations about the role of punishment,” says Judy Illes, a neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in Canada. That is not Farahany’s interpretation, however. With a few notable exceptions, use of neurobiological evidence in courtrooms “continues to be haphazard, ad hoc, and often ill conceived,” she and her colleagues write. Lawyers rarely heed scientists’ cautions “that the neurobiological evidence at issue is weak, particularly for making claims about individuals rather than studying between-group differences,” they add.

The article is here.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

US courts see rise in defendants blaming their brains for criminal acts

By Ian Sample, Science Correspondent in San Diego
The Guardian, Sunday 10 November 2013

Criminal courts in the United States are facing a surge in the number of defendants arguing that their brains were to blame for their crimes and relying on questionable scans and other controversial, unproven neuroscience, a legal expert who has advised the president has warned.

Nita Farahany, a professor of law who sits on Barack Obama's bioethics advisory panel, told a Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego that those on trial were mounting ever more sophisticated defences that drew on neurological evidence in an effort to show they were not fully responsible for murderous or other criminal actions.

Lawyers typically drew on brain scans and neuropsychological tests to reduce defendants' sentences, but in a substantial number of cases the evidence was used to try to clear defendants of all culpability.

The entire story is here.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

The New Science of Mind

By ERIC R. KANDEL
The New York Times
Published: September 6, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

These results show us four very important things about the biology of mental disorders. First, the neural circuits disturbed by psychiatric disorders are likely to be very complex.

Second, we can identify specific, measurable markers of a mental disorder, and those biomarkers can predict the outcome of two different treatments: psychotherapy and medication.

Third, psychotherapy is a biological treatment, a brain therapy. It produces lasting, detectable physical changes in our brain, much as learning does.

And fourth, the effects of psychotherapy can be studied empirically. Aaron Beck, who pioneered the use of cognitive behavioral therapy, long insisted that psychotherapy has an empirical basis, that it is a science. Other forms of psychotherapy have been slower to move in this direction, in part because a number of psychotherapists believed that human behavior is too difficult to study in scientific terms.

ANY discussion of the biological basis of psychiatric disorders must include genetics. And, indeed, we are beginning to fit new pieces into the puzzle of how genetic mutations influence brain development.

The entire story is here.

Monday, July 22, 2013

50 Shades of Gray Matter

By Sally Satel
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published July 9, 2013

You’ve seen the headlines: This is your brain on God, envy, cocaine. And you’ve seen the evidence: slices of brain with Technicolor splotches lit up like the Las Vegas Strip.

On average, one new book about the brain appears every week. In universities, new disciplines of neuroeconomics, neuroaesthetics, and neurolaw are flourishing. “If Warhol were around today, he’d have a series of silkscreens dedicated to the cortex; the amygdala would hang alongside Marilyn Monroe,” one observer quipped.

It is easy to see why the brain is a hot commodity. As the organ of the self, it makes sense to think that understanding how the brain works can help us understand ourselves, repair our flaws, and perfect our nature.

The entire blog post is here.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Why Don’t Cops Believe Rape Victims?

Brain science helps explain the problem—and solve it.

By Rebecca Ruiz
Slate.com
Originally posted June 19, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

This is rape culture in action. It puts the burden of proving innocence on the victim, and from Steubenville, Ohio, to Notre Dame and beyond, we’ve seen it poison cases and destroy lives. But science is telling us that our suspicions of victims, the ones that seem like common sense, are flat-out baseless. A number of recent studies on neurobiology and trauma show that the ways in which the brain processes harrowing events accounts for victim behavior that often confounds cops, prosecutors, and juries.

These findings have led to a fundamental shift in the way experts who grasp the new science view the investigation of rape cases—and led them to a better method for interviewing victims. The problem is that the country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies haven’t been converted. Or at least, most aren’t yet receiving the training to improve their own interview procedures. The exception, it turns out, is the military. Despite its many failings in sexual assault cases, it has actually been at the vanguard of translating the new research into practical tools for investigating rape.

(cut)

This is why, experts say, sexual assault victims often can’t give a linear account of an attack and instead focus on visceral sensory details like the smell of cologne or the sound of voices in the hallway. “That’s simply because their brain has encoded it in this fragmented way,” says David Lisak, a clinical psychologist and forensic consultant who trains civilian and military law enforcement to understand victim and offender behavior.

The entire story is here.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Biological psychiatry’s false paradigm—still no proof mental illness is a biological disease

By René J. Muller
Baltimore Sun
June 18, 2013

Days before the official May 22 publication date of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM-5), a number of psychiatrists who were closely associated with the project scrambled to do some preemptory damage control, mostly by lowering the expectations for what was to come.

Michael B. First, professor of psychiatry at Columbia, acknowledged on NPR that there was still no empirical method to confirm or rule out any mental illness. “We were hoping and imagining that research would advance at a pace that laboratory tests would have come out. And here we are 20 years later and we still unfortunately rely primarily on symptoms to make our diagnoses.” Speaking to The New York Times, Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, insisted that this failure had not been for lack of effort.

In the same Times article, David J. Kupfer, chairman of the DSM-5 Task Force, admitted “a failure of our neuroscience and biology to give us the level of diagnostic criteria, a level of sensitivity and specificity that we would be able to introduce into the diagnostic manual.” Drs. Kupfer, Insel and First agree that the new paradigm envisioned for psychiatry — the reason the new edition was undertaken — remains elusive.

The entire article is here.

The Problem with the Neuroscience Backlash

POSTED BY GARY MARCUS
The New Yorker Magazine
Originally published on June 19, 2013

Aristotle thought that the function of the brain was to cool the blood. That seems ludicrous now; through neuroscience, we know more about the brain and how it works than ever before. But, over the past several years, the field has given rise to pop neuroscience, which attempts to explain practically everything about human behavior and culture through the brain and its functions.

A backlash against pop neuroscience is now in full swing. The latest, and most cutting, critique yet is “Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience,” by Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld. The book, which slams dozens of inconclusive studies that have been spun into overblown and downright dubious fields, like neurolaw and neuromarketing, is a resounding call for skepticism of the most grandiose claims being made in the name of neuroscience. The authors describe it as “an exposĂ© of mindless neuroscience: the oversimplification, interpretive license, and premature application of brain science in the legal, commercial, clinical, and philosophical domains.”

Unfortunately, the book is also prone to being misread. This is partly because it focusses largely on neuroscience’s current limitations rather than on its progress. Some, like David Brooks in the New York Times, are using books like “Brainwashed” as an excuse to toss out neuroscience altogether.

The entire article is here.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Psychopaths Get A Break From Biology: Judges Reduce Sentences If Genetics, Neurobiology Are Blamed

Medical News Today
Originally published August 21, 2012

A University of Utah survey of judges in 19 states found that if a convicted criminal is a psychopath, judges consider it an aggravating factor in sentencing, but if judges also hear biological explanations for the disorder, they reduce the sentence by about a year on average.

The new study, published in the Aug. 17, 2012, issue of the journal Science, illustrates the "double-edged sword" faced by judges when they are given a "biomechanical" explanation for a criminal's mental disorder:

If a criminal's behavior has a biological basis, is that reason to reduce the sentence because defective genes or brain function leave the criminal with less self-control and ability to tell right from wrong? Or is it reason for a harsher sentence because the criminal likely will reoffend?

"In a nationwide sample of judges, we found that expert testimony concerning the biological causes of psychopathy significantly reduced sentencing of the psychopath" from almost 14 years to less than 13 years, says study coauthor James Tabery, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Utah.

However, the hypothetical psychopath in the study got a longer sentence than the average nine-year sentence judges usually impose for the same crime - aggravated battery - and there were state-to-state differences in whether judges reduced or increased the sentence when given information on the biological causes of psychopathy.

The entire story is here.

Abstract

We tested whether expert testimony concerning a biomechanism of psychopathy increases or decreases punishment. In a nationwide experiment, U.S. state trial judges (N = 181) read a hypothetical case (based on an actual case) where the convict was diagnosed with psychopathy. Evidence presented at sentencing in support of a biomechanical cause of the convict's psychopathy significantly reduced the extent to which psychopathy was rated as aggravating and significantly reduced sentencing (from 13.93 years to 12.83 years). Content analysis of judges' reasoning indicated that even though the majority of judges listed aggravating factors (86.7%), the biomechanical evidence increased the proportion of judges listing mitigating factors (from 29.7 to 47.8%). Our results contribute to the literature on how biological explanations of behavior figure into theories of culpability and punishment.