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Oscar Romero Jorge Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English 1103 11/06/13 Mente Abierta Alright so keep your mente abierta, which means to keep your mind open, and imagine yourself out in the middle of a gorgeous meadow. There is a large white-tail buck standing out near a breathtaking waterfall. Now, take a step back and think about each process your brain just made in order for you, yourself, to visualize the grand scenery before you. Pretty cool, yeah? It would be really cool, no, literally incredible to be able to see everything your brain does in order for you to see, feel, taste, hear, smell, or think! Or maybe, even everything at once like when you see a delicious piece of toast with strawberry jelly. As you smell the sweet strawberry you feel the rough exterior of the toast in your hands. You hear it crunch in between your teeth and you taste the savory strawberry jelly. Finally you think about how delicious that bite was and prepare to take another. Sure sounds delicious AND intellectual! Well, consider how amazing understanding the complete composition and operation of the human brain, would be; the scientific field dedicated to this is Neuroscience. Can you imagine what possibilities the human race could prosper from? I sure can think of quite a few, but could there be some reasons why the human race should not accomplish this discovery? Professor Judy Illes neatly summarizes the core concerns with neuroscience findings; privacy and enhancements, (Illes). Lets access one example out of the many possibilities offered from continued research of the brain, or neuroscience. The first possibility is being able to manipulate physical matter with just your brain. This may seem bewildering but Cyberkinetics

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Neurotechnology Systems, Inc in association with the Director of the Brain Science Program at Brown University, Dr. John Donoghue, have been exploring what they call the Braingate System technology to provide the option of controlling activities, like controlling the mouse cursor on a computer, with nothing but the sensing of electrical activity of various neurons (Braingate). Lets assess the goal of Braingate Systems technology closer. According to information readily available on their website, Braingate.com, they promote that they have created a sensor consisting of one hundred electrodes on a silicon array that when placed on the surface of the brain in the area that controls limb movement the sensor can transmit the electrical signals to a computer nearby into actions produced from algorithms that have already been programmed (Braingate). Mind-blowing, if you ask me. Their long-term goal is to provide this technology for paraplegics so that they may continue to have a manner in which to gain back control of missing appendages by utilizing their thought. The necessity for research in neuroscience is summed up on the About page of the Society for Neuroscience website: More than 1,000 disorders of the brain and nervous system result in more hospitalizations and lost productivity than any other disease group, including heart disease and cancer, (About Neuroscience). I must ask again, why should the research in neuroscience not be promoted? I couldnt help but continue to wonder why it may be possible that this field of research should not continue. David Brooks, a renowned and experienced columnist, recently wrote a column in The New York Times about his reluctance to holding neuroscience highly regarded. He writes: The field [neuroscience] is obviously incredibly important and exciting. From personal experience, I can tell you that you get captivated by it and sometimes go off to extremes, as if understanding the brain is the solution to understanding all

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thought and behavior. This is happening at two levels. At the lowbrow level, there are the conference circuit neuro-mappers. These are people who take pretty brainscan images and claim they can use them to predict what product somebody will buy, what party they will vote for, whether they are lying or not or whether a criminal should be held responsible for his crime (Brooks). Brooks accepts that the field of neuroscience is important and exciting but it seems that his desire is to bring people back down to Earth, if you will. Also, Brooks states in his closing, The next time somebody tells you what a brain scan says, be a little skeptical. The brain is not the mind, and this statement clarifies his intention (Brooks). David Brooks appears to not entirely believe that the scientific data discovered can say who a person is, what they are, or why they are such a person. This correlates to the idea of free will which is understandable because it is unfathomable to me to think that I am already preprogrammed since birth. In this aspect, I would have to agree with Brooks. If this is all that neuroscience will provide than I do not see why the funds should go into this research. It would be like trying to unravel what the future holds in store and with this would come the specific knowledge that I personally would dread to know; the day of my death. The question is now, how should neuroscience research be pursued? Lets take a moment and contemplate nuclear energy. Nuclear energy was created after nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are very hazardous no matter who has them and history demonstrates what disastrous effects nuclear weapons can have. But, nuclear energy emerged from the discovery of nuclear weapons and today it is a possible solution to the worlds energy crisis. With neuroscience it could be the opposite; it appears to be beneficial but could it become harmful? With this in mind, neuroscience has recently been introduced and could have negative

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effects arise because everything on Earth can be maliciously abused. What are some possibilities occurring from the ill use of neuroscience? According to "Ethical Issues in Neuroscience by Thomas Fuchs, published in the journal Current Opinion in Psychiatry in 2006, Mood, memory, attention, alertness and other cognitive capacities are on the agenda for brain enhancement or mind doping. The product range of pharmaceutical companies increasingly aims at healthy persons willing to increase their wellbeing and performance by legal drug use, (Fuchs). Thomas Fuchs, here, is referring to some capabilities that have already been developed with the use of pharmaceuticals. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, has become well-known in todays society and Fuchs, in his article Ethical Issues in Neuroscience, gives examples of healthy college students taking medicine that is prescribed commonly to individuals with ADHD to enhance their alertness (Fuchs). Now, considering humans have already begun to utilize their small understanding of the composition and operations of the human brain, what bad could come from discovering the entire functions and mappings of the neurological system? Understanding the brain will grant the human race a great deal of control over many diseases and how to repair neural trauma but, theoretically, it will also provide much more accurate information about when a subject is lying or telling the truth. Could this lead to a possible personal privacy violation? Fuchs states, Brain processes are intimately bound to our selves and personal identity. Our sense of privacy may be threatened by technologies that can reveal the neural correlates of our innermost though ts and unconscious attitudes, (Fuchs). This leads us to contemplate that with the means of knowing when an individual is lying could also provide the researchers the power to read entire thoughts. Today, the government has already begun to utilize

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telephone conversations to track down trigger words so that any criminal acts could be detained before they reach the point of severely hurting anyone. With this technologyknowing when an individual is lyingin any government power a much more thorough, not necessarily adequate, search could be done. Would it be just to do such a profound search of any individuals mind? Also, consider how some innocent individuals are sometimes mistakenly taken into questioning from an error in the search for the true criminal. How would it be decided that a profound search of an individuals mind be done, or not? Brain-enhancements are the other apparent benefit. Why, as human beings ever evolving, would we not desire to expand the base capabilities of our minds if it would allow a human to do much better at the daily tasks we already perform quite well? Walter Glannon says in his article of Neuroethics that, These drugs most likely would target working memory, which enables us to perform cognitive tasks and executive functions like reasoning and decision[-]making, (Glannon). By enlarging our capacity for memory would it really provide us the luxury to amass an extensive amount of memory that would always be readily at our disposal? Judy Illes, Ph.D., a Professor of Neurology and Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia, wrote in The Lancet, a medical journal found online, the following: Issues of personhood and authenticity, for example, have become hotly debated among neuroethicists as pharmaceuticals developed for improving mental health disorders, sleeping disorders, or attention disorders in children are now being consumed at high rates as off-label cognitive enhancers to boost mood, memory, and alertness. If these drugs, or substances like oxytocin, become the Viagra of daily functioning and create new benchmarks for productivity,

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wakefulness, and emotional love, what will happen to the fabric of society and the character of our interactions with one another (Illes)? IF these two dilemmas were to be advanced with caution it would appear that, as of now, neuroscience would be headed on a beneficial route for humanity. What will hold the progress of neuroscience in check will be the recent creation of neuroethics, which is recognized by Oxford Dictionary as bioethics, defined to be a The ethics of medical and biological research , ("Definition of Bioethics in English). Judy Illes believes so as well stating so in her article, The eye of neuroethics is on the wellbeing of people and society, (Illes). In conclusion, neuroscience has begun to appear that it could prove to be more useful to mankind. It is apparent that it is essential for humans to understand the very essence that allows for all functions we do day to day. In respect to Brooks I will finish with this quote by a man I met during my time at the North Carolina Governor School 2012, Be 'open -minded' without being 'gullible' and be 'skeptical' without being 'close-minded.

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Works Cited "About Neuroscience." Society for Neuroscience -. Society for Neuroscience, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. "Braingate." Braingate. Braingate Company, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. Brooks, David. "Beyond the Brain." NYTimes. New York Times, 17 June 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. "Definition of Bioethics in English." Bioethics: Definition of Bioethics in Oxford Dictiona Oxford Dictionaries, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. Fuchs, Thomas. "Ethical Issues in Neuroscience." Current Opinion in Psychiatry 19.6 (2006): 600-07. Print. Glannon, Walter. "Neuroethics." Bioethics 20.1 (2006): 37-52. Print. Illes, Judy. "Empowering Brain Science with Neuroethics." The Lancet 376.9749 (2010): 1294295. Print.