Appraisals of Cognitive Neuropsychology

Autonomy, responsibility, and privacy in neuroscience Model of 'Braingate' from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BrainGate.jpg   I take umbrage with Tamburrini’s notion that a person using a brain computer interface (BCI) is in the same legal position of responsibility as a dog owner or parent. The latter two categories work only as analogies in that both dogs and children have a form of autonomy that is at times unpredictable and potentially uncontrollable by the owner. Neither of them however requires a sacrifice of personal control. I have a feeling that irate mothers and owners of very large dogs will argue this point; nevertheless, dogs and children control only their own actions and attempt to influence the owner/parent – the autonomy of the person holding the leash so to speak, is preserved. A better analogy in my opinion would be that of a caregiver who interprets the will of the invalid in much the same way a BCI (brain computer interface) attempts to rea...

Virtual reality is a growing business (just witness the success of the movie Avatar). If you haven't already seen something called project Natal "Milo" - look for it on Youtube - go now, check it out, I'll wait... There, how was that? I find the fact that Milo is so real very disturbing on some level. At what point does Milo become "real", does he become a person? If his circuitry becomes more sophisticated and he becomes more autonomous, should we take consideration of his apparent personhood? I show you this video to demonstrate that this sort of issue is not necessarily that far away. Computing power keeps increasing exponentially, and scientists are coming up with better and better ways to model behaviour (i.e. see John R Anderson at the ACT-R laboratory ) note, this is not me! Computational models of cognitive behaviour are in their infancy now, and as of yet there aren't many models that translate well from one task set to another...

Emerging issues of ethics and fMRI imaging technology (image on the right from Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain) Modern neuroimaging techniques including ERP, fMRI, SPECT and MEG have been used – perhaps prematurely, to bridge philosophical and psychological traditions. Illes & Bird, 2006 quote Stephen Morse as saying that images produced by these techniques, particularly fMRI are exremely seductive to the general public and appear to be “more accurate” than other data. Having reconstructed, preprocessed and analyzed fMRI data, I find these statements alarming. For the public to understand what these images actually represent (i.e. statistical map of correlations and anticorrelations/covariances etc) laid upon an anatomical average, is essential to avoid false statements of causality and beliefs about the research’s prospects. Illes & Bird underscore the need for public discourse training to ensure accurate reproduction of original...