PS63CH22-Farah ARI 31 October 2011 13:38 Neuroethics: The Ethical, Legal, and Societal Impact of Neuroscience Martha J. Farah Center for Neuroscience & Society, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2012. 63:571–91 Keywords by University of Pennsylvania on 03/26/12. For personal use only. The Annual Review of Psychology is online at brain imaging, enhancement, free will, privacy, soul psych.annualreviews.org Abstract Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2012.63:571-591. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org This article’s doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100438 Advances in cognitive, affective, and social neuroscience raise a host Copyright c 2012 by Annual Reviews. of new questions concerning the ways in which neuroscience can and All rights reserved should be used. These advances also challenge our intuitions about 0066-4308/12/0110-0571$20.00 the nature of humans as moral and spiritual beings. Neuroethics is the new field that grapples with these issues. The present article sur- veys a number of applications of neuroscience to such diverse arenas as marketing, criminal justice, the military, and worker productivity. The ethical, legal, and societal effects of these applications are discussed. Less practical, but perhaps ultimately more consequential, is the impact of neuroscience on our worldview and our understanding of the human person. 571 PS63CH22-Farah ARI 31 October 2011 13:38 WHY NEUROETHICS, Contents WHY NOW? WHY NEUROETHICS, The word “neuroethics” entered the vocabu- WHYNOW?..................... 572 lary of academic neuroscientists and bioethicists What Can We Do? What Should at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It WeDo?........................ 573 was coined by William Safire, a scholar of word What Do We Know? How Should history and meaning (for 30 years he wrote the WeViewOurselves?............ 573 New York Times column “On Language”) who NEUROETHICS OF BRAIN also stayed abreast of developments in neuro- IMAGING........................ 574 science as chairman of the Dana Foundation. Ethical Issues, Familiar and New . 574 From its first mention in a 2001 Safire col- ImagingtheMind.................. 574 umn, “neuroethics” has come to refer to a broad Imaging Individual Minds range of ethical, legal, and social issues raised andMentalStates............... 575 by progress in neuroscience. To understand the Nonmedical Applications emergence of neuroethics as a field, meriting a ofBrainImaging................ 576 name of its own, we must consider some recent Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues scientific history. inBrainImaging................ 578 For much of the latter twentieth century, Brain Privacy . 578 genetics was viewed as the science most likely to Overpersuasiveness challenge our ethical, legal, and social practices ofBrainImages................. 578 and assumptions (e.g., Silver 1997). Findings NEUROETHICS OF BRAIN from twin studies and other behavioral genetics ENHANCEMENT . 579 methods demonstrated the substantial role of Ethical Issues, Familiar and New . 579 genes in most aspects of human psychology, CognitiveEnhancement............ 580 and the development of molecular genetics Social-Affective Enhancement . 580 promised to reveal the mechanisms by which Nonpharmacological personality, intelligence, psychiatric vulnera- Enhancement................... 582 bilities, and other traits developed, as well as to Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues open the door to targeted interventions (e.g., in Brain Enhancement . 582 Parens 2004). By the turn of the century, how- Voluntary Physician-Assisted ever, it had become clear that psychological Enhancement................... 582 traits bore only the weakest relationships with individual genes and that the genetics of human by University of Pennsylvania on 03/26/12. For personal use only. Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications of Cognitive psychology involve extremely complex patterns Enhancement................... 583 of interaction among genes and between genes Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2012.63:571-591. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Ethical, Legal, and Societal and environment, limiting the ease with which Implications of Social-Affective theories could be constructed and also the Enhancement................... 584 effectiveness with which interventions to THE NEUROSCIENCE change behavior could be achieved (e.g., Van WORLDVIEW................... 585 Gestel & Van Broeckhoven 2003). Moral Agency and Responsibility . 586 Contemporaneous with the lowering of Religion and the Nature expectations for genetics, neuroscience was ofPersons...................... 587 undergoing rapid development into the areas Finding Meaning in a of cognition, emotion, and social processes, MaterialWorld................. 587 thanks in large part to the advent of functional neuroimaging. Like genetics, neuroscience deals with the biological essence of persons, 572 Farah PS63CH22-Farah ARI 31 October 2011 13:38 Figure 1 Schematic illustration of the relations between genes, experience, the brain, and behavior. including their minds and behaviors. However, role of neuroscience in our lives and evaluate as represented in Figure 1, neuroscience its likely impact on individuals and society. encompasses the totality of genetic influences on behavior combined with environmental influences. Also apparent in Figure 1,the What Can We Do? What Should brain is one causal step closer to behavior than We Do? to genes or features of the environment. These The next two sections of the article address the considerations suggest that neuroscience may issues that emerge from neuroscience-based turn out to be far more successful than genetics technologies, in other words, relatively prag- in explaining, predicting, and changing human matic issues concerning how the fruits of social behavior. Indeed, so far neuroscience has been neuroscience can and should be applied. These living up to this promise. For example, whereas include ethical, legal, and social challenges single genes account, typically, for 2% to 4% raised by newfound abilities to image the brain of the variance in personality traits (Van Gestel and thereby obtain information about mental & Van Broeckhoven 2003), brain imaging states and personal traits, as well as by our by University of Pennsylvania on 03/26/12. For personal use only. studies typically capture an order of magnitude growing ability to intervene in individuals’ more variance (Farah et al. 2009). brain function to alter these states and traits. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2012.63:571-591. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org As a result of these developments in These first two sections in effect begin with cognitive, affective, and social neuroscience, the question, “What can we do with neuro- neuroscience can now be brought to bear in science?” and go on to analyze the ethical many different spheres of human life, beyond question that follows, “Should we do it?” the traditional application area for biological science, medicine. Any endeavor that depends on being able to understand, assess, predict, What Do We Know? How Should We control, or improve human behavior is, in View Ourselves? principle, a potential application area for neuro- The final section addresses neuroethical issues science. This includes diverse sectors of society, that emerge from the impact of social neuro- for example, education, business, politics, law, science on our understanding of human beings. entertainment, and warfare. The goal of this In this section it is the knowledge per se, not article is to review the current and near-term its technological applications, that is the focus www.annualreviews.org • Neuroethics: The Ethical, Legal, and Societal Impact of Neuroscience 573 PS63CH22-Farah ARI 31 October 2011 13:38 of the review. This section includes the ways in these scans could be used for other reasons by which our evolving understanding of the hu- the “worried well” of the baby boomer genera- man person challenges our long-held beliefs tion or their worried employers or insurers. In MRI: magnetic resonance imaging about morality and spirituality. The questions such cases, the benefits of foreknowledge, for of this section are, in effect, “What do we know example the greater opportunity to plan, must Incidental finding: abnormality that is about the neural bases of the human mind?” and be weighed against the psychological burden of unintentionally “How does this knowledge change the way we this knowledge and its potential impact on em- discovered in the view ourselves, as moral and spiritual beings?” ployability or insurability. As with the problem process of laboratory of incidental findings, the ethical, legal, and so- testing cietal dimensions of this problem are largely PET: positron NEUROETHICS OF familiar from clinical bioethics outside of brain emission tomography BRAIN IMAGING imaging, particularly in the area of genetic testing. Ethical Issues, Familiar and New In other cases, brain imaging raises new eth- Developments in brain imaging have engen- ical, legal, and social issues that stem directly dered a large literature in neuroethics. Some from the special relationship between brain and of this literature is concerned with issues for mind. The ability of brain imaging to deliver which we can find helpful precedents in clinical information about our psyches—about who we bioethics. For example, now that magnetic are and what we might be thinking or feel- resonance imaging (MRI) of healthy normal ing while in the scanner—opens up a range