---
title: "Neuroethics"
chunk: 7/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroethics"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:23:50.583791+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Neurological treatments ===
Neuroscience has led to a deeper understanding of the chemical imbalances present in a disordered brain. In turn, this has resulted in the creation of new treatments and medications to treat these disorders. When these new treatments are first being tested, the experiments prompt ethical questions. First, because the treatment is affecting the brain, the side effects can be unique and sometimes severe. A special kind of side effect that many subjects have claimed to experience in neurological treatment tests is changes in "personal identity". Although this is a difficult ethical dilemma because there are no clear and undisputed definitions of personality, self, and identity, neurological treatments can result in patients losing parts of "themselves" such as memories or moods. Yet another ethical dispute in neurological treatment research is the choice of patients. From a perspective of justice, priority should be given to those who are most seriously impaired and who will benefit most from the intervention. However, in a test group, scientists must select patients to secure a favorable risk-benefit ratio. Setting priority becomes more difficult when a patient's chance to benefit and the seriousness of their impairment do not go together. For example, many times an older patient will be excluded despite the seriousness of their disorder simply because they are not as strong or as likely to benefit from the treatment. The main ethical issue at the heart of neurological treatment research on human subjects is promoting high-quality scientific research in the interest of future patients, while at the same time respecting and guarding the rights and interests of the research subjects. This is particularly difficult in the field of neurology because damage to the brain is often permanent and will change a patient's way of life forever.

=== Neuroscience and free will ===

Neuroethics also encompasses the ethical issues raised by neuroscience as it affects our understanding of the world and of ourselves in the world.  For example, if everything we do is physically caused by our brains, which are in turn a product of our genes and our life experiences, how can we be held responsible for our actions?  A crime in the United States requires a "guilty act" and a "guilty mind". As neuropsychiatry evaluations have become more commonly used in the criminal justice system and neuroimaging technologies have given us a more direct way of viewing brain injuries, scholars have cautioned that this could lead to the inability to hold anyone criminally responsible for their actions. In this way, neuroimaging evidence could suggest that there is no free will and each action a person makes is simply the product of past actions and biological impulses that are out of our control.  The question of whether and how personal autonomy is compatible with neuroscience ethics and the responsibility of neuroscientists to society and the state is a central one for neuroethics. However, there is some controversy over whether autonomy entails the concept of 'free will' or is a 'moral-political' principle separate from metaphysical quandaries.
In late 2013, U.S. president Barack Obama made recommendations to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues as part of his $100 million Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. This Spring discussion resumed in a recent interview and article sponsored by Agence France-Presse (AFP): "It is absolutely critical... to integrate ethics from the get-go into neuroscience research," and not "for the first time after something has gone wrong", said Amy Gutmann, Bioethics Commission Chair." But no consensus has been reached. Miguel Faria, a professor of neurosurgery and an associate editor in chief of Surgical Neurology International, who was not involved in the commission's work said, "any ethics approach must be based upon respect for the individual, as doctors pledge according to the Hippocratic Oath which includes vows to be humble, respect privacy and doing no harm; and pursuing a path based on population-based ethics is just as dangerous as having no medical ethics at all". Why the danger of population-based bioethics? Faria asserts, "it is centered on utilitarianism, monetary considerations, and the fiscal and political interests of the state, rather than committed to placing the interest of the individual patient or experimental subject above all other considerations". For her part, Gutmann  believes the next step is "to examine more deeply the ethical implications of neuroscience research and its effects on society".

== Academic journals ==
Neuroethics
Main Editor: Adrian Carter, Monash University & Katrina Sifferd, Elmhurst University
Neuroethics is an international peer-reviewed journal dedicated to academic articles on the ethical, legal, political, social and philosophical issues provoked by research in the contemporary sciences of the mind, especially, but not only, neuroscience, psychiatry and psychology. The journal publishes high-quality reflections on questions raised by the sciences of the mind, and on the ways in which the sciences of the mind illuminate longstanding debates in ethics.

American Journal of Bioethics–Neuroscience
Main Editor: Veljko Dubljevic, North Carolina State University
AJOB Neuroscience, the official journal of the International Neuroethics Society, is devoted to covering critical topics in the emerging field of neuroethics. The journal is a new avenue in bioethics and strives to present a forum in which to: foster international discourse on topics in neuroethics, provide a platform for debating current issues in neuroethics, and enable the incubation of new emerging priorities in neuroethics. AJOB-Neuroscience launched in 2007 as a section of the American Journal of Bioethics and became an independent journal in 2010, publishing four issues a year.

== See also ==
Bodily integrity
Neurolaw
Neurosecurity
Moral psychology

== References ==