Roughly half reported unpleasant side effects, and some discontinued use because of them.
half is a big percent to be feeling side effects. I also find it interesting that it says only half of the users discontinued because of the side effects, did the others continue to use the drug despite experiencing side effects?
Compared to non-users, lifestyle drug NE users weremore likely to be prescription drug and illicit substanceusers
I wonder if this is because one people start using drugs, they are more willing to try new/other drugs to help them further or if the commercial side of pharmaceuticals has brainwashed individuals into buying more drugs to fix issues in their life
Who decides which pains shouldbe suffered to build character and whichcan be reasonably avoided
I think this is a good point. I feel that when it comes to pain and experiencing pain, the individual is the one who should decide what is too much and if they want to prevent it they should be able to
set off a steroid arms race that destroys my sport.
in my opinion, I do not think the sport would be destroyed if everyone had access to and took steroids. I think the main issue with enhancement drugs is when not everyone has equal and fair access to them
n enhancement and treatment in order to sell drugs.
many companies use this tactic in order to make what they are selling seems more reliable
Ritalin can allow studentsto stay awake for many hours in a row and maintainabnormally high levels of concentration.’
when abusing Ritalin for a certain amount of time I wonder if at some point users crash or what the long-term effect is on the brain of the users
an convey the overwhelming sense of powerlessness which invades the individual as he is continually exposed to the depersonalization of the psychiatric hospital.
this reminds me of the Stanford Experiment, if someone is made to feel like they are something and can't control anything, they will begin to believe it
The pseudopatients were not, in fact, carefully observed, but this failure clearly speaks more to traditions within psychiatric hospitals than to lack of opportunity,
this is quite concerning that individuals that were admitted to psychiatric hospitals as pseudo patients were so easily diagnosed into one group when in reality they had nothing wrong with themselves. For patients that actually have a mental illness and need lots of help, I wonder if they are actually receiving the support and treatment they need
Each was told that he would have to get out by his own devices, essentially by convincing the staff that he was sane.
I think this is quite flawed as it could cause more distress for the patients if they don't understand why they are considered to be insane or how they can 'get better'. It seems like being told why the patient was there and what steps/things they would have to do to be released would be more beneficial for both the patients and the staff.
the law is concerned with how we behave and not with how our brains function.
I think this point makes sense especially with the driving test example below, but it also makes me think of individuals that begin to behave differently when they have a brain tumor or have had a brain injury. Often times they can't be held fully responsible for their actions because their brain has an abnormality/dysfunctional brain. In this paper it seems we consider an underdeveloped brain to be dysfunctional/abnormal so these individuals can't be held fully responsible or receive extreme punishments
These connections become stronger over the course of adolescence as a result of both maturation and experience,
I wonder how rapidly/slowly the connection develop in adolescents who have had more intense life-experiences while growing up compared to those who are more 'sheltered' and how that will affect the decisions they make as an adolescent before their brain is fully developed
moral judgments, then dysfunctions in those circuitsmight be used as evidence that defendants cannot knowthat their acts are wrong.
it seems that scientists need to map out what brain parts are involved with and control decision-making, moral judgements, etc. before applying this method in real-life situations
authors found areas in the anterior medial frontal cor-tex that could be used to decode which intention thesubjects were maintaining.
as we have talked about before, these experiments are very much controlled and the same results may no be gathered or shown in real-life settings
toreduceresponsibility, not toestablishit.
I think this is a good idea because it seems there is more of a correlation rather than causation
dimin-ishing his ability to function normally
how do we know that his frontal lobes caused him to murder? perhaps he doesn't function normally but does that mean that these brain aberrations would cause him to murder?
tural recall, false rec
it appears that the actual recall and the false recall activate many of the same neurons implying that the mice see these two memories as connected, similarly, or the same
Not all of us will agree with the Council about how we oughtto cope with emotional pain, what changes to our memory will damageour sense of self, and what makes one set of experiences more genuineand, therefore, better than another.
I think the hardest part of using memory changing drugs will be creating the guidelines/rules as memory is a very sensitive subject to many people and it is hard to control what someone is allowed to remember or allowed to forget. Creating these guidelines could cause many issues for potential users
memory dampening may weakenour sense of identity by dissociating memories of our lives from thoselives as they were actually lived.
if people learned about this drug it could become abused by murderers, rapists, etc because they could take if after or before their crime and claim they couldn't be held responsible as they weren't fully coherent during the actual crime
Because less than 30% of trauma victims develop long-term PTSD, many might be treated with propranolol even though they
is there any harm of giving a patient propranolol without knowing if they will develop PTSD?
Rates of attempted suicideamong those with PTSD have been reported to be "as high as 19%.
with high suicide rates like these it seems unethical to not give a drug that could potentially help these people to forget the memory completely or to dull their pain and suffering
prevent us from truly coming to terms with trauma
one way to combat this could be to pair memory drugs with therapy to help someone come to terms with what happened and then help the individual lose some of their memories that still negatively effect them
‘Screw it. I can take my pill and even if doing this is not really warranted, I'll be OK’
I agree that if this medicine was widely available it could be quite easily abused by many. I also wonder what the other side effects this medicine would have on a body that is using it long term
n the end, to have only happy memories is not to be happy ina truly human way.
I think this quote is similar to one we talked about last class. The idea that bad experiences and memories help make us who we are. To some extent I agree that we need bad things to happen to us to develop us as humans and learn, but I also feel that some experiences are so terrible that people should have the ability to forget them or lessen the effect they have if needed
hen their memories were tested three weeks later, the drug group had flat emotional responses, simi- lar to the group who had seen the uneventful version of the boy’s outing with his mother.
this method is interesting because it seems that individuals such as soldiers could be given this medicine before going into combat and may not have to deal with things such as PTSD or flashbacks?
That is, when we have an embarrassing experience, we develop empathy forothers who have a similar experience
this is an interesting point that our embarrassing or painful memories allow us to feel more empathy for others because we can relate to their issues and what they are going through. If we had the ability to erase all the memories we didn't want, would this diminish our ability to emotionally connect with others?
diminish her and keep her from learning from theexperience, not to mention impair her ability to testify against her assailant should the chancearise.
before reading this paper, I fully supported the idea of erasing a memory that was unpleasant or caused great mental/physical distress. After reading the points about testifying against the assailant or learning from that event, I am unsure what will be best as there are many positive and negative outcomes for both sides
he found no significant differencebetween the propranolol and the placebo groups
it is interesting that Pitman found no significant differences between the two groups. I wonder if time and dealing with the trauma is the best course of action and what effect this drug really has on people
The test should be voluntary and based on informed consent.
I think this could be the most important part of the guidelines as no one should be forced to find out if they don't want to
against discrimination inemployment, exclusion from medical decision making, or the withdrawal of a drivinglicense without an adequate alternative to guarantee mobility [
I think this would be hard to avoid because once people found out that an individual was going to get AD, I think they would have a red flag on them and people would always be looking for them to make mistakes
possible false-positiveor false-negative diagnose
how reliable are these tests and what is the percent that these tests will cause false-positives or false-negatives
no disease modifying treatment available yet
I think this is the main issue with predicting early onset AD, if someone thinks they have AD there is still not much they can do about it which can just cause more stress and anxiety
The press provides a simple (perhaps, toosimple) message;
I think there needs to be a better balance with how simple or complicated news articles or medical journals are especially when they are aimed at the general public because they need to be simple enough for everyone to understand but also detailed enough to get all the information across
This disconnect between the goals of the press and the result ofthe scientific process leads to often contradictory headlines,where coffee consumption, for example, is good for you oneweek and bad for you the next.
When you look up if something is good/bad for you online you can easily find multiple papers or news articles supporting one side or the other. I like the point that there aren't that many break throughs in science but with all the news you would think there are multiple a day
‘‘fooled’’
I think this makes a lot of sense and we can see that this has been happening with other areas of science such as vaccines and coronavirus. A lot of what people believe about science is based on how it is worded, who is telling them the news, etc.
showed activity in the insula, an areaassociated with disgust and other negative feelings. This suggests that swing voters’ negativeemotions toward Mr. Edwards can be quite powerfu
I think it is a bold move to pull these conclusions from their tests as different brain regions light up for multiple tasks and thoughts. I feel that there is too much overlap with the activity in the brain to say activity in one brain region always means an individual has disgust and negative feelings
Men showlittle interest in Mrs. Clinton initially but after watching her video they react positively. Womenrespond to her strongly at first, but their interest wanes after they watch her video.
I feel like this is a strong statement/conclusion to make as it seems to be referring to stereotypes women and men might hold but there are also many other factors that need to be researched and thought of
The robot was able to separate waggle danceand sound-producing wing vibration of the dance, and theexperiments demonstrated that the waggle dance is impor-tant to transmit information about distance and direction of agiven food source.
what type of coding technologies do scientists use to program these robots? I would be interested in learning more about how they programmed these robots to sense these things.
One ofthe major challenges in mixed society is to design robots thatcan modulate the natural society towards a desired behaviourinfluencing the decision-making process
when conducting animal tests paired with robots I think it could be difficult to get accurate results as animals could be intimated or affected by the robots. How do we know the presence of the robots doesn't affect the results?
Robots can be useful tostudy behavioural adaptation, s
How did scientists make robots that are able to adapt as humans would? Is this a realistic way to test adaption?
there is little scientific justification for this proposal, given that consumer EEG data are not a repository of rich, personal information
unlike the last paper, the author here does not support the idea of creating new regulations and guidelines for brain technologies that are being commercialized. Although the EEG may not be fully accurate and reliable as of now, I still think it is important to create guidelines soon so if these technologies do become more advanced security and ethical issues don't become a problem
In fact, as a colleague and I have argued elsewhere15, there is no evidence to suggest that data captured from consumer EEG devices are valid or reliable.
if companies are selling EEG devices that are not reliable I think this is related to needing better guidelines and regulations when it comes to creating and selling these technologies. It doesn't seem ethical to sell these devices that people may be using for medical data, when they don't even work properly
Safeguards are needed at three levels: individual users, neu-rotechnology producers or service providers, and policy and regulatory bodies
it seems right now companies are more concerned about getting their technologies out on the market for people to buy but now they should be focusing on how to keep their customer's information more secure
Neuroimaging applications in commer-cial settings, especially in neuromarketing, are of particular ethical concern because they are not required to comply with the same ethical guidelines as clinical research.
personally I feel that these guidelines should be changed to be more similar to clinical research because commercial use of these devices have a more immediate and widespread effect on the population without as much testing being done beforehand. If there are glitches or dangers that aren't fully researched before the technology becomes commercialized this could lead to severe issues for many people
EEG measurements of an event-related potential elicited in deci-sion making (the ‘P300’) can be successfully used to extract financial and identity-related information from BCI users without their knowledge or consent2
it is worrying that technologies already on the market and available to the public can be used to obtain such private information from people. Access to information about financial and identity related stuff could lead to people becoming more susceptible to scams or being discriminated against in some cases. I wonder how the creators could block the EEG from sharing this information
RegulatorsinRhodeIslandfoundthatCVSPharmacywasillegallyscreeningoutapplicantswithmentalillnesseswhenapersonalitytestrequiredrespondentstoagreeordisagreetosuchstatementsas
this brings up who should have access to private information and how the information should contribute to getting a job or who should make these decisions. if the CVS pharmacy wasn't allowed to screen out people with mental illness, were the tests or questions even really needed?
Thisisunjust.Thequestionnaireincludescircumstancesofacriminal’sbirthandupbringing,includinghisorherfamily,neighborhood,andfriends.
this method of deciding who is high risk and how to decide sentencing is extremely flawed, especially since people have no control over how they were raised, or what their family, friends, etc may or may not have done
Thequestion,however,iswhetherwe’veeliminatedhumanbiasorsimplycamouflageditwithtechnology.
this statement reminds of the book "Race After Technology", although technology is supposed to be a robot and unbiased, many of these technologies were created by humans who do may have some bias and racism
First, recognizing thedefendant's reduced culpability as a mitigating factor, the courtshould impose a sentence at the lower end of the statutory range.
although I personally agree with this idea, I think this could cause a lot of conflict in the court and sentencing because the individual's actions may have caused great loss, injury, etc to an individual and their loved ones and they might feel the person who committed the crime deserves the same sentence as someone who didn't hav brain damage
In other words, an individual's childhoodenvironment, parental upbringing, and exposure to certain influencescan-and does-affect whether he will have frontal lobe/pre-frontalcortex damage that affects his ability to control aggressive impulses,and make reasoned and informed moral judgments.
as we have discussed in class before, an argument could be made that more money should be put towards preventative measures rather than diagnostic or predictive technologies because if we could prevent children from developing damage to their brain we wouldn't have to worry so much about these predictive and diagnostic technologies
Whether through impaired judgment or an inabilityto control behavior, these individuals cannot use their knowledge ofwrongfulness to direct their behavior in appropriate ways.
although people with brain injuries lack the ability to control their behavior, I don't think this means that we can conclude an individual will commit a crime or do something bad. It also seems to get tricky in the court as the individual understands they have done something wrong if they act on their impulse, but they are unable to stop themselves
the Court noted that a "leading thinker on this issue" had"'concluded that the best clinical research currently in existenceindicates that psychiatrists and psychologists are accurate in no morethan one out of three predictions of violent behavior,"' even whenassessing institutionalized violent criminals.4
Who was the "leading thinker" that said this? I wonder what their qualifications were or what other "experts" found similar results. I think this relates back to who should be allowed to determine if these technologies and tests are allowed in a court of law and what the guidelines should be when deciding this.
If theimages are similar to ones the suspect saw in a movie about terrorists, his brainactivity might imply that he was lying, although in fact he never was at the camp
the accuracy of fMRI imaging is not developed enough to deal with the complexity of the brain. It is scary to think one may be found guilty because of a false memory that showed up on a scan
kept a diary that contained murderous fantasies;had its contents been known, a catastrophe might have been averted
It is difficult to know what is a fantasy to a person and what is an actual plan a person knows they will complete. With privacy being such a big deal to Americans it is especially a sensitive subject and difficult to set guidelines for
testimonial or physical evidence
I think there could be an argument made that it could be both
The judge refused to admit the evidence on the basis of the Frye standard, after concluding that experts in the field
with new technologies widely available, and based off of these examples, it seems that there need to be new standards established for what technologies can be admitted and used in court
the sensitivity of this test was high but the specificity was low.
although the rate for correctly detecting deception was 100%, it is scary that 67% were wrongly detected as being deceptive. If this were being used in court, it seems many innocent people would be wrongly convicted. The rate of wrongly identifying someone as being deceptive is much too high for this technology to be used in "real life"
we cannot know what psychological processes other than deception might evoke the same pat-terns of activity.
I really like this statement because there has not been enough research done and we probably don't have the technologies to surely determine truth from lie yet
Suspectsmay be tested only with their consent, but forensic investigators say many agree because theyassume it will spare them an aggressive police interrogation.
if a person is agreeing to take these tests out of fear or coercion it seems that the test will not be accurate as they probably have many other things on their mind which can greatly influence activity in different areas of the brain as we discussed in class
Technologies which are neither seriously peer-reviewed nor independently replicated are not, inmy opinion, credible,” said Dr. Rosenfeld,
I think this is an important point. Before allowing technologies that study the brain, they need to be reviewed and replicated by multiple peers from the same field to test their validity. Instead, technologies such as the polygraph and EEG testing is being introduced into courts without enough scientific evidence and review which may cause innocent people to be falsely convicted
The inventors of the technology claim the system can distinguish betweenpeople’s memories of events they witnessed and between deeds they committed
Of course the inventors will back their invention as they want people to trust it so they will use/buy it and they can continue to make profit. It would be interesting to know what tests they performed and what their results were
generally regarded as promising but unproved, have yet to be widelyaccepted as evidence
I noticed this paper doesn't include many statistics on the accuracy of this method to detect lies so I wonder how accurate/reliable these machines actually are in detecting when someone is lying and why India would allow these methods to be admitted into the court
On the basis of these results, at least twocompanies have been formed to sell fMRI lie detectionservices.
similar to our other paper it seems some individuals and companies are quick to publicize and market these 'lie detectors' even though there is not nearly enough scientific evidence and research to prove their validity. money seems to be chosen over reliable and accurate results