The Ethics of Enhancing Brain Power

While advances in neuroscience already provide Americans with drugs that can enhance their mental capabilities, many of the long-term effects of these enhancements are unknown. Brain-boosting drugs that make people more productive, more alert, or better able to retain memories could potentially increase inequality between those with access to those treatments and those who cannot afford them. In a briefing on the ethical and policy implications of neuroscience research yesterday morning on Capitol Hill, Martha Farah, Science Progress advisory board member and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, explained the potential of various enhancement technologies, but raised the issue of fairness, pointing out the potential of these technologies to “amplify socioeconomic conditions that already exist in this country.”

Joined by author Jonah Leher and Science Progress Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Moreno at the Seed Magazine-sponsored briefing, Farah began by explaining that 20th-century advances in neuroscience came primarily in the fields of basic scientific research and medicine. Shifting to real-world applications, she said that 21st-century neuroscience has already brought and will bring more non-medical applications of this research, and these developments have already altered the way we can manage human capabilities. “Neuroscience has rappelled down from the ivory tower and eloped from the hospital ward,” she said, explaining that for any sphere, “in which it is important to understand, assess, predict, control, or improve human behavior, neuroscience can help.”

But the fundamental ethical question at the heart of developing brain enhancement technologies is the role of doctors. Most neuroscience research is tied to biomedical practice and infrastructure, and enhancement changes the nature of this establishment when producing non-medical applications. Farah explained that with advances in the field, the mission of medical groups is up for debate. She said that doctors must ask: “Are we in the business of just healing people and fixing the sick, or are we in the business of enhancing people and improving their lives?”

She identified two major approaches to altering and understanding the brain: drugs and devices, and some of the policy considerations related to each. The tradition of using chemicals to alter mental states or enhance mental performance goes back thousands of years, but some current non-medical applications of psychopharmacology that raise ethical questions include stimulants that improve attention or reduce the need for sleep. Farah cited a research study indicating that up to 25 percent of students on some college campuses use prescription stimulants like Adderall or Ritalin, originally designed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for non-medical purposes. With the drugs, students can work or study additional hours without sleeping, potentially leveraging that time as an educational advantage. But she noted, “the students I teach did not wait to read about this study”–rather, the social pressure to succeed and the ready availability of the controlled substances incentivizes using the stimulants to increase their productivity.

Modafinil, marketed as Provigil, is a prescription drug with growing popularity that confers an even more powerful enhancement: it allows people who take it to function for days on end without the need for sleep, and without any short-term side effects. In addition to raising the same ethical questions about advantages in productivity in competitive fields associated with stimulants, Moreno pointed out that the Air Force already prescribes Provigil to pilots in order to allow them to carry out long missions without the need for rest. Both also questioned the impact these technologies have on personal freedom. If higher productivity can come in a harmless pill, Farah wondered if workers might find themselves saying one day, “I want this job, but I don’t want to have to take a drug to get it.” Addressing military applications specifically, Moreno pointed out that citizens in military service were going to have to accept more and more interventions to improve their performance and abilities, but he warned that “we need to think about what these young soldiers are going to tolerate.”

Farah explained several other pharmaceuticals that raise significant ethical and policy questions. Courts, she said, already have the authority to prescribe anti-androgen treatments that inhibit sex drive for sex crime offenders, raising the specter of Clockwork Orange-like state control over the bodies of prisoners. Many drug companies, she said, are working to bring drugs to market that combat the natural memory loss effects of aging. Propranolol, a beta-blocker that can dampen memory formation and retention, is currently used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers. Considered through a different lens, the drug could ease the psychological burden of killing enemy soliders in combat. Moreno asked, “Are guilt-free soldiers the kind the United States wants to have?”

The pharmacological applications of neuroscientific research that Farah outlined are all real and commercially available. In shifting her discussion to devices, she was careful to stay with real applications, because the topic, “can easily get into science fiction.” The two primary categories of device applications are machines that stimulate or augment brain function, or machines that image and observe brain function. The former class includes Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation devices, which use magnetic pulses to activate specific areas of the brain and trigger a response. Portable TMS machines have battlefield applications: the direct brain stimulation can heighten awareness and alertness in demanding situations.

Neuromarketing is the burgeoning field of brain imaging applied to the development of effective corporate messaging. “A large number of Fortune 500 companies are paying neuromarketing firms to vet their advertising,” Farah said. For example, a Boston-based ad firm showed test subjects a series of potential images for use in marketing Jack Daniels whiskey, narrowing the most effective photos by observing the brain response of young men in an MRI machine.

Perhaps one of the most sensational fields of imaging research includes experiments that apply fMRI technology for lie detection. Farah explained the process by which researchers train computer algorithms to associate certain brain responses of study subjects with true and false statements, and then attempt to use the machines to determine the truthfulness of subsequent statements. While highly structured experiments have produced positive results, she registered her own skepticism “that this is ever going to transfer from the laboratory to any high-stakes purposes.”

One imaging application with high-stakes applications that could make it out of the lab allows researchers to associate personality characteristics with patterns of brain function. This allows scientists to predict extraversion, unconscious racial attitudes, or educational abilities without the usual pencil-and-paper tests–and without subjects necessarily knowing what researchers are looking for. The technology, already accurate, raises privacy concerns for job screening and discrimination.

Farah closed by pointing out that most neuroscience research is jointly funded by private enterprise and the federal government. Because private companies realize the potential of capitalizing on these technologies, the government should address future concerns about its responsible use by exerting ownership and control while it still maintains significant financial involvement, ensuring that its benefits are not inequitably distributed. “It’s going to happen anyway, and we ought to own it,” she said.

Tags: bioethics, biotech, Neuroscience

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