Our targeted issue is whether institutions or government should regulate the use of one inter-disciplinary technology, computational modeling in brain studies. Regarding this, two articles from IVLE work bin provide some helpful information.
Summary:
The first article titled “A computer that can ‘Read’ Your Mind” introduced an important breakthrough in understanding the brain and developing new computational tools.
Two researchers, a computer scientist, and a cognitive neuroscientist developed a computational model that enabled a computer to correctly determine what word a research subject was thinking about by analyzing brain scan data. Combining the brain scan information with the analysis of the text corpus, the computer then predicted the brain activity pattern of any concrete noun. This computational model provides insight into the nature of human thought. The work could eventually lead to the use of brain scans to identify thoughts and could have applications in the study of various mental diseases such as paranoid, schizophrenia, and semantic dementias. The article indicates the research in the field of computational neuroscience is promising and meaningful, which “opens up all sorts of new possibilities for looking into the fine structure of how patterns of brain activity relate to human thought process.”
The other article named “Ethics and mapping the brain” discusses legal and ethical questions such research as above raises and expresses concerns over its likely consequences.
Beginning with another article “Bioethics and the Brain”, a hypothetical scenario is given. It describes a pilot is fired by the airline due to her potential to develop schizophrenia based on her brain images. Then there is an example of such technologies in their basic form: fMRI, which shows significant correlations between lying and truth telling and the metabolic activity in the brain. However, institutions like the CIA and the FBI have not adopted this due to its immature development.
After the introduction above, ethical issues associated with brain imaging technology come up sequentially: setting bioethical standards for who should be tested, setting technological standards for what is ready to be used in the marketplace, agreement about the admissibility of this evidence in court, consent of a presumed testee, access to brain imaging data, and most controversially, a brain testing juggernaut for children.
At last, the writer emphasizes the importance of those ethical questions, which are to be answered by society, for the more and more reliable predictions from brain image may provoke reductionism, leaving influence of learning and environment ignored.
APA citation:
Marano, L. ( 2003, June 3). Ethics and mapping the brain ( An abridged version of the original in The Washington Times). Retrieved August 6, 2008, from the Centre for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics Web site:
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/brain_mapping_ethics.htm
National Science Foundation. ( 2008, May 30). A computer that can ‘read’ your mind [ Press release 08-091].Retrieved August 6,2008, from
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111641&org=olpa&form=news
Evaluation:
The first article provides comprehensive introduction to computational modeling in brain studies, explaining explicitly the knowledge of this system and how it helps to understand brain activities related to human thought process. Obvious benefits of this technology can be drawn from the content and these could be used to argue why institutions or government should adopt the application of computational neuroscience.
The second article focuses on bioethical aspect of this technology. It could be argued that institutions or government should regulate the use of it, in order to address the problems mentioned in the article and minimize negative consequence. Several standards suggested in the article, should be set to achieve the proper application of the brain imaging.
5 relevant definitions:
1.Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or FMRI, is a technique for measuring brain activity. It works by detecting the changes in blood oxygenation and flow that occur in response to neural activity – when a brain area is more active it consumes more oxygen and to meet this increased demand blood flow increases to the active area. FMRI can be used to produce activation maps showing which parts of the brain are involved in a particular mental process.
(By FMRIB Centre,Department of Clinical Neurology, University of Oxford. http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/education/fmri/introduction-to-fmri/introduction)
2.Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethical controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology.
3.computational model is a mathematical model in computational science that requires extensive computational resources to study the behavior of a complex system by computer simulation. The system under study is often a complex nonlinear system for which simple, intuitive analytical solutions are not readily available. Rather than deriving a mathematical analytical solution to the problem, experimentation with the model is done by changing the parameters of the system in the computer, and study the differences in the outcome of the experiments. Theories of operation of the model can be derived/deduced from these computational experiments.
4.Neuroimaging includes the use of various techniques to either directly or indirectly image the structure, function/pharmacology of the brain. It is a relatively new discipline within medicine and neuroscience/psychology.
5.Neuroscience is a field devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system. The Society for Neuroscience was founded in 1969,[1] but the study of the brain started a long time ago. Such studies span the structure, function, evolutionary history, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, informatics, computational neuroscience and pathology of the nervous system
Friday, February 27, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Lectures on Global Warming
Last Friday, three experts gave their lectures respectively on multiple aspects of global warming, providing us a good opportunity to gain some insights on this famous issue.
Professor Andrew Palmer mounted the rostrum first with his topic “Carbon dioxide capture and storage: technology and politics". His opening remarks involved other urgent problems like population expansion, food shortage and regional conflicts. Yet another challenging problem is coming, which already gives dangerous consequential implication globally, according to scientific research. That is climate change. Focusing on this problem, Professor Palmer discussed several respects: technological application, political resistance and public concerns, personal response. With the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, feasible application of existing technology can come into play, in order to mitigate the situation. Besides adopting alternative energy, including nuclear, solar, wind and biomass energy, an impressive example given is the capture and storage of carbon dioxide. This could be achieved by storing liquid carbon dioxide in depleted oil or sealing it with membrane under the ocean. However, the possibility of carbon dioxide leakage may lead to catastrophic effect on marine ecologic system. Furthermore, political barriers overtake technical difficulties. Generally, high-cost methods to reduce greenhouse emissions may affect company profits, industrial interest, even economic growth, thereby influencing people’ daily life, which is great concern of leaders and the public. Professor Palmer commented technological application like carbon dioxide capture and storage is feasible only there is political will. Thus at present, individual efforts to improve energy efficiency seem crucial. Although it is still controversial whether we should make largest investment in reducing greenhouse, necessity of international collaboration on this issue is always valued.
Dr Sovacool introduced Science and Technology Studies (STS) to address energy problems. He started with traditional analysis of technology which is subjected to four different stands of determinism, namely structural determinism, autonomous determinism, consequential determinism and normative determinism. He gave the first case study on renewable power industry. As he pointed out, the spread of renewable power is faced with market failures and barriers, political and regulatory obstacles, cultural and behavior challenges due to psychological resistance, public misunderstanding and other environmental concerns. The second case study presented is electric vehicles which require electricity from batteries and charging station. This limitation keeps people from widely accepting this way of transportation, though electric vehicles are much more environmental-friendly. At last, Dr Sovacool concluded that STS provides a useful lens to evaluate new technologies.
Associate Professor Bala Rajasekhar focused on assessment and mitigation of climate change. Firstly, he presented evidences from the changes in glaciers that support global warming. The enhanced greenhouse effect leads to global warming, followed by dramatic temperature changes and potential natural disasters like droughts, floods and accelerated species extinction. To mitigate this situation, the public should improve energy efficiency and adopt renewable energy; governments may impose tax on greenhouse emissions and subsidize technological projects on research and application. Inevitably, to address global warming may influence current economy and familiar lifestyle. A/P Bala encouraged governments to cooperate internationally.
During the lectures, professional insights on global warming were provided by Prof. Palmer, Dr. Sovacool and A/P Bala. Interestingly, not one of their topics left out a remarkable complication: political resistance, which has a close relationship with the pursuit of short-term benefits. However, who is able to enjoy any benefit without our survival environment on earth? The message conveyed from lectures calls upon us to act, warily and caringly, locally and gloablly.
Professor Andrew Palmer mounted the rostrum first with his topic “Carbon dioxide capture and storage: technology and politics". His opening remarks involved other urgent problems like population expansion, food shortage and regional conflicts. Yet another challenging problem is coming, which already gives dangerous consequential implication globally, according to scientific research. That is climate change. Focusing on this problem, Professor Palmer discussed several respects: technological application, political resistance and public concerns, personal response. With the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, feasible application of existing technology can come into play, in order to mitigate the situation. Besides adopting alternative energy, including nuclear, solar, wind and biomass energy, an impressive example given is the capture and storage of carbon dioxide. This could be achieved by storing liquid carbon dioxide in depleted oil or sealing it with membrane under the ocean. However, the possibility of carbon dioxide leakage may lead to catastrophic effect on marine ecologic system. Furthermore, political barriers overtake technical difficulties. Generally, high-cost methods to reduce greenhouse emissions may affect company profits, industrial interest, even economic growth, thereby influencing people’ daily life, which is great concern of leaders and the public. Professor Palmer commented technological application like carbon dioxide capture and storage is feasible only there is political will. Thus at present, individual efforts to improve energy efficiency seem crucial. Although it is still controversial whether we should make largest investment in reducing greenhouse, necessity of international collaboration on this issue is always valued.
Dr Sovacool introduced Science and Technology Studies (STS) to address energy problems. He started with traditional analysis of technology which is subjected to four different stands of determinism, namely structural determinism, autonomous determinism, consequential determinism and normative determinism. He gave the first case study on renewable power industry. As he pointed out, the spread of renewable power is faced with market failures and barriers, political and regulatory obstacles, cultural and behavior challenges due to psychological resistance, public misunderstanding and other environmental concerns. The second case study presented is electric vehicles which require electricity from batteries and charging station. This limitation keeps people from widely accepting this way of transportation, though electric vehicles are much more environmental-friendly. At last, Dr Sovacool concluded that STS provides a useful lens to evaluate new technologies.
Associate Professor Bala Rajasekhar focused on assessment and mitigation of climate change. Firstly, he presented evidences from the changes in glaciers that support global warming. The enhanced greenhouse effect leads to global warming, followed by dramatic temperature changes and potential natural disasters like droughts, floods and accelerated species extinction. To mitigate this situation, the public should improve energy efficiency and adopt renewable energy; governments may impose tax on greenhouse emissions and subsidize technological projects on research and application. Inevitably, to address global warming may influence current economy and familiar lifestyle. A/P Bala encouraged governments to cooperate internationally.
During the lectures, professional insights on global warming were provided by Prof. Palmer, Dr. Sovacool and A/P Bala. Interestingly, not one of their topics left out a remarkable complication: political resistance, which has a close relationship with the pursuit of short-term benefits. However, who is able to enjoy any benefit without our survival environment on earth? The message conveyed from lectures calls upon us to act, warily and caringly, locally and gloablly.
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