Recent developments in neuroscience have inspired proposals to perform deep brain stimulation on psychopathic detainees. We contend that these proposals cannot meet important ethical requirements that hold for both medical research and therapy. After providing a rough overview of key aspects of psychopathy and the prospects of tackling this condition via deep brain stimulation, we proceed to an ethical assessment of such measures, referring closely to the distinctive features of psychopathic personality, particularly the absence of subjective suffering and a lack (...) of moral motivation. Scrutiny of these factors reveals that two essential bioethical criteria, individual medical benefit and voluntary informed consent, cannot be met in performing neurosurgical experiments or treatments on psychopathic inmates. (shrink)

Most animals have mental states of one sort or another, but few species share our capacity for self-awareness. We are aware of our own mental states via introspection, and we are aware of the mental states of our fellow human beings on the basis of what they do and say. This chapter is not concerned with these traditional forms of mind-reading—forms whose origins predate the beginnings of recorded history—but with the prospects of a rather different and significantly more recent form (...) of ‘mind-reading’: the capacity to reliably ascribe mental states to a creature on the basis of information derived from information about their brain states. (shrink)

When it becomes available, neuroscience-based apprehension of subjective thoughts is bound to have a profound impact on several areas of society. One of these areas is medicine. In principle, medical specialties that are primarily concerned with mind and brain are most likely to apply neurotechnological thought apprehension (NTA) techniques. Psychiatry is such a specialty, and the relevance of NTA developments for psychiatry has been recognized. In this article, I discuss ethical issues regarding the use of NTA techniques in psychiatric contexts. (...) First, I consider the notion of neurotechnological “thought apprehension,” as well as some limitations of present-day NTA applications. Next, I identify ethical priorities for its possible future use in psychiatry. The topics I explore concern key (bio)ethical issues: confidentiality, trust and distrust, consent and coercion, and, finally, responsibility. I conclude that mental health-related use of NTA entails some specific ethical concerns that deserve careful attention before introducing these technologies in psychiatric practice. (shrink)

New brain imaging technology has emerged that might make it possible to read a person's thoughts directly from their brain activity. This novel approach is referred to as “brain reading” or the “decoding of mental states.” This article provides a general outline of the field and discusses its limitations, potential applications, and also certain ethical issues that brain reading raises. The measurement of brain activity and brain structure has made considerable progress in recent decades. The mapping from brain activity patterns (...) to thoughts is learned for each specific subject using brute force statistical pattern recognition techniques. It discusses the degree to which polygraphy and brain-based lie detection can be manipulated by trained subjects. A future application of brain reading technology, “neuromarketing,” has received tremendous interest and there are repeated attempts to optimize marketing campaigns by adding brain-based sources of information. (shrink)