Brutes or Angels: Human Possibility in the Age of Biotechnology

9. The Mind: Neuroenhancement and Neuroethics

9 The Mind Neuroenhancement and Neuroethics ’Twas the week before finals and all through the dorm, few students were sleeping, since Adderall is the norm. —Emily Gibson, M.D., “Barnstorming” “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” wrote Professor Peter C. Doherty (2008), co-­ winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, in an article about education in his native Australia.1 Borrowing the slogan of the United Negro College Fund, Doherty (2008) asked of his fellow Australians , “Can we afford to waste a single, talented person?”2 The human mind is hard to define. We know when someone has lost it, is wasting it, or is not in his or her “right” mind. And all of us agree that a strong, healthy mind is a good thing. But just what is the mind, and what does it mean to enhance the mind? Neurophysiologist Antonio Damasio (1999, 337) writes that mind “refers to a process, not a thing. . . . What we know as mind . . . is a continuous flow of mental processes, many of which turn out to be logi­ cally inter­ related.” One dictionary definition of the mind of humans or other conscious beings is that which “reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.”3 Modern-­ day scientists, physicians, and psychologists agree that the mind does not exist apart from the body, as seventeenth-­ century philosopher Rene Descartes thought it did. By contrast, the body can exist without a mind, as evidenced by late-­ term Alzheimer’s disease victims and brain-­ dead patients. The mind depends upon a functioning brain and contains our personality, certain intellectual and behavioral talents and weaknesses, our creativity, and our sense of “self” moving through time. Domasio includes both conscious and unconscious elements in his concept of mind. For our The Mind / 227 discussion here, let’s consider the human mind to be a product of the integration of conscious and unconscious cognitive and emotional elements of brain function that makes us recognizably unique persons to ourselves and others. In the case of good minds, can there be too much of a good thing? By modifying certain aspects of brain function, we can enhance feelings of well-­ being and the ability to concentrate on intellectually demanding tasks? Future technologies will offer memory enhancement, selective mem­ ory loss, and other enhancements of the mind. These technologies will generate ethical dilemmas difficult to imagine today. Seven questions guide our exploration of biotechnology and the human mind: 1. What are neuroenhancement and neuroethics? 2. How do nerve cells work? 3. What are the main parts of a human brain? 4. How do psychoactive drugs work? 5. What new neuroenhancements are coming? 6. How could computers enhance brain function? 7. What are the benefits and objections to neuroenhancement? What Are Neuroenhancement and Neuroethics? Neuroenhancement is using drugs, machine-­computer interfaces, or other technological interventions to augment or modify brain function. Of special interest are neuroenhancements that affect mood or cognitive aspects of brain function such as memory and attentiveness. Victims of brain injuries or disorders sometimes receive neuroenhancing treatments in efforts to restore normal brain function. These are therapeutic neuroenhancements . It can be hard to draw a line between therapeutic neuroenhancement and neuroenhancements aimed at elevating brain function beyond normal levels. Therefore, some bioethicists avoid the words treatment and therapy to describe any neuroenhancement. Instead, they use enhancement to describe any intervention that elevates the performance of a body component , in­ clud­ ing the brain. In this chapter, I use neuroenhancement to describe non-­therapeutic inter- 228 / Chapter 9 ventions simply to facilitate discussion of the ethical issues raised by boosting normal brain functions. A psychoactive drug is any chemical agent that affects brain function, regardless of its use for therapy or enhancement. Neuroethics is a subdiscipline of ethics dealing with the manipulation of brain activity. During most of the twentieth century neuroethics dealt with moral issues related to the treatment of patients with brain or psychiatric disorders and brain injuries. In the twenty-­ first century, neuroethics addresses issues raised by new technologies for enhancing and imaging brain activities. In this chapter we examine the use of psychoactive drugs that affect mood and cognition and the use of brain-­computer interfaces to augment brain function or operate electromechanical devices. New brain-­ imaging technologies also raise ethical issues, especially privacy, but are outside the range of this chapter. Brain, Mind, and Neuroenhancement: The Biology Our Two...