Can brain scans tell whether a person is likely to act criminally? If so, what should be done about it? These are two of many questions Stanford law professor Hank Greely posed to a packed hall at Cal Poly on March 12.
Hank Greely specializes in the effects of new biomedical technologies, more specifically those related to neuroscience, genetics and stem cell research. Greely focused on the emerging field of “neuroethics,” the legal and social implications of neuroscience in his lecture entitled “Neuroscience: Scientific Revolutions, Social Challenges.” With increasing technological advances, he challenged the audience to consider the ramifications of such advancements.
In his geometrical, multicolor sweater, Greely approached the front of Philips Hall at the Performing Arts Center on the sunny Friday afternoon and said, “I want you all to look at my sweater. How many colors are in it? Listen to my voice. Notice the feeling of the back of your seat (for those of you fortunate enough to have seats). Wiggle the big toe on your right foot. Ask yourself, ‘What am I doing in here on a beautiful spring day?’ Everything you just perceived, that you thought, that you sensed, the motions you made, they all are, as far as we can tell, the results of firings of some of the 100 billion neurons in your brain.”
He later went into detail about six areas of neuroscience that stem from these networks of firings in our brains: prediction, mind-reading, responsibility, consciousness, treatment and enhancement, all of which instigate ethical questions.
Greely began discussing new tools like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a driving force of this revolution. He traveled through history from Phineas Gage all they way to the first uses of MRIs. Phineas Gage was a railroad worker who suffered a six-foot metal rod blasting through his skull and the front part of his brain. He survived, but his personality was different. Greely explained how in the past the challenge has been that these “poor unfortunate souls” who suffered accidents were the only way to learn about the brain.
“You can give mice strokes and do terrible things to monkeys,” Greely said about attempted animal studies. “You can’t do that with humans. They have lawyers, (but) many of the things we care about in neuroscience are peculiar in humans. You can’t study speech in mice. You can’t study loyalty in rats.”
Greely highlighted just how important the 25-year-old invention of the MRI has been to advancements in the field. X-rays, which are shadows cast by dense objects, are not very useful for studying brains because there are no dense objects in our brains, Greely said. He talked about the MRI machine as having a magnetic field billions of times more powerful than the earth’s magnetic field. He said before they learned how to shield the machines, people walking by the building would find their keys coming out of their pockets and sticking to the walls.
An MRI is a bunch of data on radio waves that the computer software reconstructs as an image. With this technology, we can now see how the brain changes and differences between individuals
Greely brought up the topic of taxi cab drivers in London. These highly trained professionals were found to have larger hippocampi than the average individual. Being a cab driver in London is considered a higher status than being an engineer, because you are expected to memorize every street, every building, every alley or every freeway of this massive metropolitan area. It takes years of study and multiple tests.
The hippocampus is the spot in the brain where new memories and new neurons are made. If it is removed, you become incapable of learning new facts. This is concretized by the cabby study.
Greely also elaborated on the fMRI, a test for oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin in the brain, which canĀ predict areas of brain activity. With this test, scientists can tell which parts of the brain are working harder when, essentially finding a brain site for things like listening to a favorite band or the feeling of true love.
“Over 4,000 fMRI experiments will be published this year,” Greely said. “Ten years ago, there were two hundred. This technology is exploding.”
Similar technologies allow us to compare a mental state to the physical state of the brain. Greely then went on to describe the implications these technologies have for more than just neuroscientists.
Prediction
The implications include detection of things like Alzheimers or schizophrenia. The latter impacts nearly one percent of the world’s adults and is almost always diagnosed between the ages of 18 and 28. Greely points out that this means about 20 students from each class year at Cal Poly could end up with the disease. Predicting diseases like this could help with cures, but some issues arise. Knowing that someone has or will get these diseases would immediately pigeonhole them. They couldn’t become doctors. They couldn’t be in the military. Greely asks if this is ethical.
Psychopaths also have different brain patterns, according to recent studies.
“What if we can predict which one percent of 12-year-old boys will be psychopaths,” Greely asked. “What would we do with that information? Would we lock them up and throw away the key?”
“What would we do?” he asks. “That’s the fundamental question behind all these prediction uses.”
Greely then brought up the possibilities of employers and insurers getting a hold of such information and questions whether excess information is a good thing.
Greely takes an evolutionary approach to mind-reading, saying we have been doing it as a way to survive throughout history.
“You need to know who’s about to beat the shit out of you or who’s willing to share food with you,” Greely said.
He explained how we can do it, but also said we are in no way experts.
“If we were, poker wouldn’t exist, dating would look a lot different and jury trials would look a lot different,” he said.
Mind-Reading
With neuroscience, we can get much more accurate at reading minds by finding connections between specific pictures like faces or buildings to physical activities in the brain. In this way, a brain scan could be used in court or for lie detection.
Three areas of the brain light up for pain as well. Neuroscientists could implement pain detection. Doctors could read people’s minds to see if they are really in pain and if they really require certain drugs.
Responsibility
Greely talked about a schoolteacher with a clean record who started to exhibit characteristics of a pedophile. He was sentenced to prison, but a day later, they found a tumor in his brain. When the tumor was removed, he said the feelings went away. Two years of follow-up and removal of the tumor again proved this to be true.
“Was he guilty of pedophilia, or was his tumor guilty of pedophilia?” Greely asks. “What do you do with a case like that?”
Consciousness
People in vegetative states or minimally conscious states were part of study where they found activation in the secondary motor area meaning they were hearing and their brains were active. Essentially, they were answering questions through firings in the brain while completely immobile.
Treatment
There is the potential for brain-changing treatment for those convicted of certain crimes, such as “chemical castration” for men convicted of sex crimes. This is a process by which a drug blocks receptors in the brain for testosterone, causing a decrease in sex drive.
Enhancement
Lastly, Greely talked about the high use of adderall and ritalin among college students, causing cognitive enhancement. He says some people argue it’s unnatural.
“Everything’s unnatural,” Greely said. “Our lives are unnatural. My sweater is unnatural. Your clothes are unnatural … these lights are unnatural.”
He questions if it’s really cheating. These pills don’t give knowledge; they just make your studying more effective, Greely said. Safety, fairness and cohesion are his biggest concerns with drugs like these. They are FDA-approved for diseases, only certain individuals can obtain them, and what if employers started encouraging the use of these drugs?
“Most of what we care about in this world are other people’s minds,” Greely said. “That’s what we interact with, really.”
He ended with a series of ethical questions.
“This revolution is here already,” Greely said. “I have to believe we are likely to do better if we think about these in advance, if we talk about them, if we worry about them … I have to think we will do a better job of maximizing their benefits and minimizing their harms.”
Greely said after the presentation that his intention with the lectures is to mainly get people thinking.
“I want to do my little part to help create an educated population,” Greely said. “In two hours, you can’t educate in depth, but you can get people interested and give them some idea of why these are fascinating issues that will also be important.”
Cal Poly is just one of his stops. Greely has given lectures at the University of Virginia, Harvard University and the University of Texas, Houston Medical School all in the past couple of weeks. He is heading to Florida International University, Washington D.C. and Vanderbilt University in the next couple of months as well.
“This is a hot area, so there are a lot of people interested in hearing about it,” Greely said. “If one tenth of the people who are in this room actually go on to pay serious attention to this, this will have been a trip well worthwhile for me, plus I like driving here.”
Greely was brought to campus by the Ethics + Emerging Sciences group at Cal Poly. The group was established in 2007 and focuses on risk, ethical and social concerns related to new sciences and technology. Greely is part of a technology and ethics lecture series the group began last year.
Director of the group, philosophy professor Patrick Lin says they are trying to bring in leading scholars to speak on areas that may not be discussed much at Cal Poly from neuroscience to cyberweapons.
“The issues Professor Greely discussed are important, because at some point soon, they may affect the everyday person,” Lin said in an e-mail. “We’re already seeing businesses use neuroscience in marketing and advertising ā exploiting how our brains work in order to lure us into a purchase ā and, as Hank described, there are many questions related to law and ethics, such as the use of our medical information by employers or insurers that may potentially be discriminatory as well as privacy-infringing.”
The lecture series is funded by the College of Liberal Arts and the philosophy department, but with limited funds, the group is applying for grants to keep the series going.
“Given the strong showing of attendees we’ve seen ā which are increasing with every talk ā there’s a substantial demand for these talks in technology ethics, and I hope we’re able to continue the program,” Lin said.
“It’s clear that Hank has an impressive command of the history as well as latest research in the field, so it’s great to be able to hear about this work, straight from the front lines,” Lin said.
Simone Mata, a kinesiology junior, said she was planning to go on a hike, but heard about the lecture from a friend and decided to come check it out. As the first one to ask a question from the audience, Mata felt the afternoon was well spent.
“It was really informative and just very interesting to hear something other than what our majors usually feed us,” Mata said.