Browsing by Subject "neuroethics"

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    Acceptability of Neuroscientific Interventions in Education
    (2021-03-22) Schmied, Astrid; Varma, Sashank; Dubinsky, Janet M; sashank@umn.edu; Varma, Sashank; University of Minnesota Departments of Neuroscience and Educational Psychology
    Researchers are increasingly applying neuroscience technologies that probe or manipulate the brain to improve educational outcomes. However, their use remains fraught with ethical controversies. Here, we investigate the acceptability of neuroscience applications to educational practice in two groups of young adults: those studying bioscience who will be driving future basic neuroscience research and technology transfer, and those studying education who will be choosing among neuroscience-derived applications for their students. Respondents rated the acceptability of six scenarios describing neuroscience applications to education spanning multiple methodologies, from neuroimaging to neuroactive drugs to brain stimulation. They did so from two perspectives (student, teacher) and for three recipient populations (low-achieving, high-achieving students, students with learning disabilities). Overall, the bioscience students were more favorable to all neuroscience applications than the education students. Scenarios that measured brain activity (i.e., EEG or fMRI) to assess or predict intellectual abilities were deemed more acceptable than manipulations of mental activity by drug use or stimulation techniques, which may violate body integrity. Enhancement up to the norm for low-achieving students and especially students with learning disabilities was more favorably viewed than enhancement beyond the norm for high-achieving students. Finally, respondents rated neuroscientific applications to be less acceptable when adopting the perspective of a teacher than that of a student. Future studies should go beyond the coarse acceptability ratings collected here to delineate the role that concepts of access, equity, authenticity, agency and personal choice play in guiding respondents’ reasoning.
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    Active Learning in a Neuroethics Course Positively Impacts Moral Judgment Development in Undergraduates
    (Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience, 2015-03-09) Abu-Odeh, Desiree; Dziobek, Derek; Torres Jimenez, Natalia; Barbey, Christopher; Dubinsky, Janet M
    The growing neuroscientific understanding of the biological basis of behaviors has profound social and ethical implications. To address the need for public awareness of the consequences of these advances, we developed an undergraduate neuroethics course, Neuroscience and Society, at the University of Minnesota. Course evolution, objectives, content, and impact are described here. To engage all students and facilitate undergraduate ethics education, this course employed daily reading, writing, and student discussion, case analysis, and team presentations with goals of fostering development of moral reasoning and judgment and introducing application of bioethical frameworks to topics raised by neuroscience. Pre- and post-course Defining Issues Test (DIT) scores and student end-of-course reflections demonstrated that course objectives for student application of bioethical frameworks to neuroethical issues were met. The active-learning, student-centered pedagogical approaches used to achieve these goals serve as a model for how to effectively teach neuroethics at the undergraduate level.