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This epilogue presents a synthesis of discussions in the preceding chapters. It emphasizes five general points that should frame any discussion of what measures of or interventions in the brain can or cannot tell us about human mentality, thought, and behavior, and whether or to what extent we should use them. These are (i) that no two brains are alike; (ii) that although the brain generates and sustains the mind, the mind is not reducible to the brain; (iii) that before we consider manipulating the brain to alter mental capacities, we should consider how these capacities may be adaptive; (iv) that neuroscience can inform our ethical judgments; and (v) that whole-brain death is not the same as the death of a person.

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the field of neuroethics, which can be defined roughly as the study of ethical issues pertinent to information about the brain. It then discusses the mind–body problem. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

This chapter examines different forms of neurosurgery, psychosurgery, and neurostimulation for neurological and psychiatric disorders. It discusses the weighing of benefits and risks in determining whether neurosurgery or psychosurgery can be justified. The issue of consent from patients figures more importantly in brain surgery than in any other area of neuroethics because of the invasiveness of the procedure and the risk of significant neurological impairment following surgery. It is also because the competence necessary for consent may be impaired by dysfunction of the organ that is both the intended area of intervention and the basis for competence and consent. Different forms of neurostimulation are considered, from electrodes implanted inside the brain, as well as from devices outside the brain. Finally, the possible use of neurostimulation for managing pain is considered.

This chapter argues that cognitive neuroscience has three main issues with respect to the current field of neuroethics. First, cognitive neuroscience can help with some current ethical dilemmas such as whether the embryo has the moral status of a human being. Secondly, there are important ethical areas to which neuroscientists are being asked to contribute when, in fact, they should not be. For instance, neuroscience has nothing to say about concepts such as free will and personal responsibility, and it probably also has nothing to say about such things as antisocial thoughts. Finally, cognitive neuroscience is building an understanding of how brain research will instruct us on ideas like universal morals possessed by all members of our species. This fundamental development will find cognitive neuroscience becoming central to the modern world's view of ethical universals.

This chapter focuses on where and how several key neuroethical issues converge and diverge in diagnosis and treatment. First, it examines the broad obstacles that exist to addressing neuroethical problems optimally in clinical settings. Secondly, it explores ways that these barriers manifest themselves specifically in diagnostic tests that use neuroimaging and neurogenomics, and other clinical scenarios that involve treatment interventions. It discusses several sets of predicaments that appear likely to emerge, although others will no doubt confront clinicians as neurotechnology continues to advance.

The term ‘neuroethics’ has been given several kinds of meanings. One use of neuroethics describes ethical problems arising directly from research in neuroscience; for example, what should researchers doing brain imaging tell research subjects about unusual findings of no known clinical significance? The term is also used to describe neuroscience (usually imaging) research into how humans resolve ethical or moral issues; for example, what parts of the brain are activated when subjects are wrestling with moral dilemmas? This chapter discusses a third area of neuroethics: the implications of new discoveries in, and capabilities of, neuroscience for our society and their consequences for the legal system. It looks specifically at three different ways in which neuroscience seems likely to change society and law. The discussion focuses on the society and the legal system of the United States, but the same basic issues will be found in all technologically advanced societies.

This chapter explores the three areas where neuroscience challenges religion. First, in religion's ethical response to neuroscientific findings; secondly, how religion responds to the claims of some neuroscientists that current research refutes ideas such as ensoulment; and finally, through the field that has come to be known as neurotheology, the neuroscientific study of the religious impulse itself.

This chapter focuses on one aspect of the media — the film industry — and looks at its effect on the public's perception of how the mind works, both in mental illness and in the neuroscience enhancement technologies that the future holds. It outlines some of the stereotypes of psychiatric illness revealed in popular Hollywood films and highlights the impact that these stereotypes have on both the public and the mentally ill. It examines some of the new independent documentary films addressing mental illness that have been successful in breaking down some of these stereotypes by showing more realistic portrayals of mentally ill patients and families. Finally, it examines how the new frontiers of neuroscience are being portrayed in motion pictures and explore the neuroethical issues that are brought up, as well as questioning the impact that science fiction films have on the public consciousness.

This chapter describes one particular neuroethical project in more depth, in order to provide a glimpse of what a neuroethical analysis might look like and the kinds of issues that such an analysis might engender. It characterizes in some detail a body of empirical results from neuroscience, and considers the implications of trying to integrate such knowledge into our social and ethical frameworks. It argues that moral belief or judgment is intrinsically motivating and that, in judging morally, one is automatically motivated to act in accordance with one's judgment.

This chapter summarizes several classic arguments about consciousness and the nature of the mind (Descartes, Russell, Parfit, Skinner, Armstrong, Nagel, Dewey, James, Searle, and Koch). It argues that a coherent view of consciousness will include a way to understand memory and rational action, and suggests areas for future research on ethics in a world in which traditional ideas about duty, covenant, ipsity, and relationality are rapidly being re-understood in biological terms. It contends that ethics depends on narrative structures that give meaning to norms. Hence, the way that minds (and brains, to be precise) structure story and rule is critical to how we know and discern. At the core of this is memory and motive, yet for the ethicist, it will be the publicity of the moral gesture, the play out in history and social space, that is the final criterion of what beings mean to one another.

This chapter explores approaches to education programs that integrate both the biomedical sciences and humanities for teaching about the brain. It focuses on the specific domain of neuroethics, which covers topics ranging from biomedical, research, and public health ethics for brain science to neurophilosophy and moral philosophy. The chapter first describes how neuroethics research brings basic, clinical, and social scientists together to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, and then how novel interdisciplinary strategies can bring together science and the humanities for neuroethics education. It presents three examples to support these goals: multimodal training in knowledge translation for building capacity in dementia care; participatory, dialogue-based clinical neuroethics for medical residents in the clinical neurosciences; and web-based learning about neuroethics for health-care scientists and providers. These initiatives are guided by the many ways that neuroscience touches people and society today, and the imperative that ethical reflection keeps apace. Opportunities for interdisciplinary discourse are critical vehicles for translating new knowledge to communities of practice, and for enabling communities to further interpret and transform knowledge meaningfully guided by their own goals and experiences.

Blackjack players who “count cards” keep track of cards that have already been played and use this knowledge to turn the probability of winning in their favor. So long as card counters rely on their own memory and computational skills, they have violated no laws and can make sizable profits. When players use a “device” to help them count cards, however, they may be committing a serious crime. This chapter considers whether statutes prohibiting the use of devices at the blackjack table can be justified based either on concerns about cognitive enhancement or thought privacy. Both proposed justifications are deemed lacking.

This chapter builds on the work in neuroethics of Northoff (2006) to examine the utility of advances in neuroimaging to facilitate informed consent and patient decision-making. It presents the results of an empirical study of practitioners' views on the potential application of functional neuroimaging for the clinical care of mental illness. This is one arm of a larger study of stakeholder views — practitioners, adult patients, and parents of minor patients. Before these results are presented, the chapter first reviews the conditions under which informed consent is thought to be valid, why the decision making capacity of psychiatric patients may at times be considered compromised, and what questions this raises about these patients' consent to or refusal of treatment.

This chapter examines why new disciplines, which have come into being on the strength of the ‘neuro’ prefix, have invaded the realms of knowledge. It reviews the new neurodisciplines, starting from the more reputable research, then progressing to those which serve as a support for the others, and terminating with those which are exclusively ‘advertising’. These include neuroeconomy; neuromarketing and neurodesign; neuroaesthetics, neuroethics, and neurotheology; and neuropolitics.

This short conclusion summarizes the arguments of the book in regards to the neuroethics of biomarkers. He also revisits his call to develop training programs that nurture the development of legal scientists to conduct relevant neuroscience research of direct relevance to the law. Finally, the chapter concludes by highlighting the extreme dependence of a successful integration of biomarkers into our medical, legal, and social structures on a comfort with statistical—rather than binary—concepts, a dependence which may signal that we should prioritize an alteration to the way that professionals are educated in regard to probabilities.