Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Developments in neuroscience
- 2 The origins of the modern concept of “neuroscience”
- 3 On the cusp
- 4 The mind-body issue
- 5 Personal identity and the nature of the self
- 6 Religious issues and the question of moral autonomy
- 7 Toward a cognitive neurobiology of the moral virtues
- 8 From a neurophilosophy of pain to a neuroethics of pain care
- 9 Transplantation and xenotransplantation
- 10 Neurogenetics and ethics
- 11 Neuroimaging
- 12 Can we read minds?
- 13 Possibilities, limits, and implications of brain-computer interfacing technologies
- 14 Neural engineering
- 15 Neurotechnology as a public good
- 16 Globalization: pluralist concerns and contexts
- 17 The human condition and strivings to flourish
- 18 The limits of neuro-talk
- Afterword
- Index
1 - Developments in neuroscience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Developments in neuroscience
- 2 The origins of the modern concept of “neuroscience”
- 3 On the cusp
- 4 The mind-body issue
- 5 Personal identity and the nature of the self
- 6 Religious issues and the question of moral autonomy
- 7 Toward a cognitive neurobiology of the moral virtues
- 8 From a neurophilosophy of pain to a neuroethics of pain care
- 9 Transplantation and xenotransplantation
- 10 Neurogenetics and ethics
- 11 Neuroimaging
- 12 Can we read minds?
- 13 Possibilities, limits, and implications of brain-computer interfacing technologies
- 14 Neural engineering
- 15 Neurotechnology as a public good
- 16 Globalization: pluralist concerns and contexts
- 17 The human condition and strivings to flourish
- 18 The limits of neuro-talk
- Afterword
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
My introduction to this book on neuroethics, a volume with a large diversity of topics, is based upon a very personal selection of some of the numerous highlights that form the contributory history of the field of neuroscience. This volume shows how the way in which we look upon the brain has changed – in a relatively short period of time – from being just one of the organs that housed a soul to being the focus of a huge multidisciplinary endeavor to study the source of the mind. The focus of brain research has moved through that endeavor from the study of macroscopically visible pathologies of the brain to the subtle structural and functional differences that form the basis of psychiatric disorders and of our character. The sexual differentiation of our brain in utero – the programming of our gender identity and sexual orientation for the rest of our life – is discussed as an example of one of the many aspects of our character that become hardwired in our brain during early development. The concept of a critical window during which a developmental process can take place in order to structure brain systems and their function for the rest of our life is also why it is so difficult to repair lesions in the adult brain. In spite of this difficulty, it is now possible to sketch a series of new technical developments in neuroscience that bear the promise of leading to new, effective therapeutic strategies to tackle brain disorders in the near future.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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