The Neuroscience of Socioeconomic Status: Correlates, Causes, and Consequences

Neuroscience research on socioeconomic status (SES) has begun to characterize aspects of brain structure and function that vary with SES. This review summarizes our current state of knowledge concerning the neural correlates of SES, their likely consequences for human psychology and possible causes of these correlates, including relevant evidence from human and animal research concerning these causes. Challenges of research on the neuroscience of SES are discussed, and the relevance of this topic to neuroscience more generally is considered

Neuroethics: the practical and the philosophical

In comparison with the ethical issues surrounding molecular genetics, there has been little public awareness of the ethical implications of neuroscience. Yet recent progress in cognitive neuroscience raises a host of ethical issues of at least comparable importance. Some are of a practical nature, concerning the applications of neurotechnology and their likely implications for individuals and society. Others are more philosophical, concerning the way we think about ourselves as persons, moral agents and spiritual beings. This article reviews key examples of each type of issue, including the relevant advances in science and technology and their accompanying social and philosophical problems

When we enhance cognition with Adderall, do we sacrifice creativity? A preliminary study

Rationale: Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts) is used by healthy normal individuals to enhance attention. Research with healthy normal participants and those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder indicate a possible inverse relationship between attentional function and creativity. This raises the possibility that Adderall could decrease creativity in people using it for cognitive enhancement. Objective: This study was designed to find out whether Adderall impairs creativity in healthy young adults. Material and methods: In a double-blind placebo-controlled study, the effects of Adderall on the performance of 16 healthy young adults were measured on four tests of creativity from the psychological literature: two tasks requiring divergent thought and two requiring convergent thought. Results: Adderall affected performance on the convergent tasks only, in one case enhancing it, particularly for lower performing individuals, and in the other case enhancing it for the lower-performing and impairing it for higher-performing individuals. Conclusion: The preliminary evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis that Adderall has an overall negative effect on creativity. Its effects on divergent creative thought cannot be inferred with confidence from this study because of the ambiguity of null results. Its effects on convergent creative thought appear to be dependent on the baseline creativity of the individual. Those in the higher range of the normal distribution may be unaffected or impaired, whereas those in the lower range of the normal distribution experience enhancement

Neuroethics and the Problem of Other Minds: Implications of Neuroscience for the Moral Status of Brain-Damaged Patients and Nonhuman Animals

Our ethical obligations to another being depend at least in part on that being\u27s capacity for a mental life. Our usual approach to inferring the mental state of another is to reason by analogy: If another being behaves as I do in a circumstance that engenders a certain mental state in me, I conclude that it has engendered the same mental state in him or her. Unfortunately, as philosophers have long noted, this analogy is fallible because behavior and mental states are only contingently related. If the other person is acting, for example, we could draw the wrong conclusion about his or her mental state. In this article I consider another type of analogy that can be drawn between oneself and another to infer the mental state of the other, substituting brain activity for behavior. According to most current views of the mind–body problem, mental states and brain states are non-contingently related, and hence inferences drawn with the new analogy are not susceptible to the alternative interpretations that plague the behavioral analogy. The implications of this approach are explored in two cases for which behavior is particularly unhelpful as a guide to mental status: severely brain–damaged patients who are incapable of intentional communicative behavior, and nonhuman animals whose behavioral repertoires are different from ours and who lack language

Socioeconomic status and the brain: prospects for neuroscience-informed policy

Socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with health (physical and mental) and cognitive ability. Understanding and ameliorating the problems of low SES have long been goals of economics and sociology; in recent years, these have also become goals of neuroscience. However, opinion varies widely on the relevance of neuroscience to SES-related policy. The present article addresses the question of whether and how neuroscience can contribute to the development of social policy concerning poverty and the social and ethical risks inherent in trying. I argue that the neuroscience approach to SES-related policy has been both prematurely celebrated and peremptorily dismissed and that some of its possible social impacts have been viewed with excessive alarm. Neuroscience has already made modest contributions to SES-related policy, and its potential to have a more effective and beneficial influence can be expected to grow over the coming years

This is Your Brain on Politics (Farah Guest Post)

This morning\u27s New York Times Op Ed page presents us with dazzling pictures, from the lab of Marco Iacoboni, of the brains of swing voters as they react to photos and videos of the leading presidential candidates. Accompanying these pictures are interpretations of the patterns of brain activation offered by Iacoboni and his collaborators. Mitt Romney evokes anxiety – this is deduced from amygdala activation. John Edwards\u27 detractors feel disgust toward him – this is apparent in the insula of these subjects