Neuroscience: The Risks of Reading the Brain
Poldrack, Russell. "Neuroscience: The Risks of Reading the Brain." Nature News.
Nature Publishing Group, 11 Jan. 2017.
Seymour James D. Barrion
Research-Based Article Critique Report
06 May 2017 Abstract
It is widely known that the brain perceives information before it reaches the consciousness of a person. But until now, there was little way to determine what specific mental tasks were taking place prior to the point of conscious awareness. That changed with the findings of scientists at Rutgers University in Newark and the University of California, Los Angeles have developed a highly accurate way to peer into the brain to uncover the mental state of a person and what kind of information
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The problem was clearly stated and is practically important to the purpose of the study. Their big goal is to use fMRI-based lie detection and be admitted as evidence in court. However, this machine is not 100% accurate. It will only show us light that will tell us that the people are lying based on their memory. Moreover, one particularly problematic topic is one of the false memories. The scans can only reflect your beliefs, not necessarily reality. If you disbelieve that you have committed a crime, fMRI can only confirm this belief. We may be convinced to see brain scans of hard evidence, but they are only as good as your own memories: ultimately imperfect.
Review and Literature
The cited sources are pertinent to the study. The analysis was too broad because it talks about the mind and how machines are able to read it. It also talked about how accurate and inaccurate the machine is. Nevertheless, there was no cited evidence of bias. The words were correctly used and can easily be defined.
Design and
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It can be used in commercial settings without appropriate guidelines. Academic researchers need to go through a thorough process to start an fMRI study. This process will explain potential risks and benefits of an ethics committee. No such rules exist in the commercial setting. Companies are free to buy an fMRI scanner and perform experiments in any design. They can show you traumatizing scene or they may uncover the thoughts that you want to keep to yourself. They are not forced to tell you about the medical abnormalities if your scan shows
Creating the world's first Z-Bomb, would have to be the most dangerous thing that could happen to humans. Turning them into Zombies, it would entirely change the characteristics of a human being and its brain. Although both living, Zombies have drastic defects towards certain aspects of the body. This Z-bomb won’t necessarily turn humans into zombies, but rather give humans zombie-ish characteristics.
I advocate for you to choose to not proceed with the fMRI scan. The fMRI scan has not be proven to be accurate in distinguishing whether or not a person is spontaneous lying or telling a reversed lie, also there is a serious difference between a deception and telling a lie and, if you are a constant liar there will be a vast amount of white matter in your brain. There are too many limitations with today’s technology and there is too little information on how exactly fMRI scans prove your innocence in the crime. There is a hypothesis that inferrers that the brain strains to tell a lie and that blood flows to the sector of the brain that is doing the most work (Stix, 2008). This theory has not been proven as to date and there’s no information confirming the credibility of the
those who provided MRI evidence than they were for others. This has been viewed as an easier way to get off the hook for many psychopaths and sociopaths. The science behind this method stems from manipulation in the courtroom. Since MRI evidence is relatively new, attorneys are able to confuse an uneducated jury, as well as the judge, and feed them information to benefit their client. In a way, the psychopaths and sociopaths are at a loss whether they are imprisoned or let free. In both situations they will not get the care they need.
In the article brain on fiction, A very interesting article by Annie Murphy Paul appeared in the New York Times yesterday. It was titled “Your Brain on Fiction” and deals with how the written word affects our brains. In the article, she talks about several studies done with functional MRIs (fMRI). A functional MRI looks at brain activation by revealing changes in blood flow. If a certain area of the brain is stimulated, then that area will receive increased blood flow and this can be measured with a functional MRI. Such testing is currently being looked at to perhaps develop a more reliable lie detector. It appears that different parts of the brain activate when someone is remembering an event as opposed to making it up. Hopefully, this technique
This is due to the fact that police officers will have evidence taken from the defendant’s brain scans, which produces “70 to 90 per cent of accuracy”. Thus, the defendant would have been proven guilty, before commencing trials. As well as, it is believed here that the use of brain scans by police and evidence would misdirect the Jury, as Dr Farahany states that jurors often tend to believe that science is the objective truth, therefore showing that if police officer are given the right to use brain scans on suspects, evidence taken from the scans in court would be regarded more sufficient than “witness interviews, testimony by the accused under cross examination, and even the person's body language”. United States v. John W. Hinckley Jr. present the above argument due to Jury not finding Hinckley not guilty by the reason brain scan image was central to jury’s decision.
Humans have used deception and trickery as a means of protection, survival, and personal gain from the very beginning. At the primitive level this deception was required, for example, by using camouflage to catch prey. Move forward several thousand years, and human deception can result in massive profit gains, injury or death to others, and identity fraud, among many others. Across different civilizations a variety of techniques were devised to seek the truth from those who wished to deceive others. Currently a new technology aims to more accurately read minds by using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI, by mapping the brain’s activity. The implications of this technology are immense; however there are many ethical hurdles to be crossed before it can become more mainstream. This paper examines the practicality as well as the ethical hurdles of using fMRI for lie detection.
In 1984, the thought police can read thoughts inhibiting one’s privacy and controlling the information of the public. The author of 1984, George Orwell was a very futuristic thinker and also thought of this general idea of mind reading. Today the ability to mind read becomes more possible through new technologies. Today functional MRI (fMRI) is the equivalent to this. With the fMRI, the computer is able to tell which object the test subject is thinking of.
Can the human mind exist without a functional body? The degree connection between the body and mind is a topic that many people find controversial. Many people believe that the mind is an entity of its own and completely separate from the body. Others state that the body is the biggest influence on the shape of the mind. Though the mind can seem independent from the body at times, it is never truly free. The mind is inseparable from the body it inhabits. A damaged or lost body has immense effects on a person’s grip on their mind and their sense of self. Furthermore, the self is influenced and tied to the characteristics of the body it inhabits.
When discussing the ethical issues at play for the use of sMRI and fMRI as biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease detection some facts must be taken into account. When it comes to medical tests even the best possible tests available can be prone to some degree of false positive or false negative results. The ethical issue here is what percentage of successful diagnoses are deemed beneficial enough to out weight the potential of a possible wrong diagnosis. Diagnosing a patient with Alzheimer’s disease who doesn’t, or a patient with pre-Alzheimer’s disease when they don’t could have a huge psychological impact on that person’s life in a negative way. If a cure isn’t discovered but a pre-symptomatic detection test was, the scenario raises a few ethical
The article by Moheb Costandi represents the most contended topic among the Neuroscientist across the globe; how reliable or effective an fMRI data could be in solving cases in the court. Moheb provides evidence backing up his thoughts on the use of fMRI data during a trial. He starts off the article along the positive note of using the imaging technique. Moheb provides us with some lawsuits where the fMRI imaging was employed as a tool to resolve the enigma. Like the controversial trial held in Mumbai, India. Moheb also gives the example of a trial held in Brooklyn, where defense lawyer David Zevin also submitted fMRI data as a proof in his client’s justification. Moheb like many other neuroscientists and litigants
Today, information is anywhere and everywhere. Within several minutes of messing around with your smart phone and you will get practically every bit of information on just about everything. This has created an urban society by which everyone is aware of everything in their own environment and themselves, such as the chemical processes inside their bodies that constitute life. Combine this with the current bombardment by a lot of promotional initiatives that inform us about new products that are proposed to be possible to in enhancing our cognitive functioning, and the possibilities for brain enhancement become very tangible. The array of brain supplements and nootropics is incredibly wide and various. The fundamental question: do they actual
Neuroimaging devices have the potential to give us an unbiased method of determining if someone is lying. This objective lie detection system could revolutionize the legal system, such that it could provide stronger evidence than of an eyewitness' testimony, help exonerate the innocent, make the jury selection process easier by confirming a potential juror’s lack of bias, or simplify the worker’s compensation process by demonstrating that a worker is actually in pain (Chen, 2009). Unfortunately, we currently have flawed neurotechnology for lie detection. For example, the fMRI is not always accurate for lie detection and may not be practical in a real-world setting. Furthermore, it appears that the legal system may be biased
Luckily thanks to advances in technology and imaging understanding the anatomy of the brain have been made possible. Not only are they able to understand the significance of the structure of the brain but this research allows neuroscientists to detect flaws in its functioning. They are now
Although neuroimaging of false memories research has come a long way Schacter and Loftus are still skeptical of how accurate and useful it will be in the courtroom. However, imaging of the brain has been used as evidence so neuroimaging has already been used to prove a poor brain state (used in a Florida murder trial) in the courtroom.
Lie detection or also known as deception detection is a method used by the law enforcement as a support evidence in court. Basically, the method uses questioning techniques along with technology that record physiological functions to distinguish deception and non-deception. The most standard lie detection used is the polygraph with other technologies such as thermal imaging and brain imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI). Only a few countries allow the results from the lie detection evidence to be used in court (Kevin K. Park 2013). This is because of the advent of these technologies primarily the thermal imaging raises troubling constitutional concerns especially in the United States Supreme Court (Dery 2004). Kleinmuntz argued