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Moral attitudes and willingness to enhance and repair cognition with brain stimulation.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:The availability of technological means to enhance and repair human cognitive function raises questions about the perceived morality of their use. However, we have limited knowledge about the public's intuitive attitudes toward uses of brain stimulation. Studies that enlighten us about the public's willingness to endorse specific uses of brain stimulation on themselves and others could provide a basis to understand the moral psychology guiding intuitions about neuromodulation and opportunities to inform public education and public policy. OBJECTIVE:Hypothesis: We expected that subjects would be less willing to enhance or repair cognitive functions perceived as more "core" to "authentic" self-identity, prioritize brain stimulation uses for themselves, and more willing to enhance "core" functions in others. Across specific hypothetical uses, we expected the moral acceptability of specific uses to be associated with subjects' willingness to endorse them. METHODS:We administered two surveys to the public in which subjects were asked to report how willing they would be to enhance or repair specific cognitive abilities using a hypothetical brain stimulation device called "Ceremode". RESULTS:Among 894 subjects, we found that subjects were more willing to use technologies to repair other people than themselves. They were most inclined to repair core functions in others. Subjects' ratings of the moral acceptability of specific uses was related to their reported willingness to use brain stimulation. CONCLUSION:Moral acceptability is related to the public's willingness to use brain stimulation. These findings suggest that the public endorses a generous approach to applying brain stimulation for cognitive gains in others. Further, this study establishes a basis to guide moral psychological studies of cognitive modification and social processes that guide attitudes toward and uses of brain stimulation.

SUBMITTER: Medaglia JD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6685214 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan - Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Moral attitudes and willingness to enhance and repair cognition with brain stimulation.

Medaglia John D JD Yaden David Bryce DB Helion Chelsea C Haslam Madeline M

Brain stimulation 20180926 1

<h4>Background</h4>The availability of technological means to enhance and repair human cognitive function raises questions about the perceived morality of their use. However, we have limited knowledge about the public's intuitive attitudes toward uses of brain stimulation. Studies that enlighten us about the public's willingness to endorse specific uses of brain stimulation on themselves and others could provide a basis to understand the moral psychology guiding intuitions about neuromodulation ...[more]

PMID: 30309762

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Project description:Background and objectivesHuman morality has been investigated using a variety of tasks ranging from judgments of hypothetical dilemmas to viewing morally salient stimuli. These experiments have provided insight into neural correlates of moral judgments and emotions, yet these approaches reveal important differences in moral cognition. Moral reasoning tasks require active deliberation while moral emotion tasks involve the perception of stimuli with moral implications. We examined convergent and divergent brain activity associated with these experimental paradigms taking a quantitative meta-analytic approach.Data sourceA systematic search of the literature yielded 40 studies. Studies involving explicit decisions in a moral situation were categorized as active (n = 22); studies evoking moral emotions were categorized as passive (n = 18). We conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis using the Activation Likelihood Estimation to determine reliable patterns of brain activity.Results & conclusionsResults revealed a convergent pattern of reliable brain activity for both task categories in regions of the default network, consistent with the social and contextual information processes supported by this brain network. Active tasks revealed more reliable activity in the temporoparietal junction, angular gyrus and temporal pole. Active tasks demand deliberative reasoning and may disproportionately involve the retrieval of social knowledge from memory, mental state attribution, and construction of the context through associative processes. In contrast, passive tasks reliably engaged regions associated with visual and emotional information processing, including lingual gyrus and the amygdala. A laterality effect was observed in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, with active tasks engaging the left, and passive tasks engaging the right. While overlapping activity patterns suggest a shared neural network for both tasks, differential activity suggests that processing of moral input is affected by task demands. The results provide novel insight into distinct features of moral cognition, including the generation of moral context through associative processes and the perceptual detection of moral salience.

Project description:BackgroundDietary fiber is fermented in the lower gastrointestinal tract, potentially impacting the microbial ecosystem and thus may improve elements of cognition and brain function via the gut-brain axis. β-glucans, soluble dietary fiber, have different macrostructures and may exhibit different effects on the gut-brain axis. This study aimed to compare the effects of β-glucans from mushroom, curdlan and oats bran, representing β-(1,3)/(1,6)-glucan, β-(1,3)-glucan or β-(1,3)/(1,4)-glucan, on cognition and the gut-brain axis.MethodsC57BL/6J mice were fed with either control diet or diets supplemented with β-glucans from mushroom, curdlan and oats bran for 15 weeks. The cognitive functions were evaluated by using the temporal order memory and Y-maze tests. The parameters of the gut-brain axis were examined, including the synaptic proteins and ultrastructure and microglia status in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex (PFC), as well as colonic immune response and mucus thickness and gut microbiota profiles.ResultsAll three supplementations with β-glucans enhanced the temporal order recognition memory. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and the post-synaptic protein 95 (PSD95) increased in the PFC. Furthermore, mushroom β-glucan significantly increased the post-synaptic thickness of synaptic ultrastructure in the PFC whilst the other two β-glucans had no significant effect. Three β-glucan supplementations decreased the microglia number in the PFC and hippocampus, and affected complement C3 and cytokines expression differentially. In the colon, every β-glucan supplementation increased the number of CD206 positive cells and promoted the expression of IL-10 and reduced IL-6 and TNF-α expression. The correlation analysis highlights that degree of cognitive behavior improved by β-glucan supplementations was significantly associated with microglia status in the hippocampus and PFC and the number of colonic M2 macrophages. In addition, only β-glucan from oat bran altered gut microbiota and enhanced intestinal mucus.ConclusionsWe firstly demonstrated long-term supplementation of β-glucans enhanced recognition memory. Comparing the effects of β-glucans on the gut-brain axis, we found that β-glucans with different molecular structures exhibit differentia actions on synapses, inflammation in the brain and gut, and gut microbiota. This study may shed light on how to select appropriate β-glucans as supplementation for the prevention of cognitive deficit or improving immune function clinically.

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Moral attitudes and willingness to enhance and repair cognition with brain stimulation.

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Moral attitudes and willingness to enhance and repair cognition with brain stimulation.

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