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19 Februrary 2006
Organizers:
- Stephanie Bird, Science and Engineering Ethics
- Jim Miller, AAAS Science and Public Policy
Developments in neuroscience are leading to deeper understandings of the relationships between neurological structures and processes and human behavior. While the science is leading to new opportunities for intervention in cases of neurological dysfunction, it is also providing insights into regular cognitive processes including those that are related to moral judgment and ethical decision making. As a consequence of this research, new understanding of the material substrate of morality and ethics is being gained. Speakers will discuss three areas of ongoing neurological research that are providing this new understanding about these processes and identifying opportunities to intervene or affect them. They include studies of mirror neurons and their possible relation to interpersonal empathy, the neurological locus and pathways for the formation of trust, and the behavioral significance of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The symposium also will offer discussions of the significance of this research for secular ethics and traditional religious understandings of moral agency, from the perspectives of Judaism and Buddhism.
Moderator
- Jim Miller, AAAS Science and Public Policy
Speakers
- Thomas Lewis, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
From Empathy to Evil: The Neuroscience of Emotion and its Role in Moral Action
- P. Read Montague, Baylor College of Medicine
The Neuroscience of Trust
- Steven Southwick, Yale University School of Medicine
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Paul Root Wolpe, University of Pennsylvania
Neuroscience and the Material Foundations of Ethics
- Elliot Dorff, University of Judaism
Judaism and the Neuroscience of Moral Agency
- Ven. Tenzin Legphel Priyadarshi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Buddhism and the Neuroscience of Moral Agency
Neurobiological Alterations in PTSD
Author: Steven M. Southwick, Yale University School of Medicine
Over the past 20 years it has become clear that PTSD is associated with multiple neurobiological alterations/abnormalities. For example, a large number of studies have found that trauma-survivors with PTSD, as a group, have exaggerated reactivity of the sympathetic nervous system in response to current stressors compared to healthy controls. Studies in survivors with PTSD have reported elevated 24-hour urine excretion of norepinephrine and epinephrine, elevated 24-hour plasma norepinephrine, reduced platelet alpha-2 adrenergic receptor number, increased subjective, behavioral, physiological and biochemical responses to IV yohimbine (an alpha 2-adrenoreceptor antagoninst), blunted prolactic response to clonidine and altered yohimbine-induced cerebral blood flow among individuals with PTSD compared to controls. A large number of studies have also reported abnormalities in HPA axis functioning among trauma survivors with PTSD. More recently neurocognitive and brain imaging studies have reported PTSD-related biased attention to negative and potentially dangerous information, reductions in hippocampal volume and function, exaggerated amygdala responses to stressful cues and stress-induced reduction in prefrontal cortical metabolism. Much of the above data suggests that trauma-related abnormalies in neurobiological structure and function may play an important role in symptoms and behaviors related to reexperiencing, hyperarousal, avoidance, and control of impulses.
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