This volume contains the proceedings of a two-day multidisciplinary conference on the ethical implications of brain research organized by Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco. Leaders in neuroscience, journalism, law, and philosophy, among other fields, engaged in a freewheeling debate on the social and individual effects of the research. Steven Marcus has edited their formal and informal deliberations to present a compelling first-hand account of the proceedings, providing a highly readable front-row seat about the first-ever symposium on neuroethics.

Neuroethics: Mapping the Field

Science & Math

Dana Press

At age 43, Cleo Hutton awoke to a frightening and completely unfamiliar world. In the prime of life, she experienced a devastating stroke. Suddenly unable to speak, understand, or even walk, Hutton found herself struggling first to survive and then to regain her physical skills and her independence. Striking Back at Stroke is Hutton's personal journal during this trying time, detailing her hard-won success rebuilding a life in ruins and overcoming difficulties she never imagined confronting. Using a tape recorder and a notebook by her bedside where family, friends, and hospital staff could write messages, Hutton kept a record of the day-to-day emotional, physical, and financial trauma of her condition. Hutton's account of her experiences is interwoven with medical and scientific commentary by Louis Caplan, M.D., who explains Hutton's case in terms of what scientists and doctors have come to know about strokes. He documents in a clear, concise manner what actually happens before, during, and after a stroke—as Hutton in turn lives and documents her experience. Caplan also focuses his observations on how the medical system served her, as well as on the shattering effects a stroke can have on the families of patients. Both authors give valuable advice—about home care, emotional support, and physical recovery—from the frontlines of the battle against stroke. These two wise and experienced voices make Striking Back at Stroke a wrenching and inspiring personal story as well as an indispensable guide for anyone enduring the cataclysmic changes that a stroke can bring to a life, a family, and a sense of self.

Striking Back at Stroke: A Doctor-Patient Journal

Hutton, Cleo

Caplan M.D., Louis R.

More than 400 years after they were first written, Shakespeare's plays still offer a stunning glimpse into the motivations, desires, and deviancies of man. His characters are caught in situations modern readers can sympathize with, and his themes—love, family relations, adultery, power, treachery—are as relevant now as they were then. Surprisingly, another aspect of the Bard's work that has withstood the test of time is his understanding of the brain. The Bard on the Brain is a marvelous combination of close readings of Shakespeare and the most current neurological research that together demonstrate how impulses and actions originate in the brain. Paul Matthews here shows us the center-stage role of the brain in famous scenes from Shakespeare's plays. With stunning color brain scans and clear English, Matthews demonstrates how uncannily Shakespeare perceived the brain at work in his characters' ideas and deeds, and how the living brain mirrors human experiences created centuries ago by the Bard. Matthews's science is beautifully interwoven with Jeffrey McQuain's interpretations of many of the most significant soliloquies in all of Shakespeare's plays. The Bard on the Brain is also illustrated throughout with performance photos of acclaimed British and American actors—such as Morgan Freeman as Petruchio, Sir Ian McKellen as Prospero, Alfre Woodard as Paulina, and Anthony Hopkins as King Lear—from celebrated Shakespeare companies. The result of this partnership between scientist and scholar is a unique view of Shakespeare's characters, a dissection of his language, and a wonderfully oblique perspective on the human brain.

The Bard on the Brain: Understanding the Mind Through the Art of Shakespeare and the Science of Brain Imaging

Literature & Fiction

DIANE ACKERMAN

Matthews, Paul M.

McQuain, Jeffrey

Dramas & Plays

Travel in Mind: Getting Peak Performance from Your Brain on Any Journey

Travel

Andreasen, Nancy C.

Andreasen, Suz

Travel Writing

Just a few short years ago, the outcome of a life-threatening brain injury lay in the hands of the victim's god. Neurologists had a self-mocking term for their role in healing: "Diagnose and adios." While doctors knew more about why and how a brain might die or be permanently impaired, they rarely intervened in brain trauma cases, believing there was little they could do. Today, though, a brave new world of brain rescue is opening up. A handful of hospitals around the country have begun to develop neurological intensive care centers where aggressive new treatments are pulling brain-injured patients back from the brink. Acclaimed science journalist Edward J. Sylvester here takes us to one of the first of these facilities to develop neurointensive care, The Johns Hopkins Medical Centers in Baltimore. Sylvester introduces us to Marek Mirski, the pioneering neurologist who leads the neurointensive team, and follows Mirski into the very center of the brain trauma storm through five dramatic and very different cases. Sylvester also takes us on a whirlwind side trip to New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where Mirksi's compatriot Dr. Stephan Mayer—the founding neurointensivist—struggles for the life of yet another patient. A vivid, elegant writer, Sylvester has filled his book with unforgettable and fascinating events. His descriptions of the maelstrom in the traumatized brain are some of the most powerful ever put to paper, and the human faces in his cast of characters are almost clear enough to touch. Back from the Brink combines the best of medical journalism with the drama of ER as it covers some of the most innovative developments and exotic territory in modern medicine.

Back from the Brink: How Crises Spur Doctors to New Discoveries about the Brain

Medical Books

Sylvester, Edward J.

Medicine

The social and cognitive development of children is a complex yet crucial process for parents to understand, and though there are numerous books on child development, A Good Start in Life stands out from the rest as an acclaimed and important work on the connections between childhood brain and behavioral development. This new paperback edition, updated with the latest information and new material, offers parents and educators a rich and invaluable resource on how children learn to live in family and society from birth to age six. Norbert Herschkowitz, MD, and his wife Elinore Chapman Herschkowitz draw on their lifetime of experience in studying infants and children to explain how brain development shapes a child’s personality and behavior. Organizing their narrative by age, the authors examine a wide range of social development issues, from appropriate rule-setting to the development of key character elements in a child such as moral sensibility, temperament, language development, playing, aggression, impulse control, and empathy. Some of the most popular features of the hardcover edition are retained here, including the question-and-answer section that concludes each chapter with real questions posed by parents to Dr. Herschkowitz, as well as brain maps and charts that display milestones in the development of various skills. Additional new material addresses concerns about prematurely born babies and the issue of resilience in children. In today’s world, children grow up in an incredibly complex and highly sensory environment. A Good Start in Life offers a clear, concise, and richly detailed guide infused with warmth and encouragement that enables parents and educators to constructively stimulate and shape their children’s cognitive and social development. “A must read . . . a gift to all parents.”—Rosemarie T. Truglio, vice-president, Education and Research, Sesame Workshop “Do the first three years of life represent a critical period for all aspects of development? Are we the product of our genes or of our environment? Does early exposure to Mozart make for smarter babies? The answers to these and other pressing questions are skillfully and elegantly answered in this wonderful book, which I enthusiastically recommend.” —Charles A. Nelson, Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Child Psychology, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics, University of Minnesota “This delightfully written book . . . is not merely a how-to book, but a book about understanding how a child truly grows.” —Guy McKhann, MD, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

A Good Start in Life: Understanding Your Child's Brain and Behavior from Birth to Age 6

Herschkowitz MD, Norbert

Herschkowitz, Elinore Chapman

Parenting & Relationships

A Vampire's Claim [mates Of Nethermore 1] (siren Publishing Classic Manlove)

A North Carolina woman dies of a flesh-eating bacterial disease. Thousands of people in West Africa are suffering from cholera. And antibiotics are rapidly becoming less and less effective at fighting what were once mild infections. The biggest threat to the future of human society may not be terrorist attacks or nuclear war, but rather microscopic bacteria. Immunologist Norbert Gualde explains in Resistance the dangers we face from bacterial resistance, asserting that we must confront the reality awaiting us--the next fatal plague may occur sooner than we think. Over the course of the twentieth century, incredible advances in medicine inspired a utopian belief among many that all common infectious diseases would eventually be eradicated. But Resistance shows that this dream is an impossible one. The book’s riveting narrative reveals how new infectious agents and diseases are being discovered every day and how bacteria previously thought to have been destroyed are returning with a vengeance. Drawing upon the history of past epidemics, Gualde explores how new outbreaks might be predicted and controlled. He also investigates the potentially devastating social and political impact of such public health disasters, particularly in underdeveloped countries in the southern hemisphere. He ultimately argues that the constant interaction between man and microorganisms will inevitably catalyze future epidemics similar to the horrific ones of centuries past. Global outbreak monitoring and medical research on the human body’s immune system are beginning to produce effective strategies against bacterial resistance. But the most important weapon is awareness of the crisis, and this engrossing and brilliantly translated study will serve as a wake-up call for us all.

Resistance: The Human Struggle against Infection

History

Gualde, Norbert

World

Will increased scientific understanding of our brains overturn our beliefs about moral and ethical behavior? How will increasingly powerful brain imaging technologies affect the ideas of privacy and of self-incrimination? Such thought-provoking questions are rapidly emerging as new discoveries in neuroscience have raised difficult legal and ethical dilemmas. Michael Gazzaniga, widely considered to be the father of cognitive neuroscience, investigates with an expert eye some of these controversial and complex issues in The Ethical Brain. He first examines "lifespan neuroethics" and considers how brain development defines human life, from when an embryo develops a brain and could be considered "one of us" to the issues raised as the brain ages, such as whether we should have complete freedom to extend our lives and enhance our brains through the use of genetics, pharmaceuticals, and training. Gazzaniga also considers the challenges posed to the justice system by new discoveries in neuroscience. Recent findings suggest that our brain has already made a decision before we become fully aware of doing so, raising the question of whether the concept of personal responsibility can remain a fundamental tenet of the law. Gazzaniga argues that as neuroscience learns more about the unreliability of human memory, the very foundation of trial law will be challenged. Gazzaniga then discusses a radical re-evaluation of the nature of moral belief, as he not only looks at possibly manipulating the part of the brain that creates beliefs but also explores how scientific research is building a brain-based account of moral reasoning. The Ethical Brain is a groundbreaking volume that presents neuroscience's loaded findings—and their ethical implications—in an engaging and readable manner, offering an incisive and thoughtful analysis of the medical ethics challenges confronting modern society at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

The Ethical Brain

Gazzaniga, Michæl S.

History & Philosophy

Advances in neuroscience research are rapidly bringing new and complex issues to the forefront of medical and social ethics, and scholars from diverse fields have been coming together to debate the issues at stake. Acclaimed science writer Sandra Ackerman witnessed one such gathering, and here she skillfully synthesizes those proceedings into a concise presentation of the challenges that neuroscience and neuroethics currently face. Top scholars and scientists in neuroscience and ethics convened at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in May 2005. They included Michael Gazzaniga, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College; Marcus Raichle of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; Harvard University provost Steven Hyman; Judy Illes, cofounder of the Stanford Brain Research Center; University of Virginia bioethicist Jonathan Moreno; Stacey Tovino of the Health Law and Policy Institute at the University of Houston Law Center; and Stanford law professor Hank Greely. Ackerman weaves the invigorating arguments and discussions among these and other prominent scholars into a seamless and dynamic narrative. She reveals the wide array of issues that have emerged from recent research, including brain imaging, free will and personal responsibility, disease diagnosis and prediction, brain enhancement, and the potential social, political, and legal ramifications of new discoveries. Translating these complex arguments into an engrossing account of neuroethics, she offers a rare view of science—and ethics—in the making.

Hard Science, Hard Choices: Facts, Ethics, and Policies Guiding Brain Science Today (Dana Press - Dana Foundation Series on Neuroethics)

Ackerman, Sandra J.

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