Please follow the link and post your comments on Facebook on the CU Neuroscience page, then copy and paste them into your student journal to get credit.

Memory Modulation Blog

Are the therapeutic benefits of erasing traumatic events from our memories more important than the possibility of losing a true sense of ourselves?

Do we define ourselves as the sum of all our experience, both good and bad? What if it were only the good experiences that defined ourselves?

Where would you draw the line on memory erasure? (or what defines a "traumatic event" that would warrant this type of treatment?)

Please follow the link and post your comments on Facebook on the CU Neuroscience page, then copy and paste them into your student journal to get credit.

The ethics of "open placebos"

Please follow the links and post your comments on Facebook on the CU Neuroscience page, then copy and paste them into your student journal to get credit.

Biomedical Experimentation on Prisoners

Interrogation Research on Terrorists

1) The first article was published in the 70's, do you think the pros and cons listed would still be valid today?

2) If you agree that experimentation on prisoners is acceptable, should there be a participation limit as to the prisoner's sentence (ie: only on those prisoners with a life sentence, ect)?

Please follow the link and post your comments on Facebook on the CU Neuroscience page, then copy and paste them into your student journal to get credit.

Frankenstein, Gattaca and Gene Therapy

Dr. Anderson talks about some ways to stop the slippery-slope of genetic enginering...where do you think the slide should be stooped?

Body Integrity Identity Disorder, also known as apotemnophilia, is a condition in which a person has an overwhelming desire to amputate one or multiple limbs. Should doctors legally be able to perform the requested surgery?

Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Please follow the link and post your comments on Facebook on the CU Neuroscience page, then copy and paste them into your student journal to get credit.

"A trolley is coming down a track, and its going to run over and kill five people if it continues. A person standing next to the track can flip a switch and turn the trolley onto a side track where it will kill one but save the five. Most people think thats morally permissible to harm one person when five are saved. Another case is when a nurse comes up to a doctor and says, Doctor, weve got five patients in critical care; each one needs an organ to survive. We do not have time to send out for organs, but a healthy person just walked into the hospital we can take his organs and save the five. Is that OK? No one says yes to that one."

How do you explain this? Are we all driven by a certain moral code to make these deicsions? And, if so, how/when is it developed?

Is morality innate and universal?

Please follow the link and post your comments on Facebook on the CU Neuroscience page, then copy and paste them into your student journal to get credit.

• Thanks to James Tuttle for the article link! If any other students have ideas or topics they are interested in writing about for the ethics discussions, feel free to send them to me. Thanks!

This article touches on several topics related to CNS interventions, including neural enhancement drugs, court-ordered CNS intervention and "brain reading". I have personally never heard of (or thought of, for that matter) the idea of court-ordered CNS intervention so I found this topic to be particularly interesting. The author uses the example of SSRI's to reduce violent behavior. Do you think this practice infringes too much on a person's ability to think one's own thoughts? Could this treatment be more/less useful than anger management classes? Who would be responsible for paying for the medications?

CNS Interventions

Please follow the link and post your comments on Facebook on the CU Neuroscience page, then copy and paste them into your student journal to get credit.

Thank you and I look forward to reading about your chosen topics!