Reiner Research Group

Dr. Reiner’s research group focuses upon what we term as eudaimonic neuroethics, a discipline with investigates the myriad ways in which our ever increasing understanding of the brain enhances our ability to not only be happy, but to live lives filled with meaning – in short, to live well as human beings. In contrast to traditional neuroethics which examines the biomedical implications of advances in the neurosciences, eudaimonic neuroethics focuses upon the impact of technological advances in the neurosciences upon everyday life.

We are surrounded by technologies that seem to hold the promise of happiness, but often they disappoint, saddling us with what Charles Taylor has termed the malaise of modernity; sometimes, a single technology does both. Understanding how advances in the neurosciences affect the likelihood of experiencing eudaimonia is the overarching goal of the research program.

Cognitive enhancers are technologies that improve brain function. Pharmacological cognitive enhancement, the use of drugs to enhance one or another domain of cognition, is a topic of widespread interest in academic discourse, public policy debates, and the popular press, but there is much more information available in the manner of expert opinion than public opinion on the topic. Public attitudes towards pharmacological cognitive enhancers are an under-explored area of investigation. The overarching goal of this research program is to probe public attitudes towards pharmacological cognitive enhancers in an effort to inform future regulatory decision-making.

The primary question that confronts society is not whether pharmacological cognitive enhancers should exist, but rather how they should be distributed if and when effective drugs become available. There are essentially three options - over the counter, regulated by physician prescription, and complete ban. To ascertain which options are most preferred by the general public, we are conducting a large scale survey in which we allow people to share their views on this matter with us.

Four cardinal concerns dominate academic discourse regarding pharmacological cognitive enhancers: (1) Safety - the risks of the drug may outweigh its benefits; (2) Distributive Justice - the cost of the drug might increase the gap between the rich and the poor; (3) Peer Pressure - people might feel pressured to use the drug as it makes the transition from novelty to norm; and (4) Authenticity - success obtained using pharmacological cognitive enhancers might not be viewed as having the same value as that garnered by hard work. Using the constrastive vignette technique, we are exploring public attitudes towards each of these issues.

Selected publications:

Cabrera L, Reiner PB, The emotional impact of ‘study drugs’: unsurprising and unconvincing. AJOB Neuroscience (in press).

Reiner, PB. How reliable are intuitions of fairness? in: Explorations of Fairness (J. Sarra, ed.), UBC Press (in press).

Reiner, PB. The modern debate over cognitive enhancement. INK 1:18-20 (2012).

Nadler, R, Reiner PB, Prototypes or Pragmatics? The Open Question of Public Attitudes Toward Enhancement. AJOB Neuroscience 2(2):49-50 (2011).

Banjo OC, Nadler, R, Reiner PB, Physician attitudes to cognitive enhancement: safety concerns are paramount. PLoS One 5(12):1-8 (2010). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014322

Reiner PB, Distinguishing between Restoration and Enhancement in Neuropharmacology, Virtual Mentor 12(11): 885-888 (2010).

Nadler, R, Reiner PB, A call for data to inform discussion on cognitive enhancement. BioSocieties 5(4):481-482 (2010).

neuroessentialism and modern society

Neuroessentialism is the position that, for all intents and purposes, we are our brains. It is not so much that we are not also our genes, our bodies, members of social groups, and so on, but rather that when we conceive of ourselves, when we think of who we are as beings interacting in the world, the we that we think of primarily resides in our brains. The goals of this research program are to investigate the ways in which the rise of neuroessentialism might alter the mores of society.

One area in which neuroessentialist thinking is already making headway is in the field of legal jurisprudence, where the consideration of both intent and knowledge are key factors in consideration of culpability for one’s actions, both of which are well recognized as attributions of mental phenomena. Such considerations become prominent when evaluating retributive versus consequentialist theories of punishment. In order to advance the field, we have developed a new scale to measure retributive attitudes towards punishment, and have compared mens rea attributions of individuals who score high and low on this retributivist measure.

Understanding how decision making occurs in the brain has implications for our conception of a key issue in ethical discourse - autonomy. We have argued that the neuroscience of decision making informs this discourse in important ways, and that distinguishing between 1st order and 2nd order desires clarifies our understanding of the nature of autonomous decision making. We are now extending this work to investigate whether people prefer that “nudges” - behavioural modifications that help people improve their decision making - affect their 1st order or 2nd order desires.

Neuroessentialist thinking may also have an impact upon stigma, a form of social distance towards people who differ from our preconceived cultural norms. Many of the phenotypes that evoke stigma are based upon differences in brains; the neuroessentialist hypothesis suggests that once people understand stigma in this manner, social distance will decrease. We are carrying out a set of studies which sensitize people to the neuroessentialist perspective and then measure the effects of this manipulation upon social distance.

Over the past decade, a substantial body of research has explored the relationship between mindfulness, a form of self-regulated attention, and modern views of the brain function. We suggest that mindfulness can be understood in part as a variant of neuroessentialism: the ability to control ones attention and the consequences of so doing are entirely consistent with the key precepts upon which neuroessentialism is based. In one set of experiments which bears upon this issue, we are investigating the hypothesis that individuals who are either more mindful or more neuroessentialist in their outlook are more likely to (a) make utilitarian judgments in response to moral dilemmas and (b) to be more consistent in their judgments across personal and impersonal dilemmas.

Selected publications:

Nagel S, Reiner PB, Autonomy support to foster individuals’ flourishing, AJOB (in press).

Felsen G, Castelo N, Reiner PB. Decisional enhancement and autonomy: Public attitudes towards overt and covert nudges, (submitted).

Reiner, PB. Biopolitics of cognitive enhancement, in: Cognitive Enhancement- An Interdisciplinary Perspective, (E. Hildt & A. Franke, eds.), Springer (2013).

Reiner PB, The rise of neuroessentialism. In: Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics, J. Illes & B. Sahakian, eds.  pp. 161-175 (2011).

Felsen G, Reiner PB. How the neuroscience of decision making informs our conception of autonomy, AJOB Neuroscience 2:3-14 (2011).

Felsen G, Whiteley L, Nadler R, Reiner PB. Neuroscience evidence should be incorporated into our ethical practices. American J Bioethics – Neuroscience 1(4):36-38 (2010).

principal investigator

Peter B. Reiner, VMD, PhD is Professor and co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics, and a member of the Kinsmen Laboratory of Neurological Research in the Department of Psychiatry and the Brain Research Centre. Dr. Reiner began his research career studying the cellular and molecular physiology of the brain, with particular interests in the neurobiology of behavioural states and the molecular underpinnings of neurodegenerative disease. In 1998, Dr. Reiner became President and CEO of Active Pass Pharmaceuticals, a drug discovery company that he founded to tackle the scourge of Alzheimer's disease. Upon returning to academic life in 2004, Dr. Reiner refocused his scholarly work in the area of neuroethics, co-founding the National Core for Neuroethics with Dr. Judy Illes in 2007.

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Staff

Laura Cabrera, Ph.D. is a visiting postdoctoral research fellow at the Core where she is working on a project that explores the attitudes of the general public regarding cognitive enhancement.  Laura Cabrera is a postdoctoral researcher in bioethics and emergent technologies in the Institute for Biomedical Ethics at Basel University. Laura received a BSc in Electrical and Communication Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) in Mexico City, and a MA in Applied Ethics from Linköping University in Sweden. She received a PhD in Applied Ethics from Charles Sturt University in Australia. Laura’s current research focuses on neuroethics and emergent technologies, especially those connected to uses of neurotechnologies  and individual/societal implications and perspectives.

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Noah Castelo is a Research Intern at the Core, and is in his fourth year of study at the University of Toronto, majoring in psychology and philosophy. His research focuses on the effects  of mindfulness on moral decision making, a subproject in the larger effort to gauge the impact that an increasingly neuroscientific culture might have on the public's moral intuitions, including the implications that might have for criminal law and other domains of social life.

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Nicholas Fitz, B.A., is a Research Assistant at the Core. Nick joined the Core in April 2012 after a neuroethics fellowship at a think-tank in Washington DC following the completion of his undergraduate studies at Grinnell College (2011), majoring in Philosophy (with foci in mind, ethics, and pragmatism) and concentrating in Policy Studies. Nick's neuroethical research interests include: the ethics of human enhancement, the relationship between free will and responsibility, the sociocultural implications of neuroessentialist thought, the role of empirical inquiry in ethics, and moral psychology. His most visible project at the Core explores public attitudes toward cognitive enhancement: using methods inspired by experimental philosophy, he and Dr. Reiner examine folk intuitions regarding issues of safety, autonomy, peer pressure, and distributive justice as they inform ethical, social, and policy discourse.

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