Brain Basics
This part of the brain is responsible for decision-making and impulse control.
What is the prefrontal cortex?
This technology records brain activity using electrodes placed on the scalp.
What is EEG (electroencephalography)?
This ethical concern arises when financial or personal interests could compromise professional judgment.
What is a conflict of interest?
Cells taken from this woman in 1951 without her consent became one of the most important tools in biomedical research
Who is Henrietta Lacks?
This term describes the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections.
What is neuroplasticity?
This neurotransmitter is heavily involved in reward and addiction pathways.
What is dopamine?
This imaging method measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow.
What is fMRI?
This principle in biomedical ethics refers to “do no harm.”
What is nonmaleficence?
This requirement ensures participants understand risks before agreeing to a study.
What is informed consent?
This condition involves progressive degeneration of memory and cognition.
What is Alzheimer’s disease?
Damage to this structure often results in memory loss, as seen in Henry Molaison.
What is the hippocampus?
This controversial technology aims to link brains directly to computers, pursued by companies like Neuralink.
What is a brain-computer interface (BCI)?
Providing drugs for a patient to end their own life is called this.
What is physician-assisted suicide?
What is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?
What is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?
This neurotransmitter deficiency is associated with Parkinson’s disease.
What is dopamine?
This protective barrier regulates what substances can pass from the bloodstream into the brain.
What is the blood-brain barrier?
This technique uses magnetic fields to stimulate specific brain regions noninvasively.
What is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)?
This ethical approach focuses on relationships and care rather than abstract principles.
What is the ethics of care?
This ethical issue involves editing genes in embryos in ways that can be inherited by future generations.
What is germline editing?
This philosophical problem asks how physical brain processes give rise to subjective experience.
What is the hard problem of consciousness?
This brain cell type forms myelin to insulate axons in the central nervous system.
What are oligodendrocytes?
This ethical concern arises when brain data could potentially reveal thoughts or intentions.
What is cognitive privacy?
This emerging field examines ethical issues related to brain enhancement, neural data, and identity.
What is neuroethics?
This 1975 case involved a young woman in a persistent vegetative state, whose parents fought for the legal right to remove her from a ventilator—helping establish a patient’s right to refuse life-sustaining treatment.
What is the case of Karen Ann Quinlan?
This ethical issue involves editing genes in embryos in ways that can be inherited by future generations.
What is germline editing?