AJOB Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Andrew Peterson, Emily A Largent, Holly Fernandez Lynch et al.
42 citations
Psychedelic drugs are not currently offered to people with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, but interest is growing in using them to treat underlying causes and psychiatric symptoms. This paper proposes a research agenda for examining the ethics of psychedelic medicine and research involving persons with AD/ADRD. It offers preliminary analyses of six ethical issues: the impact of psychedelics on autonomy and consent; the effect of "ego dissolution" on those experiencing a pathology of self; how psychedelics might affect caregiving; the potential exploitation of patient desperation; institutional review boards' orientation to psychedelic research; and methods to reduce inequity. These issues are magnified for AD/ADRD but also relevant to other clinical populations.
AJOB Neuroscience
July 9, 2025
Aileen Van Gyseghem, Kris Dierickx, Andrew J Barnhart
17 citations
Consciousness in human brain organoids (HBOs) is difficult to define and detect because existing theories conflict. This review of 24 peer-reviewed publications reveals six key themes: how consciousness is defined, biological limits of organoids, conflicting theories of consciousness, methods for detecting consciousness, comparisons with other conscious entities, and the unique ethical status of HBOs. Uncertainty about consciousness itself complicates ethical debates. The authors suggest that focusing on organoid intelligence—a more concrete concept—may advance research and communication, while clear language is needed to avoid misunderstandings.
AJOB Neuroscience
February 5, 2024
Julian D. Sandbrink, Kyle Johnson, Maureen Gill et al.
13 citations
A nationally representative sample of 795 US Americans rated the moral status of psilocybin use in a licensed setting as morally positive for both treating a psychiatric condition and enhancing well-being, showing strong bipartisan support. These attitudes can inform policy-making around supervised psilocybin use. The study did not explore attitudes toward unsupervised or non-licensed use.
AJOB Neuroscience
April 3, 2023
Daniel Rosenbaum, Matthew Cho, Evan Schneider et al.
11 citations
No Summary
AJOB Neuroscience
April 3, 2026
Mario Picozzi, Renzo Pegoraro, Alberto Carrara
A systematic mapping of the ethical and philosophical literature on human brain organoids reveals how consciousness is discussed in that context. The analysis reconstructs the ways scholars invoke concepts of consciousness when debating the moral status, potential sentience, and research oversight of brain organoids. The mapping identifies key themes, including whether organoids could possess conscious experience, what neural correlates would indicate consciousness, and how uncertainty about organoid consciousness should guide ethical decision-making. The authors suggest the literature often conflates different notions of consciousness and call for more precise definitions to inform responsible research governance.
AJOB Neuroscience
June 16, 2025
Owen Thomas, Francisca Silva
Laypeople morally disapprove of hypothetical love drugs more than psychological therapy because they perceive the resulting feelings as inauthentic. Authenticity and naturalness drive these moral judgments. However, the line between organic and artificial experiences is blurry; emotions from love drugs could be meaningful and authentic if they foster lasting positive change and align with personal values. Natural feelings are also shaped by external stimuli affecting brain function. Where love drugs support transformative experiences, they should not be viewed as immoral.
AJOB Neuroscience
April 3, 2023
R. Ozeki-Hayashi, D. Wilkinson
This commentary argues that ethical discussions about using psychedelics to treat Alzheimer's disease must consider cultural context, not just Western bioethics. Drawing on Japanese experience, the authors identify cultural factors that could make such research more challenging, as well as other factors that might be more accommodating and could even reduce some ethical concerns raised by Peterson et al.
AJOB Neuroscience
April 3, 2023
B. Blackshaw
Because consciousness is central to moral status, identifying it in machines would argue for granting them moral consideration. However, from a third-person perspective, determining whether an artificial intelligence is conscious is extremely difficult. This commentary argues that the epistemological question of machine consciousness cannot be conclusively answered, making artificial consciousness morally irrelevant in practice. The author also contends that avoiding development of morally relevant machine consciousness is impractical. Instead, artificial intelligences should be designed to communicate, allowing their behavior to guide assignment of an artificial moral status—treating them as if they had moral status equivalent to a living organism with similar behavior.
AJOB Neuroscience
April 3, 2023
Sarah Diner, M. Gaillard
Human cerebral organoids grown in bioreactors may develop some form of consciousness, raising both scientific and ethical questions. The authors argue that current evidence for consciousness in organoids is insufficient but that the possibility cannot be dismissed. They propose a precautionary approach: researchers should monitor organoids for signs of consciousness, establish ethical guidelines for their creation and use, and consider the moral status such entities might have. The paper examines the scientific challenges of detecting consciousness in a neural model without a body and the bioethical implications of potentially creating conscious entities in a laboratory.
AJOB Neuroscience
April 3, 2023
Kai Rudolph
No Summary
AJOB Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Spyridon Orestis Palermos
If the Extended Mind thesis is true, mental privacy may be seriously threatened. This paper examines that claim and proposes enriching data ontology with a new category called mental data. Unlike standard data and metadata, mental data should not merely receive legal protection; instead, technological measures should make it practically impossible for others to obtain, preserving mental privacy as currently understood.
AJOB Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Elisabeth Hildt
Conscious machines would likely differ greatly from human consciousness, raising complex ethical questions about moral status. The article reviews current robotics approaches to machine consciousness and the obstacles to understanding it. It examines how we could know if a machine is conscious, the potential benefits of such consciousness, and its role in moral consideration. The analysis is partly speculative but emphasizes the need for a clear conceptual definition of artificial consciousness and the imperative to avoid creating machines with morally relevant forms of consciousness. Suggestions for future regulation are offered.
AJOB Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Federico Zilio, Andrea Lavazza
Human cerebral organoids are lab-grown 3D cultures that mimic the cellular composition, structure, and function of the brain, though they currently lack blood vessels and other features. They already exhibit coordinated electrical activity, and their complexity is rapidly improving. This raises the question of whether they could develop consciousness. The article discusses the neural correlates and constraints for consciousness according to leading neuroscientific theories, then considers the moral status a potentially conscious organoid might have based on ethical and ontological arguments. It concludes by proposing a precautionary principle and suggests that recent experiments may produce entities of a potential new kind.
AJOB Neuroscience
March 24, 2022
Brett J. Kagan, Daniela Duc, I. Stevens et al.
Neural organoids—lab-grown three-dimensional neural tissues—have advanced neurophysiology but raise ethical concerns. Sawai et al. (2022) proposed policies to regulate this technology, focusing on how to assess phenomenological consciousness in organoids and applying the precautionary principle. This commentary situates those proposals within broader research, highlighting recent evidence that human brain cells grown in a dish can engage in enactive learning when embodied in a virtual world via real-time closed-loop electrophysiological stimulation and recording (Kagan et al. 2021).
AJOB Neuroscience
January 1, 2022
Laura Specker Sullivan
Tibetan Buddhist monastics in India hold nuanced views on neuroethical issues that align with theoretical Buddhist perspectives while also highlighting underexplored areas. Eleven semi-structured interviews revealed that monastics' perspectives on identity and authenticity, enhancement, and disorders of consciousness reinforce prior conceptual work on Buddhism and neuroethics. The interviews also identified future areas for inquiry, including the importance of community, challenges in acting from compassion, and the value of self-directed mental cultivation. Despite decades of collaboration between Buddhist monastics and neuroscientists, Buddhist perspectives remain largely absent from contemporary neuroethical analysis, a gap this empirical study begins to fill.
AJOB Neuroscience
March 31, 2020
J. Banja
A review of Susan Schneider's book Artificial You explores how artificial intelligence and related technologies challenge understandings of consciousness and moral attitudes toward nonhumans and posthumans. The book examines what it would mean for an AI to be conscious, questioning whether consciousness requires a feeling of self-awareness or exists on a continuum from simple awareness to complex self-reflection. Schneider considers whether human enhancement with brain microchips could fracture identity and transcend humanness, and whether uploading consciousness to a computer transforms it into something no longer human. The review notes that Schneider leaves the definition of consciousness open to explore deep moral questions about AI's moral status.