But like AI, the technology has raised ethical concerns. If used improperly, it could cause harm or violate a patient’s privacy.
Fordham researcher Laura Specker Sullivan, Ph.D., was awarded a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in August to assess the usefulness of ethics guidelines currently geared toward neurotechnology researchers.
“Neurotechnology is this really rapidly growing area of science and technology. There’s a lot of interest in it, and there’s a lot of money in it, so it’s not surprising that there are a lot of ethicists thinking about how we should do it and what direction it should go in,” said Specker Sullivan, an associate professor of philosophy who helped to write some of the guidelines herself. Her research project involves bringing researchers and ethicists together to see how they’re being used.
“Unless we connect ethicists with the people doing that scientific and technological advancement, it’s not going to have any effect. And we are going to have a technological future that we don’t have control over.”
Titled “Principles to Practice: Ethical Guidance for Neurotechnology Researchers,” Specker Sullivan’s three-year project will be conducted with Anna Wexler, Ph.D. assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennslyvania.
The field of neurotechnology–which involves creating and using technology that impacts the brain and generates data from it—is expanding rapidly. According to the Harvard Business Review, the global market for neurotech is growing at an annual rate of 12% and is expected to reach $21 billion by 2026.
The technology being developed varies from things like a computer interface that can detect (and potentially even prevent) a potential seizure to implants that stimulate parts of the brain to affect mood and cognition.
Over the past few years, Specker Sullivan and Wexler helped create some of the first guidelines for researchers, but Specker Sullivan realized that there was no meaningful follow-up to see if researchers working in neurotechnology were aware of them, reading them, or finding them useful.
As part of the research, they’ll be attending neurotechnology conferences and hosting roundtables that bring ethicists and neurotechnology researchers together”.
“If we find out that researchers are not using ethics guidance for X, Y, and Z reasons, we really want ethicists to know about those reasons,” she said. “We want other researchers to reflect on that and hopefully work to decrease that gap.”
Privacy is one of the project’s biggest concerns.
“Companies are already getting profiles of what we’re looking at on the internet. Imagine if they could do that with the actual electrical impulses that are coming from your brain. There are going to be intimate things that you would maybe never say to anyone,” she said.
Safety is another concern. The brain is so complex that if a treatment targets one specific symptom, it’s possible that there can be a cascade of effects that are not always anticipated.
Specker Sullivan cited deep brain stimulation, which is being used to treat Parkinson’s Disease, as a good example. The goal is to reduce tremors and allow patients to perform motor tasks. The treatment, however, can also lead to personality and mood changes.
Specker Sullivan is optimistic that ethics guidelines can be useful for researchers in determining whether neurotechnology is good for people.
“If we’re just focusing on physical benefit, we might be thinking about one kind of definition of “good,” but what about other definitions of well-being?” she said.
“Philosophers bring the ability to ask incisive questions, but also an understanding of the broad range of possibilities for how we define ethical concepts, like good or bad or right or wrong.”
]]>When you do something simple like pick up your phone or wash your hands, what’s happening in your brain? Quite a lot, actually—neurons are firing everywhere because of all your minor movements, not to mention background activities like respiration.
“Your brain is not just stopping to do this one activity,” said Rabia Gondur, FCLC ’22, a computational research scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. “It’s very noisy in the brain.”
Cutting through this noise to see which movements fire which neurons is the subject of her research, which she’ll soon present at a prestigious international conference on machine learning.
Gondur devised an innovative approach with help from one of her professors, Stephen Keeley, Ph.D.—a collaboration that began easily during her senior year when his presentation in one of her capstone courses spoke to her interest in research. “I just reached out to him, and he was super accommodating,” she said.
They worked on the research while Gondur—an integrative neuroscience major—completed the requirements for the accelerated master’s degree program in data science at Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, after which she landed her job at Cold Spring, where she is part of a computational neuroscience research group.
She will present her research at one of the world’s leading forums for machine learning, the annual International Conference on Learning Representations, taking place in Vienna, Austria, in May.
Gondur’s research is one of many studies seeking to understand a brain’s response during complex, natural behaviors, building on prior studies of more basic movements—for instance, what happens in a monkey’s brain when it reaches left versus right in response to a prompt.
The eventual goal is to get beyond laboratory studies to see, in detail, how the human brain naturally functions. “That’s ultimately what neuroscientists are interested in understanding, is how the brain works in our day-to-day lives,” said Keeley, an assistant professor of natural science who runs a machine learning lab on the Lincoln Center campus.
But to work toward this goal, scientists have to start small—literally. For their study, Keeley and Gondur examined the brains of insects: a fly grooming itself and a moth flitting around to follow a moving image of a flower. For this, they relied on data that their collaborators at other universities gathered using brain imaging technology.
Keeley and Gondur devised a machine learning algorithm to find links between the bugs’ brain signals and the subtleties of their movements, as captured in video stills. It differs from similar algorithms because they added processes to make the measurements more precise and the results easier to interpret.
Such techniques could one day illuminate everything from brain-based diseases to variances in people’s motor skills, Keeley said. For now, their model gives a new tool to scientists trying to tease out relationships hidden in complex data. “If you are interested in genomics, if you’re interested in medicine, if you’re interested in just anything, you can basically tweak the model,” Gondur said.
Keeley is always working with undergraduates on research projects tailored to their skill level. “Rabia came in with quite a good amount of talent, and so I was able to give her a very challenging project, and she was very successful,” he said.
]]>Deborah Denno, the center’s director and the Arthur A. McGivney Professor of Law, recently sat down to talk about her work with the center.
Full transcript below:
Deborah Denno: When we’re talking about future dangerousness, it has to be put into a situation where people can understand why that person appears to be a future danger. It’s not because a juror is necessarily reacting so negatively to this evidence. It’s because it’s been so poorly introduced into court that it’s sort of a gift for the prosecutor.
Patrick Verel: In 2002, the film Minority Report presented a future in which crime has been completely eliminated, thanks to the ability of authorities to predict in advance who will commit a crime. Now, that film was set in the year 2054. Its premise is still fantastical and absurd, but the connection between criminal justice and brain chemistry is not science fiction. In 2015, Fordham established the Neuroscience and Law Center to explore how advances in neuroscience had prompted the legal profession to question long held notions of criminal culpability, free will, thought, behavior, and pain.
Deborah Denno, the center’s founding director and professor of law, recently sat down with us to talk about her work and the center. I’m Patrick Verel, and this is Fordham News. You recently said that you’ve been to conferences where people have said things like when neuroscience gets fully integrated into the court system, which is silly because it’s already in the courts, when would you say that this practice first started?
DD: We don’t know exactly when it first started, but we do know that it started probably in the 80s when some of this modern neuro imaging was starting to come into place. For example, in the John Hinckley case, a PET scan was used then. Hinckley was accused of attempting to assassinate Ronald Reagan. It was a case that captivated the country. A lot of investigation was made of his background, including the fact that this brain may not be the same as a normal brain.
PV: Now, your center is currently studying every criminal case in the United States that has used neuroscience in any capacity, from 1992 to 2012. What have you learned so far?
DD: The first major finding is that we’ve learned that neuro scientific evidence is widely used throughout the criminal justice system. The second kind of finding is this evidence is mostly used by defense attorneys, and most of these cases are death penalty cases. I think they’re death penalty cases because the stakes are so high. People don’t plead guilty as much. They go to trial. The trials last a long time. There’s a lot of money spent. Many of these people in these death penalty cases are brain damaged, or have all sorts of problems.
The arguments are made to mitigate a case down from death to someone … something where somebody wouldn’t be executed, but it’s also used for all sorts of defenses, including insanity, diminished capacity, et cetera. The third major finding is that a disproportionate number of lawyers who don’t use neuro scientific evidence are found to be incompetent because of that. In other words, courts expect attorneys today to use neuro scientific evidence, to introduce it into court when it’s relevant, and to do it correctly.
PV: We’ve reached a point basically where it’s not only is it being used, but it’s if you don’t use it, it’s considered improper.
DD: That’s right. If you don’t use it, it’s considered improper. I wanted to emphasize that it’s very hard to find somebody incompetent. Probably less than 1% of all attorneys are ever get that kind of disqualification. In my data set, I’ve found situations where up to 20% of attorneys are found to be incompetent for not introducing this evidence. That’s a really extraordinary result.
PV: Any sense of how successful this is used in defense cases?
DD: It’s hard to determine how successful it is because there’s so many things going on in these cases. That said, because attorneys fight so much to get this evidence into court, I think they believe that it certainly has a strong chance of being successful. I’ve certainly seen a lot of cases where it seems to be very influential on judges.
PV: You talk a lot about using it in defense cases when it comes to the death penalty. Can you talk a little bit about when it’s used by the prosecutor?
DD: So I included in my database cases in which victims had brain injuries. I have cases in which defendants have brain injuries, and the arguments are used by defense attorneys; but there are about a third of my sample are cases in which victims have some kind of brain injury because they’ve been injured by a defendant. That’s introduced into court to suggest that the defendant intended to do what they did, or to suggest that the defendant is a very violent and dangerous person.
A lot of the cases in which victim neuro scientific evidence is analyzed is almost always cases involving children, and a lot of those cases are shaken baby cases. In these cases, prosecutors have been immensely successful until relatively recently using that kind of argument.
PV: In my introduction, I talked about the film, Minority Report, and this whole idea in this fantastical future setting about being able to predict how people will act, whether or not they will commit crimes. I feel like this is the area where that would really come into play. It sounds like there have been instances, especially when it comes to using it as a defense, where this might become an issue. Can you talk a little bit about that? You mentioned Hinckley in particular.
DD: Yeah, Hinckley in particular, because Hinckley was … a CAT scan was used to suggest that he had a certain kind of brain damage that may have rendered him particularly impulsive or susceptible to acting out in the way that he did, or make him more violent. Some of the new technology that people hear about, they’re used in court yet. So for example, people at Harvard who can measure or distinguish between true and false memories in a brain. The way they do that is they test subjects with lists of words. You have to memorize 20 words, and you think ‘candy’ was in the list, but when you’re repeating back, you say ‘chocolate’ instead. That’s going to be a false memory, and they can tell the difference between a true and a false memory.
That said, those people wouldn’t testify in court. They don’t think their science is ready. It’s one to thing to say someone’s brain damaged, and their brain damage looks like some … is on the level of a schizophrenic, or … it’s a type of brain damage that would suggest this person is very impulsive. It’s an entirely different thing to say they’re talking about a false memory based on our scan of them, or … our technique, the P300 response indicates they were actually at the scene of the crime. That’s something that would overwhelm a jury so much. It would have so much weight. It could be considered, at least in legal terms, more prejudicial than probative.
PV: I want to go back to the part where you talked a little bit about neuroscience being used in defense cases, and specifically how there’s sort of an ethical quandary involved in using it as a defense. If you are a defense lawyer, and you claim that your client did X, Y, Z, because something was going on in their brain that wasn’t working right, … I’m being colloquial, obviously, here.
DD: Right, right.
PV: That opens you up to the possibility that if they’re that damaged, that they might not be able to be released back into society.
DD: Well, that’s right. I mean this is a concern that you see in court cases. It’s one of the biggest explanations that attorneys have for not introducing this evidence. In other words, they’re saying it was a defense strategy not to introduce evidence of brain damage because I was concerned that the jury might react very negatively, and think this person is going to be a future danger, and just hurt again. It is an ethical consideration.
That said, at least my research or my analysis of the cases I have would suggest if you’re going to err, you should probably err on the side of admitting it to a jury because it seems to have quite a mitigating impact. We have seen evidence of that in particular cases, where juries are questioned. They’ll say that they thought it was a valid explanation for why somebody did what they did.
PV: Yeah. Have there been a lot of cases where juries have said, ‘Okay, well we buy that defense that your brain damage caused you to commit this crime, but at the same time, this is proof that you’re too dangerous to be let go.’
DD: I have found cases, and I have cases in my data set where prosecution, at least, is arguing that the defendant is going to be a future danger. It’s this double edge sword issue that comes up. The defense attorney introduces the evidence, and the prosecution uses that evidence to suggest that the defendant is going to be a future danger. Whether that affects juries, it’s really hard to tell cause and effect, because again, this happens so much in cases where there’s a lot of violence; and maybe that’s what’s overwhelming the jury.
That said, I did want to emphasize that in a lot of those cases, they happen because the defense hasn’t been doing a very good job. In other words, they introduce the neuro scientific evidence. They use an expert, but that expert is the one who blurted out something to the effect, ‘This person may commit a crime again.’ In these cases, the defenses actually made a mistake, or their expert has been very sloppy. The prosecution jumps on a comment like that in an effort to use it against the defendant.
PV: Yikes.
DD: Yeah.
PV: That’s not a good defense lawyer.
DD: It’s not. I’ve seen a lot of really bad defense lawyers. There’s going to be one thread throughout all these cases is some of these attorneys are doing a really bad job. I have one case where the judge literally steps in and says, ‘This attorney is hurting their client. They’re doing their client more harm than good.’ I’ve encountered cases where defense attorneys use experts in situations where that expert has told the attorney, ‘Don’t put me on the stand. I’m going to hurt your client inadvertently.’ The attorney puts them on the stand anyway.
When we’re talking about future dangerousness, it has to be put into a situation where people can understand why that person appears to be a future danger. It’s not because that jurors necessarily react so negatively to this evidence. It’s because it’s been so poorly introduced into court that it’s sort of a gift for the prosecutor to make a future dangerousness argument.
PV: So we basically, all of this needs to be taken with a giant grain of salt, it sounds like.
DD: A giant grain of salt, and with a reminder that attorneys really have to do their homework if they’re going to be working with this evidence, and arguing on behalf of defendants. I think one thing to emphasize is maybe the ‘Minority Report’ scenario is … There’s some sense of reality to that. I see us getting to that. We can already … scientists are already starting to try to measure what’s going on in people’s heads, in terms of whether somebody intends to do something. The science is there already. It’s not … sufficiently sophisticated or refined to introduce into the courtroom, but we know some day it will be.
With every passing year, this neuro scientific evidence gets more precise. A number of people in this area have said that within 10 years, it may be already at the level precision of DNA evidence, where if somebody has a certain kind of brain damage, we’ll know much better or have a much better explanation of what that involves.
PV: One thing I’ve heard is that there’s a kind of growing understanding of how in early life, when you’re a child, that if you are exposed to an unhealthy environment, if you are not given good nutrition, and you’re surrounded by violence, that, that can have an effect on your brain development in ways that will never change back.
DD: Absolutely. I think a key message to take away from this, the introduction of neuro scientific evidence into the courtroom, is this evidence helps us most in trying to assess the effects of the environment on somebody’s behavior, more than anything internal going on, necessarily. In other words, I think a big concern with neuroscience is it’s going to make people look very different from one another in terms of their brain capacity. When in fact, what I think it really does is show us how powerful a bad environment can be, and what we should do, and that we as a society could do a much better job in cleaning it up.
PV: Yeah, so … I mean we’ll never get past … I mean obviously there’s going to be people who are saying, ‘Well, some people are just beyond hope. They’re just naturally evil.’ Other people will say, ‘Well, maybe that’s true, but let’s also take a look at where they came from, and who they were surrounded by, and how they came to that point.’
DD: Absolutely. I really don’t like the word ‘evil.’ I think it-
PV: That’s not a court term, is it?
DD: Well, except I’ve heard an awful lot of judges use it. Yeah, so …
PV: Not a technical term.
DD: It’s not a technical term. When I’ve heard a number of judges use it, and I always say look, this is really much more of a … actually, it’s much more of a religious term, isn’t it? Or, something along those lines, but it’s certainly widely used, and something that would be used by a juror. I think with the introduction of neuro scientific evidence and the more we learn about human behavior, maybe we as a society, or we as jurors would be less likely to use a term like someone was evil, as opposed to someone has substantial amount of brain damage, and they were widely influenced by their environment.
]]>But one Fordham student has beaten the odds.
Callan O’Shea, a graduating Fordham College at Lincoln Center senior, studied in Paris for six months last spring. For O’Shea, an integrative neuroscience student on the pre-med track, the trip was not only a “transformational experience to get a bigger scope of the world,” but also a unique step in his path toward becoming a neurosurgeon.
Before O’Shea became a college student, he knew he wanted to become a doctor. Outside of his schoolwork during his first two years at Fordham, he volunteered at Mount Sinai West Hospital (formerly known as Roosevelt Hospital), located just a block away from the Lincoln Center campus. In the rehabilitation unit, he worked with elderly patients who had physical injuries, people recovering from stroke and spinal cord injuries, and patients with Parkinson’s disease. In the emergency room, he recorded patient needs and relayed their requests to medical staff.
It was there, he said, that he learned about the importance of connecting with patients—not just as clients, but as people.
“Speaking with patients in these often vulnerable conditions … they place a lot of trust in you, and it really touched me,” O’Shea said. “Then moving to emergency medicine, seeing the pace of that, and having the ability to do so much good so quickly—having that responsibility reinforced that.”
Through online research, O’Shea began to look for research topics that connected his hospital volunteer service with his surgical interests. That’s when he learned about neural engraftment in Parkinson’s patients: taking skin cells from patients, turning them into new neurons, and implanting them into the same patients to rehabilitate motor skills.
“Being able to grow healthy neurons and insert them surgically into patients to restore function is something that really sparked my interest,” O’Shea said.
At the beginning of 2018, he studied abroad in Paris, where he conducted hands-on neuroscience research. At the Université Paris Descartes Centre de Psychiatrie et Neurosciences, he examined social memory in the brains of mice. He also traveled a few days a week to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, where he analyzed how information is recorded and communicated within a hospital unit.
In those six months, O’Shea also got to take in Parisian culture. He lived with a host family, improved his fluency in French, and took a tap and jazz dance class at the Paris Marais Dance School.
It was his first time traveling abroad, thanks to the Center for University Programs Abroad—an independent organization introduced to him by Fordham’s study abroad office. This month, O’Shea returned to France for the annual Cannes Film Festival.
“[Studying abroad] was really important for me, as someone who didn’t really travel at all growing up and as a science student who doesn’t usually have the opportunity to incorporate language classes and things like that,” O’Shea said.
When he returned from France, he wanted to extend that same potential to his classmates in the integrative neuroscience department, many of whom haven’t yet studied abroad.
“He set up a meeting with me and the chair of his department so the three of us could talk through how we could make [studying abroad]easier for his classmates,” said Joseph Rienti, Ph.D., the director of international and study abroad programs at Fordham. “One of the most remarkable things about Callan is that he does things not just for himself—there’s a real altruistic and broader vision that he has.”
When he returned to New York, he began working as a research volunteer at the Icahn Medical Institute at Mount Sinai. O’Shea’s experiments spanned different strains of science: genetics, genomics, and neuroscience. In one research study, he and his colleagues took skin cells from schizophrenia patients and converted them into stem cells, then analyzed their potential.
“We essentially had cultures of patient neurons in a dish that we could test for certain drugs and analyze for genetic effects,” O’Shea explained.
After he graduates from Fordham this May, he will return to the Icahn Medical Institute at Mount Sinai; this time, though, he’ll be working as a full-time research technician. Once he gains enough out-of-classroom experience, he plans on applying to dual M.D./Ph.D. programs in neuroscience and neurosurgery next year.
But for O’Shea, the most rewarding part of being in the medical field is more than translating research into real-life applications. It’s the relationships—the intimacy of patient-doctor interactions and the special camaraderie shared among doctors, nurses, and technicians in difficult situations.
“The relationships that the medical field builds are really, really special,” O’Shea said.
]]>Panelists shared their considerable insights into how neuroscience is reshaping actions police, lawyers, and judges take when interacting with individuals suffering serious mental health disorders, how neuroscience is reconfiguring the law’s approach to concussion and malingering, and other groundbreaking research occurring in the field.
In her welcome remarks, Neuroscience and Law Center Founding Director Deborah W. Denno told conference participants that the event epitomized the rapid development of the shared pursuits of legal and medical professionals to create a more just criminal justice system, and the center’s unique position as a hub for scholars, researchers, practicing lawyers, and judges. Notably, the center is home to the most comprehensive legal database of its kind on neuroscience use in the courtroom.
“Fordham’s Neuroscience and Law Center takes an interdisciplinary and evidence-based approach to studying how neuroscience is being used in the legal system and the real world to assess its impact on current decision-making, as well as to anticipate how this information should be used in the future,” Denno explained. In the near future, the center intends to expand its research into how neuroscience intersects and impacts with civil and corporate law, she noted.
Denno later outlined her research on 800 criminal cases that have addressed neuroscience evidence over a two-decade period during the day’s second panel, “Creating Groundbreaking Research on Neuroscience and Law.” Moderated by Fordham Law Professor Bruce Green, the panel also featured the insights of the Hon. Bernice B. Donald of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit who discussed implicit bias in the criminal justice system. In addition, Arielle Baskin-Sommers presented her latest research on psychopathy and Tom Tyler discussed the implications of adolescent brain development for both the criminal justice system and for schools. Baskin-Sommers and Tyler are both in the Department of Psychology at Yale University.
The opening panel featured presentations by New York County District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. and New York City Police Department Deputy Commissioner Susan Herman, both of whom detailed how their respective agencies are responding to the needs of individuals with mental illness. Fordham Law Professor James Kainen moderated the panel.
Vance noted that 56 percent of state prisoners nationwide and 60 percent of jail inmates have some mental health problem, adding that often the criminal justice system sends these people to prison without “being responsible enough” to pay for their mental health support in prison, to ensure an increased likelihood of success when they are released.
“Mental illness is a big problem in terms of bringing people into our system, and if we want healthy communities and healthy families, we’re going to have to invest money at the local level,” Vance said, emphasizing that local investment is particularly important in 2018 because the federal government is pulling back its support for these programs.
To this end, the New York County District Attorney’s Office is investing $250 million over the next five years into crime prevention strategies, including youth hubs that will provide services to neighborhoods that those neighborhoods specifically requested. Neighborhood residents will provide the services, Vance added.
The New York Police Department is opening new community health diversion centers in Manhattan and the Bronx this year, Herman shared, to provide support for individuals with mental illness. A police officer must accompany the individual—who has either committed a low-level violation or police believe has a mental health or substance abuse problem—to the diversion center, Herman said.
Neuroscience will eventually be used to predict future violent behavior and recidivism—predictions that could lead down a slippery slope, said Leah G. Pope, director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Substance Use and Mental Health Program, during comments made during the first panel. On the other hand, neuroscience could also provide “great value” in shedding light on the impact conditions of confinement have on the brain and also rehabilitation possibilities for individuals with serious mental illnesses, Pope continued.
The conference concluded with afternoon panels on “The Challenge of Malingering: Symptoms Real, Imagined, and Pretended,” moderated by Fordham Law Professor Kimani Paul-Emile, and “Reconceptualizing Concussion in Law: The Increasing Influence of Neuroscience,” moderated by Fordham Law Professor Clare Huntington.
—Ray Legendre
]]>But along the way, he made a deep foray into new technologies that could bring big changes to medicine as well as other aspects of daily life.
A New York City native, Ciuffo shadowed doctors in the city during freshman and sophomore year while also taking computer science courses. His major in computational neuroscience led him to Fordham’s Wireless Sensor Data Mining (WISDM) lab and the study of biometric data.
In the lab, students were exploring the use of smartphones and smartwatches for tracking a wide range of actions, from big movements like standing up and walking to small movements like noshing on potato chips. The devices’ sensors could record anyone’s “signature” way of moving with as much as 98 percent accuracy.
Ciuffo was fascinated. “Our brain-and-body connection is so unique, no matter what we’re doing,” he said.
At the suggestion of lab director Gary Weiss, Ph.D., Ciuffo decided to study something even smaller: the subtle wrist movements that we all make when writing. Other studies of people’s writing motions had relied on custom-made pens or keyboards, Ciuffo said, but he wanted to see what could be done with a wearable device.
With funding from a Fordham Undergraduate Research Grant, he had 24 people wear smartwatches containing gyroscopes and accelerometers while typing and writing by hand. “I didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “Even Gary Weiss was unsure if it was going to work.”
But it did work. The recorded patterns accurately identified the writer 94 to 98 percent of the time. Ciuffo and Weiss wrote up their findings and, in October, presented them at the 8th IEEE Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference, held at Columbia University.
Ciuffo was one of the youngest people there. “I learned a lot of interesting things in the field of machine learning,” he said.
By then, however, he had refocused on becoming a doctor. He works in the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, documenting patients’ medical histories, while preparing to apply to medical school.
He looks forward to working with patients one day, but will also keep his computer skills handy because of the burgeoning potential of biometric data. It could make passwords passé by providing a far more secure way of accessing your home or computer, for instance, and wearable devices could continuously monitor patients’ vital signs and activity over long periods, providing doctors with a wealth of useful information.
“I think there’s going to be an explosion of these wearable technologies that are just going to completely change the way doctors interact with their patients,” he said.
]]>Kundakovic, an assistant professor of biological sciences, is conducting research to understand the mechanisms that drive the behavior of genes. Although the genes in humans are similar, individual genes can “express” themselves in different ways, through either alteration of the DNA or of the proteins that hold the DNA together.
“What makes something a brain cell, a skin cell, or a blood cell? The genetics are the same, meaning the set of genes that we have are the same,” she said. But within that set, “different genes are turned on or off. So, depending on which genes you turn on or off, certain cells will function as say, neurons, blood cells, or something else.”
When spread out, human DNA is actually about six-and-a-half feet long, said Kundakovic. To fit it into a microscopic structure called a nucleus, it’s wrapped into a structure called a chromatin. In this process, some DNA is squeezed tightly together; some not. Kundakovic compared the way DNA is wrapped to a library where some books are accessible while others are stored on shelves that are off limits.
Opening up parts of that “library” i.e., the human genome, to change could lead to developments like cancer or psychiatric disorder, said Kundakovic. There are some life periods with more flexibility and, hence, vulnerability than others, and this is particularly important during human development. The DNA and proteins are susceptible to outside environmental factors that a person might encounter early in life—Kundakovic’s work lies at this level.
Previously at Columbia University, her research showed a connection between exposure to certain kinds of plastics and fetal development. Now, she is looking for connections between abuse and neglect early in life, and depression and anxiety later on in adulthood.
It’s already known that the former often leads to the latter, but researchers don’t fully understand the underlying processes that cause it.
“If there is early-life neglect or abuse, chances are that later in life, the person will be socially isolated. We’re trying to understand whether these two stressful events actually are interacting,” Kundakovic said.
Her current study on mental disorders, which is funded by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, is just getting underway.
What makes Kundakovic’s work particularly challenging is the fact that the changes that she’s looking for are in the brain, and therefore, inaccessible in living subjects. So she has to look for clues somewhere other than in brain cells, for example blood cells.
“If I take a blood cell, and I see some differences in autistic children versus control children, or ADHD children versus control children, what does that mean for the brain? It might not exactly reflect what’s happening in the brain, but I do believe there is a lot of potential here,” she said.
“The idea is that environmental exposures like stress or malnutrition can leave a signature in the peripheral tissues that can capture something also happening in the brain.”
In addition to blood cells from living subjects, Kundakovic has also received post mortem brain tissue for a separate project that will compare the epigenome of neuronal and non neuronal cells. This is important because even within the brain, not every cell is identical. Epigenomes vary not only among cells, but also among different individuals. Successful studies require hundreds of patients, and take a long time, particularly since the field of epigenetics is relatively new.
Kundakovic is hopeful that scientists will be able to identify biomarkers for serious psychiatric disorders before the disorders take hold. There will never be just one on/off switch that will predict whether everyone will be afflicted by depression; rather she envisions a panel of markers that will tip off scientists to a person’s risks.
“There will be genetic markers, there will be epigenetic markers, and you might see brain-imaging markers. We will probably need to have several different tests to be able to predict whether someone will develop this.
“I’m not naïve enough to think epigenetics is everything,” she said. “I just think it’s an important part of neuroscience, and it is very important to understand this in the context of psychiatric disorders.”
]]>Our genes are coded with explicit instructions for not only what we need to develop, said Alma Rodenas-Ruano, PhD, but also when each developmental process ought to begin.
That question of “when” is at the heart of Rodenas-Ruano’s epigenetics research, which she began as a researcher in the neuroscience department at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and has brought with her to Fordham’s laboratories.
“I’m interested in the neurological events that occur during what we call critical periods of development,” said Rodenas-Ruano, an assistant professor of biology. “As the name suggests, these are critical events that must happen for normal function to occur.”
Genes are subsets of DNA that define the fundamental traits an organism inherits from its parents. They are like a code that gives each cell instructions about what to do—for instance, to develop legs instead of fins or to start growing facial hair.
Epigenetics refers to cellular mechanisms cued by external events that influence whether or not a certain gene becomes active.
“The genetic code is set, but which genes are expressed or not expressed depends on the environment.” Rodenas-Ruano said. “For example, the first time an animal opens its eyes and lets light in, this sets off an epigenetic process of developing vision. If you deprive the eye of light, however, the normal development of those synapses will not occur.”
In the lab, Rodenas-Ruano uses zebrafish to study what happens to normal development if these epigenetic factors are changed or disrupted. Even small stressors, such as temporarily separating a newborn animal from its mother (and the same may be true for newborn humans, Rodenas-Ruano hypothesized) can alter certain epigenetic processes and gene expression as a whole.
“Disrupting this system causes mechanistic changes. The animal may behave normally, but if there’s another stressful event later in its life, that can trigger additional dysregulation in the system,” she said.
The potential benefits of her research could provide new insights for the treatment and prevention of neurological illnesses such as epilepsy or schizophrenia, Rodenas-Ruano said.
“Most diseases are multifactorial, and so we want to understand the exact triggers that make a person vulnerable,” she said. “We first have to identify and understand the basic mechanisms that contribute to normal function. Then, we see what happens if we disrupt these mechanisms—both what happens at first and what happens later on in a mature brain.”
Rodenas-Ruano, who just completed her first year at Fordham, is a recipient of a summer Grass Fellowship, a grant designed to support independent research projects by early career scientists. She is currently at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts with a cohort of researchers from around the world. There, she is undertaking her project, “Epigenetic Regulation of the Cation-Chloride Symporter KCC2 During Neuronal Development.”
“This laboratory is a hub for neuroscientists. Many Nobel Prize winners have worked here. Hodgkin and Huxley discovered how neurons fire (action potentials) here,” she said. “They provide everything, from housing and equipment to a zebrafish facility.”
When she returns to Fordham in the fall, she will have her own zebrafish facility on campus. The space will allow her to involve her undergraduate students in ongoing research projects.
“These are challenging concepts, but my Fordham students have been well prepared and eager to learn,” she said. “I hope we can generate meaningful data and answer some questions about this topic.”
]]>Vukov, who graduated from Fordham this past Saturday with a PhD in philosophy, has examined the ethical questions surrounding the intersection of theory of mind (the capacity to attribute mental states to yourself and others) and neuroscience. It’s a field that has relevance to many discoveries being made today. “For example,” he says, “there are now certain treatments that can make your memories more or less salient, or they can even be deleted altogether.”
Researchers think these procedures could help those suffering from psychological trauma. But for Vukov, this raises significant ethical questions. “We clearly don’t want to be people who just don’t remember anything. But what are the limits? How do we set those limits? What are the ethical boundaries here? Philosophers, neuroscientists, psychologists, MDs, nurses, and lawyers should all be weighing in.”
In September, the Minnesota native will be helping students navigate these complicated questions when he returns to the Midwest to teach in Loyola University Chicago’s philosophy department. Having recently completed a study funded by the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities that examined how graduate students relate to Fordham’s Jesuit mission, Vukov is particularly excited to be joining another Jesuit university. He will be teaching several classes in the school’s Jesuit core, as well as courses in neuroethics and healthcare ethics.
Vukov’s new assistant professor position is on the coveted tenure track. “I still can’t believe it,” he says. “I feel incredibly fortunate, and fortunate for the mentorship I received at Fordham and for the support that the faculty members and the graduate school have given me.”
]]>It turns out that when he counseled his disciples, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself,” Jesus was tapping into a concept that neuroscientists say could reduce stress for our hyperanxious society.
At Fordham, Kirk Bingaman, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, is taking his lead from these neuroscientists and arguing that those who find solace in the sermon would also benefit from what science has to say. In his latest book, The Power of Neuroplasticity for Pastoral and Spiritual Care (Lexington Books, 2014), Bingaman suggests ways pastoral and spiritual caregivers can draw on contemporary neuroscience to help their clients and congregants relieve undue anxiety.
“We hear it in the Sermon on the Mount and we hear it in our churches today—don’t worry about tomorrow, stay centered in today. We grasp it intellectually, but how, practically, do we not worry?” said Bingaman, who is also a pastoral counselor.
In the book, Bingaman explores the impact that an adaptive mechanism known as the negativity bias has on our well-being. An evolutionary cousin of the “fight or flight” phenomenon, this bias describes the brain’s propensity to experience negative events more intensely in order to alert us to potential danger.
A built-in negativity bias was vital when humans lived as hunter-gatherers ever at the ready to flee from a hungry lion. In the modern world, however, this bias tends to cause excessive negativity and anxiety.
“[This] anxiety spills over into our relationships with others and with ourselves,” Bingaman said. “It causes us to assume the worst, to overreact to situations in ways such as, ‘Why did you look at me this way? Why did you use that tone?’”
Fortunately, he says, we are not condemned to primal negativity, thanks to the human brain’s capacity to change across the lifespan. With every new experience—creating a memory, learning new information, or adapting to a new situation—the brain undergoes structural changes, generating new neural pathways and reshaping existing ones. This ability, known as neuroplasticity, forms the crux of Bingaman’s book.
He argues that the most effective way to harness the power of neuroplasticity is through mindfulness meditation and contemplative spiritual practice. Through these therapeutic and spiritual techniques, clients learn to become aware of their thoughts and feelings. Rather than reacting to or trying to eliminate them, clients learn to simply observe them as they come and go, without getting “hooked.”
“Thoughts and feelings have a 90-second shelf-life biochemically. So when we experience an anxious thought or feeling, [the reaction]will dissipate from the blood in 90 seconds—unless we feed the thought or judge ourselves for feeling that way,” he said. “The key to mindfulness-based therapy is to let thoughts and feelings come and go without fighting them. This then reduces the limbic activity in our brains and calms the amygdala.”
These practices—which are so well-regarded that they are central to the “third wave” of classical cognitive behavioral therapy—can take a variety of forms and be applied in both religious and nonreligious settings. For example, one might spend 15 minutes each day sitting quietly and focusing on the ebb and flow of his or her breath. Alternatively, one might practice something like the Christian centering prayer, in which the practitioner meditates on a “sacred word” (such as “Jesus,” “God,” or “love”) while learning to modulate the many other chaotic thoughts that crowd the mind.
Bingaman says that these practices, informed by the science of neuroplasticity, will “necessitate a paradigm shift” in the way pastoral and spiritual caregivers approach their work with clients, especially clients whose anxiety may have been exacerbated by their own religious beliefs.
“When a theology views the spiritual quest as a matter of warfare—as a battle within the person, or as a matter of good versus evil and flesh versus spirit—that activates neural circuitry that causes stress,” he said. “If we overdo that construct, the person in our care might see himself as flawed and defective, and that could end up reinforcing the negativity bias.
“Whether it’s therapy or theology, we need to look at the frames of reference we are using to help the person in our care to calm their anxious brain. Some of our approaches are going to fire up the limbic region, and others will do the reverse,” he said. “So we have to make more use of contemplative practices in religious and spiritual circles… They’re not just for the mystics off in the desert. They’re for you and me and everyone else.”
]]>The series, which is part of a seminar for Fordham Law students looking to explore topics beyond first-year courses, will feature leading neuroscientists, psychologists, medical researchers, and lawyers.
The lectures kicked off on Sept. 3 and will run every Tuesday through Nov. 26, wrapping up with “My Neurons Made Me Do It!” by Hon. Jed S. Rakoff, Judge, United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York.
Other class lectures include:
• “Neuroscience of Addiction,” by Fordham Professor of Chemistry Joan Roberts, Ph.D.,
on Oct. 8.
• “The Neuroscience of PTSD,” by Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, on Oct. 29.
• “Will there be a Neuroscience Revolution?” by Adam Kolber, professor of law at Brooklyn Law school, on Nov. 12.
Deborah W. Denno, Ph.D., the Arthur A. McGivney Professor of Law, started the seminar and lecture series, now in its third cycle, to prepare law students for fields of science that are “going to be very much a part of their working lives, no matter what area of law they go into.”
The seminar examines a variety of cutting-edge, at times controversial, linkages—from social and environmental influences on the brain, to the interpretations of neuroimaging, to the prediction of criminality and predispositions toward mental illnesses and addictions.
“It’s important for students to get out of the box of law, branch into other disciplines, and to become comfortable and accustomed to talking to nonlawyers and experts in other fields—particularly technical fields such as neuroscience, biology, physiology, and more before they graduate,” said Denno. “They’ll be working with [such]experts when they are lawyers.”
Denno said she opened up the classes to the public because the lineup of stellar speakers will draw high interest beyond just a student audience; the series has already attracted members of the medical profession and lifelong learners from the community.
“Fordham is a place for the interchange of ideas,” she said. “It’s part of our mission.”
A full schedule of the series can be found at http://law.fordham.edu/faculty/22818.htm
Although the Fordham community and the public are invited to attend, reservations are required.
For more information, contact Denno at 212-636-6868 or by email at [email protected].
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