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Interior Traces: The Past, Present and Future of Neuroscience

Last night the Dana Centre hosted the first night of Interior Traces, an ambitious series of events looking at how neuroscience can affect every aspect of our lives. By using drama, panel discussion and audience debate, the aim is to examine the past, present and future implications of this work.

The drama pieces were set in 2030, not all that far from now you might think. First we joined Catie, a middle-aged woman who had undertaken a routine genetic screening test when she was in her early 20s. This had revealed a predisposition for developing brain tumours, but later in life, missing a single screening appointment had a domino effect on everything from her health insurance and job to the demise of her relationships. Nothing she did seemed to be able to change the impending course of events, leading her to question whether certain paths are laid out for good, or could genetic screening allow us to alter the course of our lives?

Mike meanwhile, committed a crime as a child and has since been labelled a psychopath. A life-long course of drugs and behavioural therapies awaits him as brain scans reveal he is predisposed to antisocial behaviour. It was this idea that aroused the panel the most, with Dr Christine Hauskeller taking issue with the idea that in the future, people may be held accountable for their “wrong being rather than wrong doing”, or their predispositions rather than their actions. And where do you draw the line between pathological and diverse?

However, Jeffrey Rosen, a Professor of Law at George Washing University argued that people have been using the claim “my brain made me do it” in court cases since 1990. It appears that the legal system needs to rapidly catch up with scientific technology, given that these events set in the ‘future’ could possibly happen in some form today.

These dramas raised some rather scary points. Should genetic screening become compulsory it appears that it could control every aspect of our lives. Detection of a predisposition to illness would cause our health insurance to rise, subconscious thoughts in an MRI scanner could be held against you in a court of law, and we may start to think that a genetic clean bill of health is actually the most important thing in a potential partner. But Judy Illes, Professor of Neurology at the University of British Columbia urged enthusiasm for neuroscience. She argued that we are not “purely determined beings”, we all have a moral and political choice and science and society should be partners, rather than locked in an antagonistic relationship.

Interior Traces continues tonight (at the Birkbeck Cinema) and tomorrow (at the Wellcome Collection). I strongly recommend you get a ticket and join the debate yourself, but if not, it will also been shown at the Cheltenham Science Festival, and broadcast on Resonance 104.4fm on 29th May, 5th and 12th of June.

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    Maxine Clarke said:

    Yikes! This sounds like a meta-nightmare. By which I mean, people have to cope already with all kinds of unanticipated cognitive horrors associated with inherited and/or familial disease. Just when your legs have stopped wobbling to the extent that you can participate in a useful life, along comes all this stuff. How much knowledge is useful “moving forward” as they say, and how much is just overload?

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