Protecting Human Health and Security in Digital Europe: How to Deal with the “Privacy Paradox”?

This article is the result of an international research between law and ethics scholars from Universities in France and Switzerland, who have been closely collaborating with technical experts on the design and use of information and communication technologies in the fields of human health and security. The interdisciplinary approach is a unique feature and guarantees important new insights in the social, ethical and legal implications of these technologies for the individual and society as a whole. Its aim is to shed light on the tension between secrecy and transparency in the digital era. A special focus is put from the perspectives of psychology, medical ethics and European law on the contradiction between individuals’ motivations for consented processing of personal data and their fears about unknown disclosure, transferal and sharing of personal data via information and communication technologies (named the “privacy paradox”). Potential benefits and harms for the individual and society resulting from the use of computers, mobile phones, the Internet and social media are being discussed. Furthermore, the authors point out the ethical and legal limitations inherent to the processing of personal data in a democratic society governed by the rule of law. Finally, they seek to demonstrate that the impact of information and communication technology use on the individuals’ well-being, the latter being closely correlated with a high level of fundamental rights protection in Europe, is a promising feature of the socalled “e-democracy” as a new way to collectively attribute meaning to large-scale online actions, motivations and ideas.     

Motor skill learning in the middle-aged: limited development of motor chunks and explicit sequence knowledge

The present study examined whether middle-aged participants, like young adults, learn movement patterns by preparing and executing integrated sequence representations (i.e., motor chunks) that eliminate the need for external guidance of individual movements. Twenty-four middle-aged participants (aged 55–62) practiced two fixed key press sequences, one including three and one including six key presses in the discrete sequence production task. Their performance was compared with that of 24 young adults (aged 18–28). In the middle-aged participants motor chunks as well as explicit sequence knowledge appeared to be less developed than in the young adults. This held especially with respect to the unstructured 6-key sequences in which most middle-aged did not develop independence of the key-specific stimuli and learning seems to have been based on associative learning. These results are in line with the notion that sequence learning involves several mechanisms and that aging affects the relative contribution of these mechanisms.     

The premotor theory of attention and the Simon effect

In the paper by Hommel (2011-this issue), the roles of the theory of event coding (TEC) and the premotor theory of attention (PMTA) for the Simon effect were considered. PMTA was treated by Hommel in terms of the proposal that attentional orienting can be viewed as the preparation of a saccade towards a certain location, and was dismissed as providing no useful contribution for an attentional explanation of the Simon effect. Here we considered a more recent and broader conception of the PMTA, compared this approach with TEC, and confronted both approaches with a few studies focusing on the role of spatial attention for the Simon effect. It was argued that PMTA may account more easily for various studies examining the influence of spatial attention on the Simon effect. We concluded our paper by listing some elements that an overall encompassing theory on the Simon effect should contain.     

Interhemispheric dissociation of expressive and receptive language functions in patients with complex-partial seizures: An amobarbital study

Bilateral intracarotid amobarbital procedures (IAP) were performed in 144 patients with medically intractable complex-partial seizures. As a result of language testing, 29 patients (20.1%) were found to have bilateral language representation to different degrees. In four (2.8%) of these patients--all right-handers with early onset of epilepsy and/or evidence of early brain damage--there was strong evidence of an interhemispheric dissociation of expressive and receptive language functions. Two of these patients had circumscribed temporal foci (one left, one right), and receptive language functions were represented in the hemisphere contralateral to the focus. One patient with a right frontal focus showed left-hemisphere dominance for expressive functions, while the fourth patient exhibited left-hemisphere dominance for receptive functions associated with a right temporo-parietal focus. It is argued that in these four cases the circumscribed functional and/or structural impairments have led to a shift of the anatomically associated language functions to the opposite hemisphere (rather than to neighboring regions of the same hemisphere). These findings substantiate the hypothesis that in special circumstances the anterior (expressive) language area can be located in one hemisphere and the posterior (receptive) area in the other.     

Teaching Bioethics to a Large Number of Biology and Pharma Students: Lessons Learned

To be made aware of bioethical issues related to their disciplines, undergraduate students in biology and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Basel are required to enroll in the bioethics course called “Introduction to Bioethics”. This article describes the chances and challenges faced when teaching a large number of undergraduate biology and pharmaceutical sciences students. Attention is drawn to the relevance and specific ethical issues that biology and pharmaceutical sciences students may be confronted with and to how these could be integrated into ethics curricula. Results from a survey addressing the knowledge and opinion of students taking the course in spring semester 2012, 2013, and 2014 are presented and discussed. Finally, we describe the lessons learned and how we have improved the course based on students’ feedback throughout the following years.     

Ethical Design of Intelligent Assistive Technologies for Dementia: A Descriptive Review

The use of Intelligent Assistive Technology (IAT) in dementia care opens the prospects of reducing the global burden of dementia and enabling novel opportunities to improve the lives of dementia patients. However, with current adoption rates being reportedly low, the potential of IATs might remain under-expressed as long as the reasons for suboptimal adoption remain unaddressed. Among these, ethical and social considerations are critical. This article reviews the spectrum of IATs for dementia and investigates the prevalence of ethical considerations in the design of current IATs. Our screening shows that a significant portion of current IATs is designed in the absence of explicit ethical considerations. These results suggest that the lack of ethical consideration might be a codeterminant of current structural limitations in the translation of IATs from designing labs to bedside. Based on these data, we call for a coordinated effort to proactively incorporate ethical considerations early in the design and development of new products.     

Testing the dopamine overdose hypothesis in action control: A study in people with Parkinson's disease

Prior work on patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) has shown that the administration of dopaminergic medication in the early to intermediate stages of PD benefits (motor) functions associated with the dopamine-depleted dorsal striatal circuitry but may ‘overdose’ and interfere with (cognitive) functions associated with the relatively intact ventral striatal circuitry. The present study aimed to elucidate this so-called dopamine overdose hypothesis for the action control domain. Using a within-subject design in a sample of 13 people with PD, we evaluated the effect of dopaminergic medication on two cognitive processes underlying goal-directed behaviour, namely action selection and initiation through event binding and conflict adaptation. We also investigated whether individual differences in the magnitude of medication effects were associated across these processes. Results showed no indications that dopaminergic medication affects action selection and initiation or conflict adaptation in PD patients. Additionally, we observed no correlations between both cognitive processes nor between individual differences in medication effects. Our findings do not support the notion that dopaminergic medication modulates action control processes, suggesting that the dopamine overdose hypothesis may only apply to a specific set of cognitive processes and should potentially be refined.     

Defining Nano,Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine: Why Should It Matter?

Nanotechnology, which involves manipulation of matter on a ‘nano’ scale, is considered to be a key enabling technology. Medical applications of nanotechnology (commonly known as nanomedicine) are expected to significantly improve disease diagnostic and therapeutic modalities and subsequently reduce health care costs. However, there is no consensus on the definition of nanotechnology or nanomedicine, and this stems from the underlying debate on defining ‘nano’. This paper aims to present the diversity in the definition of nanomedicine and its impact on the translation of basic science research in nanotechnology into clinical applications. We present the insights obtained from exploratory qualitative interviews with 46 stakeholders involved in translational nanomedicine from Europe and North America. The definition of nanomedicine has implications for many aspects of translational research including: fund allocation, patents, drug regulatory review processes and approvals, ethical review processes, clinical trials and public acceptance. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the field and common interest in developing effective clinical applications, it is important to have honest and transparent communication about nanomedicine, its benefits and potential harm. A clear and consistent definition of nanomedicine would significantly facilitate trust among various stakeholders including the general public while minimizing the risk of miscommunication and undue fear of nanotechnology and nanomedicine.     

The premotor theory of attention as an account for the Simon effect

The Simon effect refers to the phenomenon that responses are faster when the irrelevant location of a stimulus corresponds with the response location than when these locations do not correspond. In the current paper we examined the viability of an updated version of the premotor theory of attention (PMTA) as an account for the Simon effect. Two predictions were evaluated. First, in the case of focused attention at the relevant target position a strong reduction of the Simon effect should be observed as the Simon effect according to PMTA crucially depends on attentional orienting. Secondly, if attention is directed towards a location then this orienting by itself should already be sufficient for producing a Simon effect, as stimulus presence is not required. Our data confirmed these predictions thereby supporting the relevance of the PMTA for the Simon effect.     

A key role for experimental task performance: effects of math talent, gender and performance on the neural correlates of mental rotation

The neurophysiological mechanisms underlying superior cognitive performance are a research area of high interest. The majority of studies on the brain-performance relationship assessed the effects of capability-related group factors (e.g. talent, gender) on task-related brain activations while only few studies examined the effect of the inherent experimental task performance factor. In this functional MRI study, we combined both approaches and simultaneously assessed the effects of three relatively independent factors on the neurofunctional correlates of mental rotation in same-aged adolescents: math talent (gifted/controls: 17/17), gender (male/female: 16/18) and experimental task performance (median split on accuracy; high/low: 17/17). Better experimental task performance of mathematically gifted vs. control subjects and male vs. female subjects validated the selected paradigm. Activation of the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) was identified as a common effect of mathematical giftedness, gender and experimental task performance. However, multiple linear regression analyses (stepwise) indicated experimental task performance as the only predictor of parietal activations. In conclusion, increased activation of the IPL represents a positive neural correlate of mental rotation performance, irrespective of but consistent with the obtained neurocognitive and behavioral effects of math talent and gender. As experimental performance may strongly affect task-related activations this factor needs to be considered in capability-related group comparison studies on the brain-performance relationship.