The Oxford Handbook of Molecular Psychology
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199753888.013.27
Full text: Unavailable
Ethical inquiry has followed advances in biology for decades, and different fields within biology have given rise to overlapping yet distinct areas of ethical inquiry. Genethics focuses on the ethics of genetics. Neuroethics focuses on the ethics of neuroscience. The author suggests that developments in molecular psychology, in which the tools of molecular biology are applied to study behavior, bring a new confluence of factors to generate a set of new questions, unique to the combination of neuroscience and genetics: neurogenethics—the ethics of neurogenetics. The questions are unique and novel because they emerge when genetic techniques are applied to the brain: to reprogram neural circuits and psychological processes, better predict behavior, personalize mental health treatment, and understand the Self. This chapter outlines the problem space and discusses specific examples of future neurogenethics research areas: viral-mediated gene therapy directed at the brain, optogenetics, imaging genetics, therapygenetics, and direct-to-consumer genomics.