Northoff Georg
Department of Psychiatry, Section for Neurophilosophy, University of Magdeburg, Leipziger Strasse 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany.
J Med Ethics. 2006 Feb;32(2):70-3. doi: 10.1136/jme.2005.011858.
Progress in neuroscience will allow us to reveal the neuronal correlates of psychological processes involved in ethically relevant notions such as informed consent. Informed consent involves decision making, the psychological and neural processes of which have been investigated extensively in neuroscience. The neuroscience of decision making may be able to contribute to an ethics of informed consent by providing empirical and thus descriptive criteria. Since, however, descriptive criteria must be distinguished from normative criteria, the neuroscience of decision making cannot replace the ethics of informed consent. Instead, the neuroscience of decision making could complement the current ethics, resulting in what can be called neuroethics of informed consent. It is concluded that current progress in the neurosciences could complement and change the way in which we approach ethical problems in neuropsychiatry.
神经科学的进展将使我们能够揭示与诸如知情同意等伦理相关概念所涉及的心理过程的神经元关联。知情同意涉及决策，其心理和神经过程在神经科学中已得到广泛研究。决策神经科学或许能够通过提供实证性且因此具有描述性的标准，为知情同意伦理做出贡献。然而，由于描述性标准必须与规范性标准区分开来，决策神经科学无法取代知情同意伦理。相反，决策神经科学可以补充当前的伦理，从而产生所谓的知情同意神经伦理学。得出的结论是，神经科学当前的进展可以补充并改变我们处理神经精神病学中伦理问题的方式。
