IN LIGHT OF MY TechCentralStation column on neuroscience today, I should probably also steer interested readers to this weblog on neuroscience, focusing primarily on neuroprosthesis.

UPDATE: Just got this interesting email:

My name is Maria Yang and I am a medical student at UC Davis. I just wanted to comment on your TCS article (“Brains: Good, Bad, and Modified”):

I think neuroscience does not receive the attention and emotions that cloning/abortion does simply because neuroscience is considered way too complicated and way too esoteric and way too academic to really affect the lives of the average citizen, or the average ethicist.

It’s easy to explain cloning and abortion in lay terms (“like a photocopy”; “removing a piece of tissue”/”killing a child”). But how does one “simply” explain neuroscience? How does one state in five words or less the concepts of neurotransmitters, inhibition, inhibition of inhibition, etc., and how all of those interactions can produce a desired (or undesired) effect?

That, and do people *really* want to know the intricacies of brain function? People never ask how Prozac works–they just know that it makes you happy. People want instant gratification: just deliver the end result and move on to the next distraction.

While I don’t want to attribute the disparity of attention given to various ethical issues solely to laziness, it seems like people just find it easier to work with issues that can be summed up in five words and generate a visceral response from the masses. It just takes too much time and effort to actually look closer, dig deeper, and understand what a bigger issue may be.

Yes. Also, Hollywood hasn’t done much with neuroscience. If they made a movie out of Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels that might change.