Neuroimaging and neuroethics: imaging the ethics in neuroscience

This paper outlines the topics that are on the intersection of neuroethics and neuroimaging domain.

An extensive search through Medline bibliographic database was performed for a period of 12 years (1997-2009), using a combination of 3 keywords ("ethics", "neuroethics", "neuroimaging"). The search returned 119 indexed articles, of which 102 were found relevant. The articles were classified in two main categories tackling ethical challenges in basic research (55 papers) and applied clinical research and practice (39 papers).

For each of the categories, the majority of articles came under one of the following topics--the neural basis of emotion, reasoning and personality (30 papers) and ethics of neuroimaging in disorders of consciousness (15 papers). The appointed topics stand at the very intersection of the neuroethics and neuroimaging domain, evidencing their strong interdependent relationship. Furthermore, the number of topics and corresponding articles has been steadily increasing over the years (minimal in 1997, maximal in 2009). These data are in good acconcordance with other scientific findings. Also, they correspond to the period of progress in the investigated disciplines, giving rise to the fact that future advances in neuroethics are in strong correlation to the advances of neuroimaging technologies.