(I must confess that I wasn’t expecting this course posts – to be so massively “into humanities”, I mean, so much “ethics”, little “neuro”. I know that almost all colleagues are from Humanities Background) – I myself came from a Linguistics graduation, but at that time all that cognitive enhancement talk was given me the chill’s; I couldn’t help but had that Gattaca Feeling . But yes, Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it – Salvador Dali! And I was just in need of a course on neuroanatomy or physiology to take me from my “wonder world of theory” and try to learn how the body works and what it is capable of. Now that I’m SUPPOSEDLY able to see theory and practice I agree with the authors when they said that we are not the same after a glass of wine, a trip, that we are already trying to improve ourselves by doing plastic surgeries – just loooooved Steven Pinker’s comments on modern, post-modern aesthetics notion – and the other part think that’s ok, but uh-oh, we shouldn’t improve further cause further is bad, is unworthy…based on what? Religion? False morals? We should close our eyes to a possible link between breast implant and risk of committing suicide but found it completely odd that a student may want to enlarge…his…work memory, cognitive capacity?! Well, I had an experience with a close friend who is really brilliant but the fact that “I’m the second best at my laboratory and I have this need to be the top first in everything not to feel miserable” lead her to try and get Ritalin… THAT is pathological and she should get to a psychiatry instead, as well as women that are more prone to suicide or start drug and/or alcohol abuse BEFORE receiving a breast implant.

The genomic technology is a marvelous contribution to neurosciences and it enables us to progress in the genetics of psychiatric disorders. The previous knowledge of biological markers in an individual helps to better diagnosis the psychiatric disorders. With such information:

• physiopathology and genetics may help to identify  diseases subtypes, increasingly the clinical homogeneity of the sample and defining phenotypes (any observable characteristic or trait of an organism) more accessible to the investigation, alas! selecting candidate genes;
• more efficient medication might be produced by pharmacogenetic;
• more knowledge of the biological bases and improvement of new treatments.

…ahhhhhh, all is marvelous, all is about theory and practice! And just let me give you an example of a friend’s PhD at neurosciences program; she’s studying IF there’s possible links  between sexual aggressors and genetic markers.  She’ll conclude it at the Faculty at Humanities Sciences of UFMG and she’ll probably receive death threats hahahah for people there would probably find it irresistible to assume she is a reductionist. No she’s not. She’s a neuroscientist and she’s just trying to verify if there’s a biological marker and a biological marker is almost nothing without the environment in which the individual is inserted. Suppose she finds it. Would that be a real harm to society? Would be fair to sacrifice human rights, human dignity, fundamental freedom  for the “sake” of the society? Concrete situations are indeed harder.

And Oh well… better I come back to laboratory again.