Facebook and the Fusiform Gyrus : A Neurologic Perspective on Social Online Networking for the Cultivation of Global Bioethics
Yes, this title is a mouthful...but facebook, neuroscience, and global bioethics...all in one presentation? who could pass that up? Seriously, these are important things to consider as the world becomes smaller...er socially that is. This was a paper from the recent conference: Global Bioethics: Emerging Challenges Facing Human Dignity.
Abstract: "Online social networking has become a major international cultural phenomenon. Facebook, for example, hosts more than 200 million active users, 70% of whom reside outside the United States. Facebook also hosts a number of bioethics discussion groups, which have the potential to enlarge the global bioethics community, crossing national boundaries and bridging cultures. Online networking offers a number of practical advantages over traveling to conferences and professional society meetings. These include savings in time and expense, immediacy of communication, demographic inclusiveness, greater participation among younger people whose careers are being shaped, and a democratic forum for expression of a broad range of ideas from many perspectives. Some disadvantages include potentially unmanageable volumes of information, vulnerability of participants to uncharitable criticism, lack of participation by older people who could share insights drawn from life experience, dissemination of unverifiable assertions, and overt or subtle commercial influence over content. Interpersonal interaction and dialogue in community are essential to bioethics. Bioethical discourse in the online realm of virtual reality, due to the nature of the medium, has the potential to become more personal, and hence in some ways more effective, than journals. The ability to share facial images, audio and video content, and social as well as cognitive feedback engages social brain systems important for ethical reflection. Such functions include cognitive empathy in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, emotional empathy in the orbitofrontal cortex-ventrolateral region, and interpretation of facial expression in the fusiform gyrus and its connections. An understanding of the neurology of social behavior underlying shared ethical dialogue may contribute to the further development of online media useful in the cultivation of a robust global bioethics community that is appropriately sensitive to regional and universal moral concerns. Online discourse cannot, however, adequately take the place of meeting face-to-face and being present to others."
Listen Now
Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity Site.
Abstract: "Online social networking has become a major international cultural phenomenon. Facebook, for example, hosts more than 200 million active users, 70% of whom reside outside the United States. Facebook also hosts a number of bioethics discussion groups, which have the potential to enlarge the global bioethics community, crossing national boundaries and bridging cultures. Online networking offers a number of practical advantages over traveling to conferences and professional society meetings. These include savings in time and expense, immediacy of communication, demographic inclusiveness, greater participation among younger people whose careers are being shaped, and a democratic forum for expression of a broad range of ideas from many perspectives. Some disadvantages include potentially unmanageable volumes of information, vulnerability of participants to uncharitable criticism, lack of participation by older people who could share insights drawn from life experience, dissemination of unverifiable assertions, and overt or subtle commercial influence over content. Interpersonal interaction and dialogue in community are essential to bioethics. Bioethical discourse in the online realm of virtual reality, due to the nature of the medium, has the potential to become more personal, and hence in some ways more effective, than journals. The ability to share facial images, audio and video content, and social as well as cognitive feedback engages social brain systems important for ethical reflection. Such functions include cognitive empathy in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, emotional empathy in the orbitofrontal cortex-ventrolateral region, and interpretation of facial expression in the fusiform gyrus and its connections. An understanding of the neurology of social behavior underlying shared ethical dialogue may contribute to the further development of online media useful in the cultivation of a robust global bioethics community that is appropriately sensitive to regional and universal moral concerns. Online discourse cannot, however, adequately take the place of meeting face-to-face and being present to others."
Listen Now
Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity Site.
posted by Jonathan Morrow at
5:22 PM
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