Neurotechnologies and Proliferation of the Ideas of Neuroscience

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Abstract

In the article the author analyzed the idea of neuroplasticity-human brain change throughout person life under pressure of social, economic, cultural, and other factors-as a source of the increasing interest in human brain studies and widespread of the ideas of neuroscience within the body of scientific knowledge and beyond the laboratories. An opportunity to influence on social behavior by chemical brain intervention and neurostimulation attracted the attention of the politicians, militaries and pharmacological companies. The idea of brain plasticity was also continued in novel interdisciplinary research areas-social cognitive and affective neuroscience, cultural neuroscience, neuroeconomics, neurosociology, and others. This whole positive trend has a flaw. The transition from neuroscience facts to its social applications sometimes accompanies by information loss and misinterpretation. This damaged neuroscience and lead to dissemination of false ideas, promoting ambiguous social activity, strengthening control over person by access to the information ‘encrypted’ on the neural level. The analysis also sheds light on the background of the discussed recently neuroethics issues.

General Information

Keywords: neuroplasticity, neurotechnology, neuropharmacology, cosmetic psychopharmacology, critical neuroscience, neuroethics

Journal rubric: Theoretical Research

Article type: scientific article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/sps.2017080403

For citation: Shkurko Y.S. Neurotechnologies and Proliferation of the Ideas of Neuroscience. Sotsial'naya psikhologiya i obshchestvo = Social Psychology and Society, 2017. Vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 32–42. DOI: 10.17759/sps.2017080403. (In Russ., аbstr. in Engl.)

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Information About the Authors

Yulia S. Shkurko, PhD in Sociology, Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Technologies, Ulyanovsk State University, Ulyanovsk, Russia, e-mail: yushkurko@yandex.ru

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