Kay Redfield Jamison
"The Ethical Brain is an extraordinary book. Michael Gazzaniga asks profound questions about life, ethics, the brain, reason, and irrationality. His discussion of these issues-ones that perplex ethicists, philosophers, and psychologists-is lucid, provocative, and deeply interesting. This is an important and fascinating book." --Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Robert Bazell
"Michael Gazzaniga is one of the country's preeminent brain scientists and a keen observer of much about human behavior. Not content merely to serve on the President's Council on Bioethics, he took the opportunity to formulate a new understanding of how the emerging field of neuroscience might actually allow us to solve what seem to be so many intractable ethical issues raised by modern medicine. This is a witty, well written, highly informed account of how our brain forms our beliefs and how we can determine what beliefs serve us best." --Robert Bazell, chief health and science correspondent, NBC News

Steven Hyman
"Michael Gazzaniga, a pioneer of cognitive neuroscience, has written a compelling, accessible, and opinionated book that illuminates the profound issues that arise when modern neuroscience intersects with the concerns of ethics, religion, and public policy." --Steven Hyman, provost, Harvard University

Steven Pinker
"A thoughtful and accessible introduction to an entirely new domain of moral concern. Gazzaniga writes with verve and expertise about the fascinating issues that will confront us as our knowledge of the brain expands." --Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Blank Slate and How the Mind Works

Book Description
Will increased scientific understanding of our brains overturn our beliefs about moral and ethical behavior? How will increasingly powerful brain imaging technologies affect the ideas of privacy and of self-incrimination? Such thought-provoking questions are rapidly emerging as new discoveries in neuroscience have raised difficult legal and ethical dilemmas. Michael Gazzaniga, widely considered to be the father of cognitive neuroscience, investigates with an expert eye some of these controversial and complex issues in The Ethical Brain.

He first examines "lifespan neuroethics" and considers how brain development defines human life, from when an embryo develops a brain and could be considered "one of us" to the issues raised as the brain ages, such as whether we should have complete freedom to extend our lives and enhance our brains through the use of genetics, pharmaceuticals, and training.

Gazzaniga also considers the challenges posed to the justice system by new discoveries in neuroscience. Recent findings suggest that our brain has already made a decision before we become fully aware of doing so, raising the question of whether the concept of personal responsibility can remain a fundamental tenet of the law. Gazzaniga argues that as neuroscience learns more about the unreliability of human memory, the very foundation of trial law will be challenged.

Gazzaniga then discusses a radical re-evaluation of the nature of moral belief, as he not only looks at possibly manipulating the part of the brain that creates beliefs but also explores how scientific research is building a brain-based account of moral reasoning.

The Ethical Brain is a groundbreaking volume that presents neuroscience's loaded findings--and their ethical implications--in an engaging and readable manner, offering an incisive and thoughtful analysis of the medical ethics challenges confronting modern society at the dawn of the twenty-first century.