Maureen L. Condic

Last updated
Maureen L. Condic
CitizenshipUSA
Scientific career
FieldsBioethics, fetal development, spinal cord regeneration

Maureen L. Condic is an American neurobiology professor, bioethicist, ombudsman, and appointee to the United States's National Science Board currently at the University of Utah. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Research

Condic received her BA from the University of Chicago, and her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her postdoctoral fellowship was undertaken at the University of Minnesota. She is an associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Utah since 1997. Among her research contributions have been investigations into spinal cord development and regeneration, [4] death determination, [5] ethics around pregnancy, [6] stem cell usage [7] and development. [8] In a 2018 Science interview, Condic was asked why she moved from being well established in her field of neuroscience (with a 2001 single-author paper in her field's leading journal reporting that alterations in a single gene could help adult neurons regenerate, [9] and with two grants from the National Institutes of Health) into the then new field of bioethics. Condic said she moved due to a "heart-wrenching conversation" with a person suffering from a spinal cord injury concerning lack of availability of medical information, combined with concerns that the public was given false enthusiasm for spinal cord recovery after the injury to actor Christopher Reeve. [1]

Since that transition, Condic has published extensively in the field of bioethics, including two books on the intricacies of fetal development and how this biological knowledge intersects with philosophical understandings of human beings, "Human Embryos, Human Beings: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach" (2018) [10] and "Untangling Twinning: What Science Tells Us about the Nature of Human Embryos" (2020). [11]

Government service

Condic was appointed to the National Science Board to help advise the US Government's senior leaders on bioethics matters. Her term runs 2018–2024. [3] She wrote an Affidavit in 2012 with expert testimony intended to inform the Oklahoma legislature on embryonic development and personhood. [12] In 2013, she testified before Congress regarding ethics surrounding a bill to ban abortions past a certain timeframe. [13] [2]

On July 29, 2021, Condic submitted an amicus brief [14] to the United States Supreme Court in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health which attempts to overturn the ruling in Roe v. Wade .

Therein Condic summarizes her perspective on biomedical advances published in scientific journals that have increased biological understanding of human fetal development. However, many of her cited sources are misrepresented. For instance, citing a 2015 study by Lutkenhoff and colleagues, [15] Condic writes that "the largest study to date of human patients with consciousness disorders unambiguously concluded that the loss of consciousness is associated not with the loss of cortical, but rather of subcortical circuitry." This would appear to suggest that consciousness might arise early in gestation even before the cerebral cortex has developed if, for instance, anatomical brain structures situated below the cortex, such as the thalamus, are actually responsible for consciousness. However, this interpretation is contradicted by the very study it cites, in which Lutkenhoff and colleagues [15] endorse the view of an earlier study [16] that the thalamus "might itself be neither necessary nor sufficient to produce wakefulness." The cerebral cortex appears to rely on nerve fibers that project from the thalamus, thus consciousness may be lost when the thalamus is injured, yet this does not demonstrate that consciousness can be sustained by the thalamus alone. [15] Furthermore, the fact that the cortex relies on the thalamus to function is evidence that consciousness cannot plausibly emerge prior to 24 weeks gestation when connections form between the thalamus and cortex. [17]

Condic states in her amicus that "...technological breakthroughs, especially sophisticated brain mapping and 4D ultrasonography, have enabled direct, unprecedented observation of human fetuses and behavior indicating their subjective experiences— confirming that the fetus is living, conscious, and sensitive to pain shortly after the beginning of the second trimester and months before viability." [18] She argues that many of the scientific "uncertainties" that were present when Roe was decided five decades ago have subsequently been clarified by scientific advances. However, these advances in neuroscience do not corroborate her view that fetuses are conscious prior to viability. For instance, a 2021 study of fetal MEG signals found that a signature of conscious processing was not present until 35 weeks gestation, i.e., during the third trimester when the fetus is already viable. [19]

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Central nervous system</span> Brain and spinal cord

The central nervous system (CNS) is the part of the nervous system consisting primarily of the brain and spinal cord. The CNS is so named because the brain integrates the received information and coordinates and influences the activity of all parts of the bodies of bilaterally symmetric and triploblastic animals—that is, all multicellular animals except sponges and diploblasts. It is a structure composed of nervous tissue positioned along the rostral to caudal axis of the body and may have an enlarged section at the rostral end which is a brain. Only arthropods, cephalopods and vertebrates have a true brain, though precursor structures exist in onychophorans, gastropods and lancelets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cerebral cortex</span> Outer layer of the cerebrum of the mammalian brain

The cerebral cortex, also known as the cerebral mantle, is the outer layer of neural tissue of the cerebrum of the brain in humans and other mammals. The cerebral cortex mostly consists of the six-layered neocortex, with just 10% consisting of the allocortex. It is separated into two cortices, by the longitudinal fissure that divides the cerebrum into the left and right cerebral hemispheres. The two hemispheres are joined beneath the cortex by the corpus callosum. The cerebral cortex is the largest site of neural integration in the central nervous system. It plays a key role in attention, perception, awareness, thought, memory, language, and consciousness. The cerebral cortex is part of the brain responsible for cognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thalamus</span> Structure within the brain

The thalamus is a large mass of gray matter located in the dorsal part of the diencephalon. Nerve fibers project out of the thalamus to the cerebral cortex in all directions, allowing hub-like exchanges of information. It has several functions, such as the relaying of sensory signals, including motor signals to the cerebral cortex and the regulation of consciousness, sleep, and alertness.

Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see due to lesions in the primary visual cortex, also known as the striate cortex or Brodmann Area 17. The term was coined by Lawrence Weiskrantz and his colleagues in a paper published in a 1974 issue of Brain. A previous paper studying the discriminatory capacity of a cortically blind patient was published in Nature in 1973. The assumed existence of blindsight is controversial, with some arguing that it is merely degraded conscious vision.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human brain</span> Central organ of the human nervous system

The human brain is the central organ of the human nervous system, and with the spinal cord makes up the central nervous system. The brain consists of the cerebrum, the brainstem and the cerebellum. It controls most of the activities of the body, processing, integrating, and coordinating the information it receives from the sense organs, and making decisions as to the instructions sent to the rest of the body. The brain is contained in, and protected by, the skull bones of the head.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claustrum</span> Structure in the brain

The claustrum is a thin sheet of neurons and supporting glial cells, that connects to the cerebral cortex and subcortical regions including the amygdala, hippocampus and thalamus of the brain. It is located between the insular cortex laterally and the putamen medially, encased by the extreme and external capsules respectively. Blood to the claustrum is supplied by the middle cerebral artery. It is considered to be the most densely connected structure in the brain, and thus hypothesized to allow for the integration of various cortical inputs such as vision, sound and touch, into one experience. Other hypotheses suggest that the claustrum plays a role in salience processing, to direct attention towards the most behaviorally relevant stimuli amongst the background noise. The claustrum is difficult to study given the limited number of individuals with claustral lesions and the poor resolution of neuroimaging.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Damasio</span> Portuguese-American neuroscientist (born 1944)

Antonio Damasio is a Portuguese-American neuroscientist. He is currently the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, as well as Professor of Psychology, Philosophy, and Neurology, at the University of Southern California, and, additionally, an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. He was previously the chair of neurology at the University of Iowa for 20 years. Damasio heads the Brain and Creativity Institute, and has authored several books: his work, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2010), explores the relationship between the brain and consciousness. Damasio's research in neuroscience has shown that emotions play a central role in social cognition and decision-making.

In philosophy and neuroscience, neuroethics is the study of both the ethics of neuroscience and the neuroscience of ethics. The ethics of neuroscience concerns the ethical, legal and social impact of neuroscience, including the ways in which neurotechnology can be used to predict or alter human behavior and "the implications of our mechanistic understanding of brain function for society... integrating neuroscientific knowledge with ethical and social thought".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reticular formation</span> Spinal trigeminal nucleus

The reticular formation is a set of interconnected nuclei that are located throughout the brainstem. It is not anatomically well defined, because it includes neurons located in different parts of the brain. The neurons of the reticular formation make up a complex set of networks in the core of the brainstem that extend from the upper part of the midbrain to the lower part of the medulla oblongata. The reticular formation includes ascending pathways to the cortex in the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) and descending pathways to the spinal cord via the reticulospinal tracts.

A gamma wave or gamma rhythm is a pattern of neural oscillation in humans with a frequency between 25 and 140 Hz, the 40 Hz point being of particular interest. Gamma rhythms are correlated with large-scale brain network activity and cognitive phenomena such as working memory, attention, and perceptual grouping, and can be increased in amplitude via meditation or neurostimulation. Altered gamma activity has been observed in many mood and cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and schizophrenia. Elevated gamma activity has also been observed in moments preceding death.

In religion and philosophy, ensoulment is the moment at which a human or other being gains a soul. Some belief systems maintain that a soul is newly created within a developing child and others, especially in religions that believe in reincarnation, that the soul is pre-existing and added at a particular stage of development.

Prenatal development includes the development of the embryo and of the fetus during a viviparous animal's gestation. Prenatal development starts with fertilization, in the germinal stage of embryonic development, and continues in fetal development until birth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thalamocortical radiations</span> Neural pathways between the thalamus and cerebral cortex

In neuroanatomy, thalamocortical radiations also known as thalamocortical fibres, are the efferent fibres that project from the thalamus to distinct areas of the cerebral cortex. They form fibre bundles that emerge from the lateral surface of the thalamus.

Prenatal perception is the study of the extent of somatosensory and other types of perception during pregnancy. In practical terms, this means the study of fetuses; none of the accepted indicators of perception are present in embryos. Studies in the field inform the abortion debate, along with certain related pieces of legislation in countries affected by that debate. As of 2022, there is no scientific consensus on whether a fetus can feel pain.

The development of the nervous system in humans, or neural development or neurodevelopment involves the studies of embryology, developmental biology, and neuroscience to describe the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which the complex nervous system forms in humans, develops during prenatal development, and continues to develop postnatally.

Recurrent thalamo-cortical resonance is an observed phenomenon of oscillatory neural activity between the thalamus and various cortical regions of the brain. It is proposed by Rodolfo Llinas and others as a theory for the integration of sensory information into the whole of perception in the brain. Thalamocortical oscillation is proposed to be a mechanism of synchronization between different cortical regions of the brain, a process known as temporal binding. This is possible through the existence of thalamocortical networks, groupings of thalamic and cortical cells that exhibit oscillatory properties.

A fetus or foetus is the unborn offspring that develops from an animal embryo. Following embryonic development the fetal stage of development takes place. In human prenatal development, fetal development begins from the ninth week after fertilization and continues until birth. Prenatal development is a continuum, with no clear defining feature distinguishing an embryo from a fetus. However, a fetus is characterized by the presence of all the major body organs, though they will not yet be fully developed and functional and some not yet situated in their final anatomical location.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neuroscience and sexual orientation</span> Mechanisms of sexual orientation development in humans

Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender, or none of the aforementioned at all. The ultimate causes and mechanisms of sexual orientation development in humans remain unclear and many theories are speculative and controversial. However, advances in neuroscience explain and illustrate characteristics linked to sexual orientation. Studies have explored structural neural-correlates, functional and/or cognitive relationships, and developmental theories relating to sexual orientation in humans.

The parabrachial nuclei, also known as the parabrachial complex, are a group of nuclei in the dorsolateral pons that surrounds the superior cerebellar peduncle as it enters the brainstem from the cerebellum. They are named from the Latin term for the superior cerebellar peduncle, the brachium conjunctivum. In the human brain, the expansion of the superior cerebellar peduncle expands the parabrachial nuclei, which form a thin strip of grey matter over most of the peduncle. The parabrachial nuclei are typically divided along the lines suggested by Baxter and Olszewski in humans, into a medial parabrachial nucleus and lateral parabrachial nucleus. These have in turn been subdivided into a dozen subnuclei: the superior, dorsal, ventral, internal, external and extreme lateral subnuclei; the lateral crescent and subparabrachial nucleus along the ventrolateral margin of the lateral parabrachial complex; and the medial and external medial subnuclei

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fetal EEG</span>

Fetal electroencephalography, also known as prenatal EEG includes any recording of electrical fluctuations arising from the brain of a fetus. Doctors and scientists use EEGs to detect and characterize brain activity, such as sleep states, potential seizures, or levels of a coma. EEG captures the electrical activity in the vicinity of the recording electrodes. The majority of the neural electrical activity arises from the flow of current from the cell bodies of pyramidal neurons to their apical dendrites, which become depolarized by excitatory inputs from other neurons. To record the most accurate signals, scientists try to minimize the distance between the recording electrode and the neural activity that they want to detect. Given the difficulty of attaching electrodes to a fetus inside a uterus, doctors and scientists use a variety of techniques to record fetal brain activity.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Crashing the boards: Neuroscientist Maureen Condic brings a different voice to NSF oversight body". Science | AAAS. 2018-11-25. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  2. 1 2 Neumann, Erik. "Utah Professor Tapped To Oversee National Science Foundation, Widely Cited By Anti-Abortion Groups" . Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  3. 1 2 "White House Names University of Utah Bioethicist Maureen Condic to Six-Year Term on National Science Board - Utah Business". Utah Business. 2018-11-08. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  4. ↑ "Condic ml and spinal - Search Results - PubMed".
  5. ↑ Condic, Maureen L. (2016). "Determination of Death: A Scientific Perspective on Biological Integration". Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. 41 (3): 257–278. doi:10.1093/jmp/jhw004. PMC   4889815 . PMID   27075193.
  6. ↑ Condic, Maureen L.; Harrison, Donna (2018-06-18). "Treatment of an Ectopic Pregnancy". The Linacre Quarterly. 85 (3): 241–251. doi:10.1177/0024363918782417. ISSN   0024-3639. PMC   6161225 . PMID   30275609.
  7. ↑ Condic, Dr Maureen L. (2009-04-16). "Does Research Really Need Human Embryos and Cloning?". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  8. ↑ Condic, Maureen L. (2014-04-15). "Totipotency: What It Is and What It Is Not". Stem Cells and Development. 23 (8): 796–812. doi:10.1089/scd.2013.0364. ISSN   1547-3287. PMC   3991987 . PMID   24368070.
  9. ↑ Condic, Maureen L. (2001). "Adult Neuronal Regeneration Induced by Transgenic Integrin Expression". The Journal of Neuroscience. 21 (13): 4782–4788. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.21-13-04782.2001. PMC   6762359 . PMID   11425905.
  10. ↑ Condic, Samuel B.; Condic, Maureen L. (29 June 2018). Human Embryos, Human Beings: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach. ISBN   978-0813230238.
  11. ↑ Condic, Maureen L. (2020). Untangling Twinning: What Science Tells Us about the Nature of Human Embryos. ISBN   978-0268107055.
  12. ↑ "APPENDIX A Affidavit of Dr. Maureen L. Condic, Ph.D. STATE OF". studylib.net. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  13. ↑ Biblical Creation & Apologetics Ministries (2017-04-12), Dr Maureen Condic Congressional Testimony: Fetal Pain at 8 Weeks... , retrieved 2018-12-01
  14. ↑ "Dobbs Amicus Brief" (PDF). Charlotte Lozier Institute. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  15. 1 2 3 Lutkenhoff, Evan S.; Chiang, Jeffrey; Tshibanda, Luaba; Kamau, Evelyn; Kirsch, Murielle; Pickard, John D.; Laureys, Steven; Owen, Adrian M.; Monti, Martin M. (July 2015). "Thalamic and extrathalamic mechanisms of consciousness after severe brain injury: Brain Injury and Consciousness". Annals of Neurology. 78 (1): 68–76. doi:10.1002/ana.24423. hdl: 2268/183269 . PMID   25893530. S2CID   10774807.
  16. ↑ Fuller, Patrick; Sherman, David; Pedersen, Nigel P.; Saper, Clifford B.; Lu, Jun (2011-04-01). "Reassessment of the structural basis of the ascending arousal system". The Journal of Comparative Neurology. 519 (5): 933–956. doi:10.1002/cne.22559. PMC   3119596 . PMID   21280045.
  17. ↑ Padilla, Nelly; Lagercrantz, Hugo (May 2020). "Making of the mind". Acta Paediatrica. 109 (5): 883–892. doi: 10.1111/apa.15167 . ISSN   0803-5253. PMID   31922622. S2CID   210133737.
  18. ↑ https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/185364/20210729171818898_CondicCLI%20Amicus%20Brief%20Final.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  19. ↑ Moser, Julia; Schleger, Franziska; Weiss, Magdalene; Sippel, Katrin; Semeia, Lorenzo; Preissl, Hubert (2021-06-01). "Magnetoencephalographic signatures of conscious processing before birth". Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. 49: 100964. doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2021.100964. ISSN   1878-9293. PMC   8163957 . PMID   34023644. S2CID   235167579.
  20. ↑ "St. Albert Award Archive".
  21. ↑ Institute, Social Trends. "Maureen Condic | Social Trends Institute". socialtrendsinstitute.org. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
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