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The media files for this episode are hosted on another site. Download the audio here.

Uehiro Seminar: Do antidepressants work and if so how?

Series
Uehiro Oxford Institute
Antidepressants are commonplace yet there is much debate about their clinical efficacy. Are they merely placebos or do they have a clinical effect on the way our brains work? In this presentation, Professor Cowen investigates the evidence.
Antidepressant drugs are commonly prescribed for clinical depression but have a rather dubious public reception. Professor Ian Reid has commented that, 'antidepressants are regularly caricatured in the media as an addictive emotional anaesthetic, peddled by thoughtless general practitioners as a matter of convenience, and taken by credulous dupes who seek "a pill for every ill".' (BMJ 2013; 346: f190). There is also a perception that antidepressants, in fact, work only through placebo mechanisms and have no specific activity to relieve depression. In this presentation I will look at the evidence for the effectiveness of antidepressants and the kind of clinical situation where their use seems justified. I will also describe a new 'cognitive' theory of antidepressant action which suggests that antidepressants work through a specific effect on how the brain evaluates emotional information.

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Uehiro Oxford Institute

Uehiro Seminar: Cyborg justice: human enhancement and punishment

We explore some possible interactions between enhancement technology and punishment, reflect on ethical issues that arise as a result, and consider what our justice system must do in order to ensure that it keeps pace with developments in technology.
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Uehiro Oxford Institute

2013 Wellcome Lecture in Neuroethics: The Irresponsible Self: Self bias changes the way we see the world

Humans show a bias to favour information related to themselves over information related to other people. How does this effect arise? Are self biases a stable trait of the individual? Do these biases change fundamental perceptual processes?
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Licence
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Episode Information

Series
Uehiro Oxford Institute
People
Phil Cowen
Keywords
neuroethics
antidepressants
efficacy
placebo effect
Department: Uehiro Oxford Institute
Date Added: 04/12/2013
Duration: 00:49:12

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