Researchers at Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra are collaborating with a new international center that seeks a dialogue between neuroscience, Humanities and the social sciences. This is the International Center for Neuroscience and Ethics (CINET), promoted by the Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno Foundation.

presentation "One of the big problems of neuroscience today is how we get it to the general public, with headlines such as subject 'Your brain chooses your friends', 'your brain tells you who to fall in love with', or 'Facebook is going to read your mind'," saidJavier Bernácer, director scientist at CINET and researcher of group 'Mind-brain' of the ICS. He pointed out that the new body aims, among other objectives, to "explain what neuroscience is capable of doing and what it is not capable of doing in a truthful way, so that it recognises that it needs the financial aid of other disciplines".

As he explained, the centre aims to promote dialogue, training and research that promotes understanding of the brain in a systemic way, in the context of the person: the global functioning of the brain, its relationship with the rest of the body, with the individual's life history and with interpersonal relationships.

Neuroscience, psychiatry, Philosophy, ethics and law

At the head of the board board of directors, in addition to Javier Bernácer, are the philosopher Juan Arana, Full Professor of the University of Seville; Carmen Cavada, professor of Neuroanatomy at the Autonomous University of Madrid and director of the Chair UAM-Fundación Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno in Neuroscience; César Nombela, Full Professor emeritus and researcher in Microbiology, President honorary of the Menéndez Pelayo International University; and Álvaro Matud, director academic of the Tatiana Foundation.

CINET is made up of a team of renowned researchers in various disciplines: neuroscience, psychiatry, Philosophy, ethics and law. Among the experts advising the new centre, from universities in up to eleven countries, there are neuroscientists working in the USA, such as Rafael Yuste, director of the Center for Neurotechnology at Columbia University, or Jorge Sepulcre, from Harvard University, as well as philosophers such as Markus Gabriel, from the University of Bonn (Germany) or Alva Noë, from the University of Berkeley (USA).

Other profiles include Georg Northoff, neuroscientist and philosopher at Chair of research of Mind, Brain Imaging and Neuroethics, Canada; Thomas Fuch, psychiatrist and philosopher at the University of Heidelberg (Germany); and Marya Schechtman, professor at Philosophy and member of laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Illinois at Chicago (USA).

From 5 to 7 November, the days prior to the CINET's presentation , an internal workshop was held, attended by several researchers from the group 'Mind-brain', in addition to Bernácer: José Ignacio Murillo, Francisco Güell, Nathaniel Barrett, Javier Sánchez Cañizares, José Manuel Muñoz...

CINET's objectives are aligned with the mission statement of this group. On the occasion of the questions raised by neuroscience, it seeks to establish a dialogue between the various traditions of contemporary philosophical thought (phenomenology, analytical Philosophy , Aristotelianism, philosophical anthropology, etc.) which, stimulated by the realism of science, overcomes the relativistic or sceptical temptations that beset them and aims to integrate the advances of biology into a sapiential vision of man.