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Capping off a productive week of posters in the Decision Lab, Narayan Sankaran received a poster award at the International Neuroethics Society’s 2024 meeting in Baltimore for his poster, on “Disparate ethical responses to speech decoding research.” Narayan’s project is focused on (1) unpacking an ethical tension exhibited in many responses to the ongoing development of speech BCIs (brain-computer interfaces), between support for restoration and concerns about surveillance, and (2) drawing upon details of the neuroscience of speech and on community engagement to chart a path forward. Congrats also to Narayan on his upcoming faculty appointment at the University of San Francisco!

In my view, this year’s INS program was the most well-developed and engaging so far. In addition to exciting integrations with the arts, the program included illuminating international discussions (particularly with expertise from Japan and Latin America) and really thoughtful incorporation of considerations of society and the social sciences. Looking forward to next year in Munich!

This year the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting is in Denver, where Manizhe Eslami-Amirabadi and UCSF neurology resident Michael Trainer presented their work.

Manizhe presented “Financial activities and mismanagement by people with dementia as reported in a nationally representative caregiver survey,” which takes a new approach to estimating the impact of disease-related impairments in decision-making. Michael presented “Ethical shared decision-making for novel anti-amyloid therapies,” which applies prior work on tools for improving shared decision-making (mostly utilized so far in non-neurologic disorders) to the complex decisions facing clinicians, patients, and families regarding new biologically-based treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Congrats to both of them, and thanks to everyone who came out to ask questions and give feedback!

Today in place of our usual weekly code meeting, we instead were invited to present at a virtual meetup of the Bay Area Open Science Group, a community spanning UCSF, UC Berkeley, and Stanford. We had a fascinating discussion about open science and different norms across a wide range of scientific disciplines–at a health sciences university, we don’t often have the chance for such wide ranging discussions about rigor and method. And it was flattering to know that people outside the lab had found the Decision Lab Handbook useful!

Another goodbye for the lab, but fortunately Celeste Fong will not be going too far away. Instead, she’ll be joining the Sutter Health Program in Medicine and Human Values as a clinical ethics fellow. We’re super excited that she’s found such a great role for her interests, and even more excited that she’s staying in San Francisco! Since she missed our last dim sum outing, it was only right to go out and reminisce over dumplings and noodles!

Clara Sanches presented her poster at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in Washington DC, on a drift-diffusion model analysis of cognitive slowing in aging. In contrast with many prior studies comparing cohorts of younger and older adults (in which variability in recruitment across cohorts can lead to uncontrolled differences), or studies analyzing parameters derived from a single task, this work analyzes the effect of age as a continuous variable across a single cohort of older adults verified as neurologically healthy, in three quite different task contexts (decision-making, emotion recognition, and memory).

After a one-year hiatus due to a kitchen remodel, we’re back for another Decision Lab BBQ! This time we are welcoming Manizhe and Pongpat to the lab. Manizhe is a behavioral neurologist from Iran via Boston, while Pongpat is a health economist from Thailand via Hiroshima! Very excited to have them join us, bringing their talents and new perspectives!