Are we allowed to do what we are able to do? What principles should we use to decide?These questions have accompanied medical treatment from the beginning. Yet they are particularly salient when dealing with an organ so central to our understanding of the self as the human brain. Constant technological development has expanded medicine s scope of possible interventions and made formerly unthinkable situations probable, and pressure to make decisions in these cases makes ethical reflection necessary. This book takes into account both anthropological models and the results of modern neuroscience in order to develop criteria useful for practitioners in ethically difficult cases."