This chapter provides an overview of suicidal behaviours and suicide prevention strategies among minority groups, including refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons (IDPs). The chapter highlights the interplay of cultural and gender diversity in shaping suicidal behaviours and emphasizes the need for tailored interventions that address the specific challenges faced by these populations. It reviews the existing literature on the prevalence of suicide among minority groups in both high-income countries (HICs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), examining the role of cultural factors, gender-based violence, and mental health issues. The chapter also discusses suicide prevention strategies in humanitarian settings, such as community engagement, gatekeeper training, cultural adaptation of interventions, and the importance of integrating mental health services into primary healthcare services. The chapter highlights evidence-based practices recommended by research, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), and the World Health Organization (WHO). The conclusion underscores the need of a comprehensive, culturally sensitive approach and calls for further research, increased investment in mental health infrastructure, and the development of gender-sensitive strategies to reduce the burden of suicide among minority groups in humanitarian contexts.

This chapter looks at claims to understanding. It begins by looking at the system I have worked on, the lamprey spinal cord locomotor circuit, and claims that circuit function and behaviour can be understood in terms of the interactions of spinal cord nerve cells. I highlight that the claims to experimental confirmation actually reflect various assumptions and extrapolations and that the claimed understanding is lacking. I then look at the Nobel Prize winning work on the Aplysia gill withdrawal reflex, making the same conclusion as the lamprey, various assumptions and extrapolations are used to claim causal links, and in doing this commit various logical fallacies, including confusing correlation for causation and begging the question. I finish by looking at hippocampal long-term potentiation and claims it is the cellular basis of memory, again highlighting that the claimed links have not been made.

This introductory chapter starts by considering the distinction between doubt and denial, and why retaining doubt in science is needed to ensure claims are accurate. It then discusses neuroscience aims and claims, and how the insight obtained is directed at translations to practical use in artificial intelligence, neurology, psychiatry and wider translations to society; for example, education and cognitive enhancement. The chapter highlights the relevance of philosophy and history to science, aspects to which science students are seldom exposed. This includes discussion of science denial by popularist politicians and corporations who try and ignore or dismiss evidence that negates their views or products. These aspects are highlighted as being important to defend science and ensure that scientific claims are as accurate as possible, and that in an age of disinformation we all need to think critically, mirroring the workers’ educational movements of the late nineteenth century.

Can neurotechnologies be used responsibly in the rehabilitation of convicted persons, respecting fundamental freedoms and rights? This is the question we have endeavoured to answer throughout this book. The human rights challenges generated by new and emerging neurotechnologies have been widely noted by scholars, ethics committees and human rights bodies. This has prompted a debate on how and to what extent human rights protect – and should protect – against unsolicited interference with our brains and minds. In a recent report on the impact, opportunities and challenges of neurotechnology in relation to human rights, the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee concluded that neurotechnologies can affect human rights in a “unique manner”. Therefore, developing an actionable human rights approach is of the “utmost importance”. Some of their concerns relate to the potential use of neurotechnology in the criminal justice system, holding that “most of the applications proposed are extremely problematic from a human rights perspective”. For example, they consider that “forceful extraction of information from detainees or offenders through the use of neurotechnology is prohibited”.

The scope of this chapter is to provide an overview of the relationship of substance use disorders (SUD) and suicidal behaviour. The epidemiology of substance use disorders and suicidal behaviour is extensively and critically reviewed in general and clinical populations. The mediating mechanisms for this association are examined.

The findings strongly indicate that SUD is a robust risk factor for suicidal behaviour: It is remarkable that the contribution of SUD to suicidal behaviour is universal except for few variations in the association of SUD with suicidal behaviour between high-income and low-income and middle-income countries.

This chapter looks specifically at neural circuits, assemblies of neurons that influence sensory, motor and cognitive functions. I discuss the conventional criteria for understanding these circuits, which are reductionist in their approach, and highlight various caveats in experimental and conceptual approaches that are routinely followed. I also consider the use of motifs, arrangements of component parts of a circuit that serve specific functions like electronic components. I follow others in highlighting the utility of appealing to motifs, but again highlight caveats of these motifs that mean we cannot assume their presence or the function when we know they are present. I finish by discussing aspects that have been identified over the last few decades that may add to the aspects we need to study, including plasticity, glial cells, variability and ephaptic signals.

There is an established body of research providing clear evidence that certain types of media reporting of suicide, such as sensationalist reporting of celebrity suicides, can produce substantial negative effects. The most notable of these effects is a subsequent increase in the number of suicides. Conversely, emerging evidence also shows that suicide reporting focused on positive narratives of recovery from suicidal thoughts may confer protective benefits and lower subsequent suicide rates. This chapter provides a brief discussion of a possible theoretical mechanism for the impact of media portrayals of suicide on subsequent suicides. It also provides a brief history of research into the effects of fictional and non-fictional media portrayals of suicide, as well as portrayals and discussions of suicide in both traditional and newer media, including social media. The chapter focuses particularly on novel research findings related to suicide and the media. It concludes with a discussion of interventions that attempt to optimize the safety of media portrayals of suicide, and those that attempt to use various types of media proactively for suicide prevention purposes.

This chapter considers reductionism, a major aspect of neuroscience research. I consider reductionist claims that we can only understand nervous systems from knowledge of their component parts. I then consider reductionist approaches and what we have learnt by following them, highlighting that a complete reductionist account of any nervous system region hasn’t been and is probably impossible to achieve. I then discuss decomposable hierarchical and non-decomposable heterarchical systems, and how relational aspects suggest we cannot understand the latter systems from cataloguing their individual components. I then discuss two effects that have received little attention despite being known for decades – volume transmission and ephaptic signalling – that highlight the need to consider component parts in relation to the whole system. I finish by discussing non-reductionist views, equipotentiality, cybernetics, the holonomic brain and embodied cognition, highlighting, as many have in the past, that debating between reductionist and non-reductionist approaches is a false dichotomy.

This chapter looks at social influences on neuroscience. It outlines that science is a social system, and subject to various social pressures that can affect what we study, how we study it, and how we interpret the data we obtain. This includes financial conflicts of interest, claims to priority, scientific prizes, peer review, ‘scientmanship’ that attempts to promote or suppress certain scientific views and scientists, and the recent quantification of social pressures in science from surveys that suggest that social pressures and career structures introduce behaviours that make science a difficult career for those lower in the scientific hierarchy, including racial and sexual biases, and can see those higher up using their prominence to affect how science is done and the claims made. I highlight that awareness of these negative social influences is starting to lead to approaches that aim to address these issues.

In this chapter, clinical practice is addressed from three perspectives. First, what does good clinical practice in suicide prevention look like? Secondly, there are key matters pertaining to how we both maintain patient safety and avoid iatrogenic harm. These include: an excessive focus on risk; the way in which people can and do fall through gaps between services; the continued use of, contrary to evidence, guidance and humane clinical practice, of behavioural management approaches to self-harm and suicidality, and the risks to patients and service users of ‘group think’ and malignant alienation in clinical cultures. Finally, we will consider what needs to be done to maintain positive standards and values in clinical settings.

This chapter focuses on aspects of the philosophy of science, in particular the twentieth century views of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. It briefly covers earlier aspects, including Francis Bacon and William Whewell who highlighted the need for, and influence of, subjective factors in science. In discussing Popper, it considers inductive and deductive reasoning and his falsification approach, while discussion of Kuhn focuses on his view of scientific paradigms, normal science, anomalies and crises, and paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions. It highlights both Popper’s and Kuhn’s views using neuroscience examples, including chemical synaptic transmission, animal electricity and adult neurogenesis. The conclusion is that there is no formal scientific method, no formula for discovery: scientists use, and need to use, a diversity of approaches.

Disease surveillance, particularly of infectious diseases, has a long history. There are many book chapters and articles providing detailed accounts of systematically collated health information [1]. Conventionally, modern health surveillance commences with John Snow’s observations of the epidemic of cholera in London’s Soho district in 1854 [2], culminating in the iconic (but probably ineffective) removal of the handle from Broad Street pump. It is significant that although Snow did not know that the Vibrio cholerae bacterium was the causative organism, surveillance played a part in resolving the epidemic. Disease surveillance has a crucial role in evaluating and shaping responses to major public health problems, as was clearly demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Not all causes of untimely death or ill health are due to the disease of interest, but surveillance provides a firm foundation for public health interventions of all types [1].