Neurological and psychiatric disorders constitute a serious social issue, and development of treatment for these disorders is highly anticipated by society. Human biological samples are a necessary resource for biomedical research, and brain banks are an important infrastructure in neuroscience research on these disorders. Some experts argue that Japanese citizens have been emotionally wary of brain donation and that public consensus building is needed to promote brain bank activities. However, there is currently little information for an evidence-based discussion of social issues related to brain banks, and further studies are needed to empirically analyze public attitude toward brain banks.
Given this background, we conducted a comparative analysis of coverage of brain banks in major Japanese and US newspapers as a preliminary study. Newspapers are one of the most popular media in both countries and can provide insight into public attitude. We used the US as the control because it is one of the top centers for neuroscience research in the world. Additionally, we believe that comparing media coverage from the US with that of Japan may provide good insight into the unique context of brain banks as covered in Japanese newspapers.
We identified articles containing the phrase "brain bank" from several major Japanese newspapers (Asahi, Yomiuri, Nikkei, and Mainichi) by using their official databases. For the US newspapers, we searched for relevant articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today (on LexisNexis Academic), and The Wall Street Journal (on ProQuest).
We focused on three main elements in our comparative analysis: (1) the content of discourses, (2) the quality and quantity of the articles, and (3) the context of "brain bank" used in the article. In our presentation, we will provide the results of our latest research. Based on these results, we are planning to survey public attitudes toward brain banking/donation in Japan.