Ethics Review Title Altered functional connectivity to stressful stimuli in prenatally cocaine-exposed adolescents Review The study by Zakiniaeiz et al (2017) investigated how the brain of Prenatal Cocaine Exposed (PCE) adolescents reacted to stressful and appetitive cues. The paper concluded that Non-Drug Exposed (NDE) adolescents displayed less connectivity during stressful and more connectivity during neutral-relaxing conditions, and the opposite for PCE adolescents. Furthermore, for the appetitive conditions, PCE adolescents craving scores were inversely correlated with areas of the brain associated with behaviour, however not for NDE adolescents. The research paper mentions that its experimental procedure was approved by the Human Investigation Committee from the Yale School of Medicine. Although it is ethical for the study to obtain an approval, it is also important to note that most of the researchers and authors are from the Yale School of Medicine. This may result in bias where the committee may have shown leniency or limited regard into the ethical obligations of the paper. I believe that the ethics of this paper would have been at a higher standard if they had obtained approval from a non-associated committee to eliminate any possibility of bias and ensure all ethical responsibilities were upheld by the study to convey accurate conclusions. This study focuses on adolescent human participants aged 14 to 17 years old. Although the paper mentions that all participants signed an informed consent form, there was no mention of obtaining consent from the parents of the participants. Because the participants are minors, they are not considered capable to take decisions on their own concerning the study. It is very possible they did not fully understand all the consequences of the study. This can be a huge risk as the study shows the adolescents stressful stimulating images that could trigger a relapse for the participants who all have a history of substance abuse (Sinha ,2009 ,p.1). However, the participants collected for this study was chosen very well in order to produce the most fair and accurate results. The participants were chosen from a similar study by (Hommer et al, 2013, pp.2561-2573), which mentioned that the individuals had been observed since birth and were excluded if prescribed with medications that could potentially affect their autonomic responses, or if they had, claustrophobia, or any reason to not be able to fit comfortably into the fMRI scanner. In this regard I believe that study adhered to the Kant framework concerning ethics in research by treating their participants with respect. Kant theory is maintained around the claim that individuals should not be exploited, or merely used for the purpose of answering the aim of the study. The paper mentions that it is the first of its kind to produce a correlation study of PCE adolescents using a connectivity-based approach. This could perhaps have been a motivation for researchers to falsify data to ensure its first position in their research. Although the research paper violated some ethical obligations, I believe that the results of the study are accurate and beneficial