Engineering the Brain: Ethical Issues and the Introduction of Neural Devices

Dec. 1, 2015

Eran Klein, Tim Brown, Matthew Sample, Anjali R. Truitt, and Sara Goering

Neural engineering technologies such as implanted deep brain stimulators for Parkinson's disease and brain-computer interfaces represent exciting and potentially transformative tools for improving human health and well-being. But they raise ethical and philosophical concerns about identity, normality, authority, responsibility, privacy, and justice. 

If a device is stimulating my brain while I decide upon an action, am I still the author of the action? Does a device make my personal experience accessible to others? Will the device change the way I think of myself and others think of me? Devices currently under development--such as the BrainGate System of implanted brain sensors coupled to robotics in persons with paralysis and brain-to-brain interfacing--promise to extend and deepen these debates. 

The authors are part of a National Science Foundation-funded engineering research center tasked with investigating philosophical and social implications of neural engineering research and technologies. 

In the "Another Voice" column, Ronald M. Green, professor emeritus for the study of ethics and human values at Dartmouth College, examines the "ethical novelty" of deep brain stimulation compared with potent psychiatric drugs. He concludes, "It is not simply the fact that neural technologies pose questions of identity, privacy, and the like but that they do so with a degree of intensity that creates qualitatively new challenges."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/303381.php?tw