Neurotechnology has the potential to transform medicine, with proponents hailing it as a promising tool for helping patients recover from traumatic brain injuries, restore hearing, and more.
But like AI, the technology has raised ethical concerns. If used improperly, it could cause harm or violate a patient’s privacy.
Fordham researcher Laura Specker Sullivan, Ph.D., was awarded a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in August to assess the usefulness of ethics guidelines currently geared toward neurotechnology researchers.
“Neurotechnology is this really rapidly growing area of science and technology. There’s a lot of interest in it, and there’s a lot of money in it, so it’s not surprising that there are a lot of ethicists thinking about how we should do it and what direction it should go in,” said Specker Sullivan, an associate professor of philosophy who helped to write some of the guidelines herself. Her research project involves bringing researchers and ethicists together to see how they’re being used.
“Unless we connect ethicists with the people doing that scientific and technological advancement, it’s not going to have any effect. And we are going to have a technological future that we don’t have control over.”
Titled “Principles to Practice: Ethical Guidance for Neurotechnology Researchers,” Specker Sullivan’s three-year project will be conducted with Anna Wexler, Ph.D. assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennslyvania.
Photo by Patrick Verel
A Growing Field
The field of neurotechnology–which involves creating and using technology that impacts the brain and generates data from it—is expanding rapidly. According to the Harvard Business Review, the global market for neurotech is growing at an annual rate of 12% and is expected to reach $21 billion by 2026.
The technology being developed varies from things like a computer interface that can detect (and potentially even prevent) a potential seizure to implants that stimulate parts of the brain to affect mood and cognition.
Over the past few years, Specker Sullivan and Wexler helped create some of the first guidelines for researchers, but Specker Sullivan realized that there was no meaningful follow-up to see if researchers working in neurotechnology were aware of them, reading them, or finding them useful.
Connecting Ethicists with Researchers
As part of the research, they’ll be attending neurotechnology conferences and hosting roundtables that bring ethicists and neurotechnology researchers together”.
“If we find out that researchers are not using ethics guidance for X, Y, and Z reasons, we really want ethicists to know about those reasons,” she said. “We want other researchers to reflect on that and hopefully work to decrease that gap.”
Potential Pitfalls
Privacy is one of the project’s biggest concerns.
“Companies are already getting profiles of what we’re looking at on the internet. Imagine if they could do that with the actual electrical impulses that are coming from your brain. There are going to be intimate things that you would maybe never say to anyone,” she said.
Safety is another concern. The brain is so complex that if a treatment targets one specific symptom, it’s possible that there can be a cascade of effects that are not always anticipated.
Specker Sullivan cited deep brain stimulation, which is being used to treat Parkinson’s Disease, as a good example. The goal is to reduce tremors and allow patients to perform motor tasks. The treatment, however, can also lead to personality and mood changes.
Specker Sullivan is optimistic that ethics guidelines can be useful for researchers in determining whether neurotechnology is good for people.
“If we’re just focusing on physical benefit, we might be thinking about one kind of definition of “good,” but what about other definitions of well-being?” she said.
“Philosophers bring the ability to ask incisive questions, but also an understanding of the broad range of possibilities for how we define ethical concepts, like good or bad or right or wrong.”
