Increasingly, national governments across the globe are prioritizing investments in neuroscience. Currently, seven active or in-development national-level brain research initiatives exist, spanning ...four continents. Engaging with the underlying values and ethical concerns that drive brain research across cultural and continental divides is critical to future research. Culture influences what kinds of science are supported and where science can be conducted through ethical frameworks and evaluations of risk. Neuroscientists and philosophers alike have found themselves together encountering perennial questions; these questions are engaged by the field of neuroethics, related to understanding of the nature of the self and identity, the existence and meaning of free will, defining the role of reason in human behavior, and more. With this Perspective article, we aim to prioritize and advance to the foreground a list of neuroethics questions for neuroscientists operating in the context of these international brain initiatives.
Neuroscience is a national priority across the globe necessitating engagement with the underlying cultural and ethical values that drive brain research. We offer a list of neuroethics questions for neuroscientists to advance and accelerate an ethically tenable globalized neuroscience.
Ethical reflection on Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a priority. In this article, we propose a methodological model for a comprehensive ethical analysis of some uses of AI, notably as a ...replacement of human actors in specific activities. We emphasize the need for conceptual clarification of relevant key terms (e.g., intelligence) in order to undertake such reflection. Against that background, we distinguish two levels of ethical analysis, one practical and one theoretical. Focusing on the state of AI at present, we suggest that regardless of the presence of intelligence, the lack of morally relevant features calls for caution when considering the role of AI in some specific human activities.
In this article, we present and analyse the concept of Digital Twin (DT) linked to distinct types of objects (artefacts, natural, inanimate or living) and examine the challenges involved in creating ...them from a fundamental neuroethics approach that emphasises conceptual analyses. We begin by providing a brief description of DTs and their initial development as models of artefacts and physical inanimate objects, identifying core challenges in building these tools and noting their intended benefits. Next, we describe attempts to build DTs of model living entities, such as hearts, highlighting the novel challenges raised by this shift from DTs of inanimate to DTs of living objects. Against that background, we give an account of contemporary research aiming to develop DTs of the human brain by building "virtual brains", e.g. the simulation engine The Virtual Brain (TVB) as it is carried out in the European Human Brain Project. Since the brain is structurally and functionally the most complex organ in the human body, and our integrated knowledge of its functional architecture remains limited in spite of recent neuroscientific advances, the attempts to create virtual copies of the human brain are correspondingly challenging. We suggest that a clear scientific theoretical structure, conceptual clarity and transparency regarding the methods and goals of this technological development are necessary prerequisites in order to make the project of constructing virtual brains a theoretically promising and socially beneficial scientific, technological and philosophical enterprise.
Responsible Research and Innovation is promoted by research funders and scientific communities as a way to place societal needs and values at the centre of research and innovation. In practice, ...however, legal compliance still tends to dominate the RRI agenda. In order to move beyond the dominance of legal compliance and address a broader societal agenda, this article argues that RRI requires: (1) a productive intertwining of research and practice; (2) the integration of anticipation, reflection, engagement, and action (AREA) in a non-linear process; and (3) an experimental approach. Based on this framework, this article draws on our experience of developing and institutionalizing an RRI-inspired approach to address dual-use and misuse issues in the EU-funded Human Brain Project. Our experience suggests that the four dimensions of the AREA framework work better not as separate stages but rather being flexibly intertwined to enable experimentation, learning, and dialogue.
Contemporary ethical analysis of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing rapidly. One of its most recognizable outcomes is the publication of a number of ethics guidelines that, intended to guide ...governmental policy, address issues raised by AI design, development, and implementation and generally present a set of recommendations. Here we propose two things: first, regarding content, since some of the applied issues raised by AI are related to fundamental questions about topics like intelligence, consciousness, and the ontological and ethical status of humans, among others, the treatment of these issues would benefit from interfacing with neuroethics that has been addressing those same issues in the context of brain research. Second, the identification and management of some of the practical ethical challenges raised by AI would be enriched by embracing the methodological resources used in neuroethics. In particular, we focus on the methodological distinction between conceptual and action-oriented neuroethical approaches. We argue that the normative (often principles-oriented) discussion about AI will benefit from further integration of conceptual analysis, including analysis of some operative assumptions, their meaning in different contexts, and their mutual relevance in order to avoid misplaced or disproportionate concerns and achieve a more realistic and useful approach to identifying and managing the emerging ethical issues.
Within the last decades, brain science has been offering new insights into the relationship among diverse psychological processes and the neural correlates of our moral thought and behavior. Despite ...the distinction between the explanatory/descriptive nature of science and the normative nature of morality, some neuroethicists have claimed that neuroscientific findings have normative implications. In this paper, I identify three interpretations of the claim. The first focuses on neuroscience’s role in explaining the origin of morality and of moral values and how neurobiology is the bases of moral behavior. A second version is about the role that neuroscientific knowledge can play in showing the psychological plausibility of the moral psychology underlying some ethical approaches. Finally, a third version advances that neuroscience could play a role in determining the moral plausibility of some normative approaches. My aim is to delineate each version and highlight the issues raised to suggest that while neuroscience might provide information regarding the nature of moral reasoning, its role in the normative discussion itself is still quite limited.
Drawing on more than eight years working to implement Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in the Human Brain Project, a large EU-funded research project that brings together neuroscience, ...computing, social sciences, and the humanities, and one of the largest investments in RRI in one project, this article offers insights on RRI and explores its possible future. We focus on the question of how RRI can have long-lasting impact and persist beyond the time horizon of funded projects. For this purpose, we suggest the concept of ‘responsibility by design’ which is intended to encapsulate the idea of embedding RRI in research and innovation in a way that makes it part of the fabric of the resulting outcomes, in our case, a distributed European Research Infrastructure.
Neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders (NPD), also sometimes referred to as psychosurgery, is rapidly evolving, with new techniques and indications being investigated actively. Many within the field ...have suggested that some form of guidelines or regulations are needed to help ensure that a promising field develops safely. Multiple countries have enacted specific laws regulating NPD. This article reviews NPD-specific laws drawn from North and South America, Asia and Europe, in order to identify the typical form and contents of these laws and to set the groundwork for the design of an optimal regulation for the field. Key challenges for this design that are revealed by the review are how to define the scope of the law (what should be regulated), what types of regulations are required (eligibility criteria, approval procedures, data collection, and oversight mechanisms), and how to approach international harmonization given the potential migration of researchers and patients.
The recently published Guidelines on Disorders of Consciousness (DoCs) by the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) and by the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) in collaboration with the American ...Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) stand as the most ambitious international attempts to provide clear and standardized recommendations to clinicians working with patients with DoCs. They offer an updated, timely, and wide-ranging list of recommendations for the diagnosis, prognosis, and clinical care of affected patients. However, while commendable, the guidelines pose a number of questions including some related to the practical implementation of their recommendations. The paper introduces the Distributed Responsibility Model as a tool for maximizing the impact of recommendations in clinical practice
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