From my mind: Advances in brain technology demand “nerve rights”

Berlin: The turning point of Rafael Yuste, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York, was when his lab discovered that it could activate some neurons in the visual cortex of mice to cause hallucinations. ..

Mice were trained to lick the waterspout each time they saw two vertical bars, and researchers were able to encourage them to drink even if they couldn’t see the bars, the team said in a study on the experiment in 2019. Mr. Juste, who made the announcement, said.

“I was able to show something invisible to animals, like a doll,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview. “If we can do this with animals today, we can certainly do it with humans tomorrow.”

Yuste is part of a group of scientists and legislators from Switzerland to Chile working to limit the potential abuse of neuroscience by companies from tech giants to wearable startups.

Following the discovery of his team, he launched the NeuroRights Initiative. It advocates five “nerve rights” to protect how people access and use brain data, including mental privacy and the right to free will.

“Now it’s the western pioneer era,” said Juste.

In Chile, Senator Guido Girardi is promoting the conversion of these principles into law by legally protecting the proceedings of nervous rights and submitting bills that complement the national constitution.

This month, the National Science and Technology Research Commission began discussing Girardi’s proposal, which received unanimous support from Congress in December 2020.

His office hopes the bill will be adopted by the end of the year.

“If this technology were industrialized without proper regulation and regulation, it would threaten basic human autonomy,” he said in a telephone interview.

Meanwhile, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has issued its own neurotechnology guidelines, said Marcello Ienca, a researcher at the ETH Zurich Institute for Health Ethics and Policy, working on an OECD project.

“Usually people start talking about ethics and regulation only after a big scandal, but at Neurotech we hope we can answer these questions before that scandal,” he said. ..

“Science fiction scenario”

Advances in brain science, such as those made by Juste’s team, have made it possible to penetrate the brain using censorship and implants and gain access to some degree of neural activity.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved deep brain stimulation (implanting electrodes in the brain) to treat a variety of disorders, from Parkinson’s disease to epilepsy.

Also, major tech companies from Facebook to Tesla are working on a “computer brain” interface that allows consumers to control their devices in their own way, while some small businesses do brain activity. We sell wearable devices to monitor.

However, Karen Rommelfanger, director of the Neuroethics Program at Emory University in Atlanta, said the warning of a “science fiction scenario” of commercial mind control is exaggerated for a series of studies that are still very young. Said.

“Yes, science will improve, not worse,” she said. “But how it evolves is just floating in the air.”

ETH Zurich’s Ienca said major ethical issues could arise if the data collected by commercial neurotech devices were widely shared and analyzed without proper safeguards.

“There are already digital biomarkers that can indicate if someone is predisposed to developing dementia. For example, if the data is shared with future employers, they may face discrimination in the job market. There is, “he said.

In 2018, Ienca published a review of six commercially available “neuro-monitoring” headsets in its journal. Nature biotechnology..

He may leak EEG data collected online when the device measures electrical activity in the brain, sell it to third parties, or expose it to consumer disagreement. I discovered that there is a possibility.

It’s also related to Adam Molnar, co-founder of Neurotech startup Neurable, which develops headphones that measure EEG to help users track emotions such as brain activity and burnout.

He said that when Neurable launches a new device, it promises not to sell user data and uses only the data it collects to improve its products.

“We want to be good people,” he said, adding that he hopes the move will help other neurotech companies to get in shape.

Data harvesting

Rommelfanger of Emory University is wary of moving too fast to regulate brain technology.

She works directly with startups working on commercial devices to encourage privacy-conscious and ethical products.

Girardi supports strict regulations. “We didn’t regulate big social media and internet platforms in time, and it costs us. We have all sorts of data, from our location to our romantic interests. Lost control-it’s all for sale, “he said.

“My suggestion will give you the state of your mental data as well as your organs like your heart,” he added. “No one can interfere with it.”

“No one knows what the result would be if we allowed all this brain data to be retrieved. There is an algorithm to determine what’happiness’ means,” Girardi said.

Tim Brown, a neuroethics expert at the University of Washington, said the data currently being collected is not strong enough to do so.

“Most of that brain data is basically noise,” he said.

However, scientists are working on algorithms that decode and analyze data collected from EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, hoping to build computer models that can interpret an individual’s mental state. He said.

He predicted that the same dynamics that exist in the social media and search industries, which companies offer free in exchange for permission to collect user data, are likely to surface at Neurotech.

Brown warns that companies can link users’ social media behavior to images of their brains in real time to create ads and other messages that could have serious privacy consequences over the next few years. did.

He is also worried about how neurotechnology exacerbates existing patterns of discrimination and racism.

His study warns of the possibility of “forced neural intervention” when institutions such as schools and prisons may deploy neurotechnology to assess mental status.

“Is there a situation where prisoners are asked to put their heads in a box and are scanned to see if they are eligible for parole based on the algorithmic interpretation of their brains?” Brown asked. ..

“How does that affect blacks and browns who already know that they are disproportionately (represented) in these institutions?”

Policymakers around the world need to start considering these issues right now, Juste said.

He is in contact with President Joe Biden’s administration and members of the United Nations on issues related to neurological rights.

“It’s not about patching the law,” he said. “These technologies affect the core of what it means to be human. The only way to tackle this is to use new human rights.” – Thomson Reuters Foundation