By Cailin Lechner, Celeste Fong, and Winston Chiong
This post is part of a series featuring authors who have received the Neuroethics R01 (Research Project Grants) supported by the NIH BRAIN Initiative. These research projects specifically address prominent ethical issues arising from emerging technologies and advancements in human brain research.
New technologies that modulate brain function have tremendous potential for alleviating the burden of treatment resistant neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, but they also raise challenging ethical and societal questions regarding self-ownership and control over thoughts, emotions, and actions. There is a greater impetus now to consider the potential concerns that may arise with growing societal investment in new circuit-based treatments for brain diseases. Our work studies the ethics of closed-loop neurostimulation techniques across different applications (clinical and research; movement disorders, epilepsy, and mood disorders), us…