Addressing the Ethical, Legal, Social, and Cultural Implications of Neurotechnology

As part of our effort to support the neuroengineering community, the IEEE Brain Neuroethics Subcommittee is developing a neuroethical framework for evaluating the ethical, legal, social, and cultural issues that may arise with the deployment of such neurotechnologies.

The goals of this framework are to:

1. Describe the landscape of what we define as neurotechnologies
2. Identify the ethical, legal, social, and cultural implications (ELSCI) that should be broadly considered during the research, development, clinical application, evaluation, adoption, and usage of neurotechnologies. While this framework is intended to provide particularly useful guidance for neurotechnology researchers and developers, the broad reach of ELSCI demands that all neurotech stakeholders—including device regulators, research ethics committees, scientific funding officers, clinicians, and end users—remain aware of these issues and engaged in related professional and public discourse.

IEEE Brain is in the process of developing documentation that supports this framework by providing examples of existing neurotechnologies and exploring the ethical, legal, social, and cultural issues (ELSCI) generated by a particular neurotechnology when used in specific contexts (medical, wellness, work and employment, legal, education, entertainment, marketing, sports and competition). Please see the General Introduction (link below) for more information on the overall effort. Links to information on each of the applications are also provided here.

The intent is for the framework documents to evolve as new developments, uses, and issues arise, and therefore we would appreciate receiving your feedback on current documentation. Please note that this site will also evolve as more detailed documentation is published in each of the applications over time. At this time, only the Medical Application is available for public review. Please use this FORM to provide your feedback to the IEEE Brain Neuroethics Committee.

If you are interested in volunteering in one of these Working Groups to help advance the work, please complete this FORM and we will contact you.

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