New published Commentary: 'Brain leaks and consumer neurotechnology' in Nature Biotechnology,

While the researchers declare that increased private-sector investment in neurotechnology could benefit society, they warn about the commercialization of human brain data and the dangers these trends pose to privacy, security and freedom of thought. The journal Nature Biotechnology has published the study. The authors conclude that as our brains become increasingly digitally available, securing brain data becomes the paramount challenge for technologists, policy makers and society at large.

Collecting data from the human brain is no longer exclusive to research labs and medical clinics. Today, numerous companies sell neurotechnology devices such as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and neurostimulators to the general public, with associated accessories and online services. Consumer neurotechnologies allow individuals to record their brain activity and engage in various activities without medical supervision, such as monitoring cognitive health, seeking relaxation, improving brain performance or playing virtual games. Large electronics and social media companies, such as Samsung and Facebook, are testing products controlled via electroencephalography (EEG) detected brain signals, while neurotechnology companies such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink and Brian Johnson’s Kernel are becoming the “next big thing” in the Silicon Valley. At last year’s NeuroGaming conference in San Francisco, the hyperbole rose to fever pitch, with delegates heralding the dawn of “the pervasive neurotechnology age” in which everyday wearable technologies will be non-invasively connected to brains.

Consumer neurotechnology and ethical issues

These market developments will boost highly needed private-sector investment and open new opportunities for self-monitoring and cognitive training in fields as diverse as mental health and education. At the same time, however, they raise two fundamental questions for society and the biomedical community: Are our current digital infrastructures adequate for this upcoming proliferation of consumer-generated neurological data? And what legal and ethical safeguards need to be put in place to ensure individual rights, such as privacy and data security, are protected?

Three experts have now argued in a paper published in Nature Biotechnology that the commercial proliferation of neurotechnology, if not supported by enhanced ethical and technical safeguards, could pose risks to informational privacy and security, enable more subtle forms of social surveillance and manipulation, and undermine individual rights.

The end of freedom of thought?

Once brain data become digitally available they will add to the existing electronic profiles available online. This will expose them to the same risks and vulnerabilities of conventional digital data, including hacking, unauthorized use and sharing. Furthermore, they could be mined by corporations and governmental agencies to reveal insights about the users’ private domain for commercial or surveillance purposes, especially if aggregated with other data sources. To mitigate these risks, Dr. Marcello Ienca, a bioethicist from the Health Ethics & Policy Lab at ETH Zürich, Prof. Pim Haselager a cognitive scientist from the Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen, and Prof. Ezekiel J Emanuel, a physician and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, have proposed a roadmap for responsible innovation in consumer neurotechnology. «The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scenario» they argue «should not be permitted for neuro-derived information». Their recommendations include making security of personalized brain information a priority for neurotechnology manufacturers, allowing the collection of brain data and their linkage with other online information only upon explicit affirmative permission from users, and expanding the scope of existing data privacy and security policies for safeguarding medical information, which are often inapplicable to consumer devices and online services. The authors conclude that as our brains become increasingly digitally available, securing brain data becomes the paramount challenge for technologists, policy makers and society at large.

Original source

Marcello Ienca, Pim Haselager, Ezekiel J Emanuel
Brain leaks and consumer neurotechnology
Nature Biotechnology, 36, pages 805–810 (2018) | external page https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4240

Further information

Marcello Ienca, ETH Zürich, Department of Health Sciences & Technology, phone: +41 44 632 03 13,
email: