ArticleFrontiers in neuroscience2018
Freedom of Thought and Mental Integrity: The Moral Requirements for Any Neural Prosthesis.
Article in Frontiers in neuroscience, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ethical gaps in closed-loop neurotechnology: a scoping review.NPJ digital medicine · 2025Article
- Comparative analysis of media coverage concerning the social implications on three life sciences in Japan during 1991-2020.Frontiers in sociology · 2025Article
- Right to mental integrity and neurotechnologies: implications of the extended mind thesis.Journal of medical ethics · 2024Article
- Chilean Supreme Court ruling on the protection of brain activity: neurorights, personal data protection, and neurodata.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Ethical considerations for integrating multimodal computer perception and neurotechnology.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Article
- Persuasive Technology and computational manipulation: hypernudging out of mental self-determination.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2023Review
- Article
- How to deal with mind-reading technologies.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Closed-Loop Brain Devices in Offender Rehabilitation: Autonomy, Human Rights, and Accountability.Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees · 2021Article
- Forensic Brain-Reading and Mental Privacy in European Human Rights Law: Foundations and Challenges.Neuroethics · 2021Article
- On Neurorights.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Review
- Affective Brain-Computer Music Interfaces-Drivers and Implications.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Article
- What Should We Do With People Who Cannot or Do Not Want to Be Protected From Neurotechnological Threats?Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Article
- Brain-Machine Interfaces as Commodities: Exchanging Mind for Matter.The Linacre quarterly · 2020Article
- Wired Emotions: Ethical Issues of Affective Brain-Computer Interfaces.Science and engineering ethics · 2020Article
- Souled out of rights? - predicaments in protecting the human spirit in the age of neuromarketing.Life sciences, society and policy · 2019Review
- Transcending the brain: is there a cost to hacking the nervous system?Brain communications · 2019Review
- Multi-Person Brain-To-Brain Interfaces: Ethical Issues.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There are many kinds of neural prostheses available or being researched today. In most cases they are intended to cure or improve the condition of patients affected by some cerebral deficiency. In other cases, their goal is to provide new means to maintain or improve an individual's normal performance. In all these circumstances, one of the possible risks is that of violating the privacy of brain contents (which partly coincide with mental contents) or of depriving individuals of full control over their thoughts (mental states), as the latter are at least partly detectable by new prosthetic technologies. Given the (ethical) premise that the absolute privacy and integrity of the most relevant part of one's brain data is (one of) the most valuable and inviolable human right(s), I argue that a (technical) principle should guide the design and regulation of new neural prostheses. The premise is justified by the fact that whatever the coercion, the threat or the violence undergone, the person can generally preserve a "private repository" of thought in which to defend her convictions and identity, her dignity, and autonomy. Without it, the person may end up in a state of complete subjection to other individuals. The following functional principle is that neural prostheses should be technically designed and built so as to prevent such outcomes. They should: (a) incorporate systems that can find and signal the unauthorized detection, alteration, and diffusion of brain data and brain functioning; (b) be able to stop any unauthorized detection, alteration, and diffusion of brain data. This should not only regard individual devices, but act as a general (technical) operating principle shared by all interconnected systems that deal with decoding brain activity and brain functioning.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.