Neurology, Addiction and Psychiatry Conference

Neuroethics is an increasingly important field located at the nexus of neuroscience and ethics, dealing with profound ethical, legal, and societal implications arising from progress in knowledge of the human brain. While neuroscientific revelations grow ever deeper into the intricate nature of the human brain, debates on the scope of moral responsibility, privacy, and proper use of neurotechnology become more urgent than ever.

One of the most pressing controversies in neuroethics revolves around the issue of brain privacy. More concretely, with BCIs and neuroimaging tools, personal neural data is being increasingly exposed to the danger of misuse. Whose information is it if the activity of the brain is decoded and analyzed? Do such data available from such scanning potentially have commercial applications or even be mobilized for use by the government without the person's consent? Neuroethicists point out that protecting the private nature of a person's thoughts and neural patterns should be highly valued as such technologies advance.

Another very important area within neuroethics is cognitive enhancement. The pharmacological agents, as well as the neurostimulation protocols, for enhancing cognitive processes-including memory, attention-would raise equity, access, and even the threat of coercion. Should cognitive enhancement be generally available or only available to those who can afford it? Can it also create some new forms of inequality, thus compelling people to keep ""improving"" themselves to keep ahead in professional and educational life?

A further advance in neuroethics deals with the consequences of neuroscience for law, so-called neurolaw. Advances in knowing how the brain works raise questions of how such neurological information might be introduced into the courtroom to help weigh questions in determining criminal behavior and fixing moral responsibility. Ought a brain scan determine whether an individual is predisposed to commit a crime? Should neurobiological evidence play a role in sentencing?

Advances in neurotechnology raise the ethical issues associated with interventions like DBS and, more importantly, the genetic modification of the brain. Such technologies hold out further treatments that may cure diseases like Parkinson's disease and depression but at the same time raise questions regarding issues as important as identity and autonomy and unprecedented long-term effects.

Neuroethics can be thought of as something like a map that would give us critical direction on our trespass across this rather incomprehensible ethical landscape created by rapid advances in neuroscience. It wishes to provide ethical answers that, thereafter, assure the scientific progress about understanding the brain in the best way possible for society, allowing enough tributes to individual rights and human dignity.