Neuroethics and national security

Neurotechnology and international security: Predicting commercial and military adoption of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in the United States and China

In the past decade, international actors have launched "brain projects" or "brain initiatives." One of the emerging technologies enabled by these publicly funded programs is brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), which are devices that allow communication between the brain and external devices like a prosthetic arm or a keyboard. BCIs are poised to have significant impacts on public health, society, and national security. This research presents the first analytical framework that attempts to predict the dissemination of neurotechnologies to both the commercial and military sectors in the United States and China. While China started its project later with less funding, we find that it has other advantages that make earlier adoption more likely. We also articulate national security risks implicit in later adoption, including the inability to set international ethical and legal norms for BCI use, especially in wartime operating environments, and data privacy risks for citizens who use technology developed by foreign actors.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Use in Warfighting: Benefits, Risks, and Future Prospects

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique which provides unique potential to directly improve human capability on a temporary, at needs, basis. The purpose of this paper is to consider the utility of tDCS through analysis of the potential risks and benefits in the context of defence service personnel. First, we look at the potential benefits, focusing primarily on warfighter survivability and enriching cognition quality in support of command and control. Second, we look at the potential detriments to tDCS military use, focusing on adverse effects, safety considerations, and risk. Third, we examine how the level of risk can be mitigated through military doctrine development focusing on safety parameters and exclusion criteria. Finally, we explore the future prospects of military tDCS use, particularly in terms of addressing gaps in the literature so that tDCS can be used ethically and efficaciously at the level of individual personnel.

Dilemmas in Military Medical Ethics: A Call for Conceptual Clarity

Despite the increase in and evolving nature of armed conflicts, the ethical issues faced by military physicians working in such contexts are still rarely examined in the bioethics literature. Military physicians are members of the military, even if they are non-combatants; and their role is one of healer but also sometimes humanitarian. Some scholars wonder about the moral compatibility of being both a physician and soldier. The ethical conflicts raised in the literature regarding military physicians can be organized into three main perspectives: 1) moral problems in military medicine are particular because of the difficulty of meeting the requirements of traditional bioethical principles; 2) medical codes of ethics and international laws are not well adapted to or are too restrictive for a military context; and 3) physicians are social actors who should either be pacifists, defenders of human rights, politically neutral or promoters of peace. A review of the diverse dilemmas faced by military physicians shows that these differ substantially by level (micro, meso, macro), context and the actors involved, and that they go beyond issues of patient interests. Like medicine in general, military medicine is complex and touches on potentially contested views of the roles and obligations of the physician. Greater conceptual clarity is thus needed in discussions about military medical ethics.

Security implications and governance of cognitive neuroscience

In recent years, significant efforts have been made toward elucidating the potential of the human brain. Spanning fields as disparate as psychology, biomedicine, computer science, mathematics, electrical engineering, and chemistry, research venturing into the growing domains of cognitive neuroscience and brain research has become fundamentally interdisciplinary. Among the most interesting and consequential applications to international security are the military and defense community's interests in the potential of cognitive neuroscience findings and technologies. In the United States, multiple governmental agencies are actively pursuing such endeavors, including the Department of Defense, which has invested over $3 billion in the last decade to conduct research on defense-related innovations. This study explores governance and security issues surrounding cognitive neuroscience research with regard to potential security-related applications and reports scientists' views on the role of researchers in these areas through a survey of over 200 active cognitive neuroscientists.

Deliver us from evil? The temptation, realities, and neuroethico-legal issues of employing assessment neurotechnologies in public safety initiatives

In light of the recent events of terrorism and publicized cases of mass slayings and serial killings, there have been calls from the public and policy-makers alike for neuroscience and neurotechnology (neuroS/T) to be employed to intervene in ways that define and assess, if not prevent, such wanton acts of aggression and violence. Ongoing advancements in assessment neuroS/T have enabled heretofore unparalleled capabilities to evaluate the structure and function of the brain, yet each and all are constrained by certain technical and practical limitations. In this paper, we present an overview of the capabilities and constraints of current assessment neuroS/T, address neuro-ethical and legal issues fostered by the use and potential misuse of these approaches, and discuss how neuroethics may inform science and the law to guide right and sound applications of neuroS/T to "deliver us from evil" while not being led into temptations of ampliative claims and inapt use.

Using Brain Imaging for Lie Detection: Where Science, Law and Research Policy Collide

Progress in the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain to evaluate deception and differentiate lying from truth-telling has created anticipation of a breakthrough in the search for technology-based methods of lie detection. In the last few years, litigants have attempted to introduce fMRI lie detection evidence in courts. This article weighs in on the interdisciplinary debate about the admissibility of such evidence, identifying the missing pieces of the scientific puzzle that need to be completed if fMRI-based lie detection is to meet the standards of either legal reliability or general acceptance. We believe that the Daubert's "known error rate" is the key concept linking the legal and scientific standards. We posit that properly-controlled clinical trials are the most convincing means to determine the error rates of fMRI-based lie detection and confirm or disprove the relevance of the promising laboratory research on this topic. This article explains the current state of the science and provides an analysis of the case law in which litigants have sought to introduce fMRI lie detection. Analyzing the myriad issues related to fMRI lie detection, the article identifies the key limitations of the current neuroimaging of deception science as expert evidence and explores the problems that arise from using scientific evidence before it is proven scientifically valid and reliable. We suggest that courts continue excluding fMRI lie detection evidence until this potentially useful form of forensic science meets the scientific standards currently required for adoption of a medical test or device. Given a multitude of stakeholders and, the charged and controversial nature and the potential societal impact of this technology, goodwill and collaboration of several government agencies may be required to sponsor impartial and comprehensive clinical trials that will guide the development of forensic fMRI technology.

Reviews of functional MRI: the ethical dimensions of methodological critique

Neuroimaging studies involving human subjects raise a range of ethics issues. Many of these issues are heightened in the context of neuroimaging research involving persons with mental health disorders. There has been growing interest in these issues among legal scholars, philosophers, social scientists, and as well as neuroimagers over the last decade. Less clear, however, is the extent to which members of the neuroimaging community are engaged with these issues when they undertake their research and report results. In this study, we analyze the peer-reviewed review literature involving fMRI as applied to the study of mental health disorders. Our hypothesis is that, due to the critical orientation of reviews, and the vulnerability of mental health population, the penetrance of neuroethics will be higher in the review literature in this area than it is in the primary fMRI research literature more generally. We find that while authors of reviews do focus a great deal of attention on the methodological limitations of the studies they discussed, contrary to our hypothesis, they do not frame concerns in ethical terms despite their ethical significance. We argue that an ethics lens on such discussion would increase the knowledge-value of this scholarly work.

The promises and perils of non-invasive brain stimulation

Non-invasive brain stimulation promises innovative experimental possibilities for psychology and neuroscience as well as new therapeutic and palliative measures in medicine. Because of its good risk-benefit ratio, non-invasiveness and reversibility as well as its low effort and cost it has good chances of becoming a widespread tool in science, medicine and even in lay use. While most issues in medical and research ethics such as informed consent, safety, and potential for misuse can be handled with manageable effort, the real promise of brain stimulation does raise one prominent moral worry: it may lay the foundation of reliable, precise and stable manipulations of the mind. This article addresses this worry and concludes that it is not the possibility of manipulation, but the shift in our understanding of our mind which stands in need of careful consideration.

Modulation of untruthful responses with non-invasive brain stimulation

Deceptive abilities have long been studied in relation to personality traits. More recently, studies explored the neural substrates associated with deceptive skills suggesting a critical role of the prefrontal cortex. Here we investigated whether non-invasive brain stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) could modulate generation of untruthful responses about subject's personal life across contexts (i.e., deceiving on guilt-free questions on daily activities; generating previously memorized lies about past experience; and producing spontaneous lies about past experience), as well as across modality responses (verbal and motor responses). Results reveal that real, but not sham, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the DLPFC can reduce response latency for untruthful over truthful answers across contexts and modality responses. Also, contexts of lies seem to incur a different hemispheric laterality. These findings add up to previous studies demonstrating that it is possible to modulate some processes involved in generation of untruthful answers by applying non-invasive brain stimulation over the DLPFC and extend these findings by showing a differential hemispheric contribution of DLPFCs according to contexts.

Non-invasive brain stimulation in the detection of deception: scientific challenges and ethical consequences

Tools for noninvasive stimulation of the brain, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), have provided new insights in the study of brain-behavior relationships due to their ability to directly alter cortical activity. In particular, TMS and tDCS have proven to be useful tools for establishing causal relationships between behavioral and brain imaging measures. As such, there has been interest in whether these tools may represent novel technologies for deception detection by altering a person's ability to engage brain networks involved in conscious deceit. Investigation of deceptive behavior using noninvasive brain stimulation is at an early stage. Here we review the existing literature on the application of noninvasive brain stimulation in the study of deception. Whether such approaches could be usefully applied to the detection of deception by altering a person's ability to engage brain networks involved in conscious deceit remains to be validated. Ethical and legal consequences of the development of such a technology are discussed.

Imaging and imagining: current positions on the epistemic priority of theoretical concepts and data in psychiatric neuroimaging

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

To give an overview of recent developments in neuroimaging in psychiatry and on the current discussion about the relationship between theoretical concepts and data from neuroimaging studies.

RECENT FINDINGS

In psychiatric neuroimaging, broad concepts such as the self, well being, insight, empathy and volition form an integral part of the questions to be answered and cannot be avoided. Although, currently, the intradisciplinary discussion in neuroscience is mainly focused at the methodological and neurobiological level, psychological and philosophical theories are also needed for the interpretation of results. This raises questions regarding the epistemic priority of neuroimaging data and theories.

SUMMARY

In the current paper, we present the hypothesis that there is an interdependence of neuroimaging data and theoretical concepts. An approach to 'correlational neuroscience' with an awareness of this issue may help in avoiding misunderstandings and oversimplifications as well as building an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that is able to integrate findings from life sciences, mind sciences and humanities.