Artificial intelligence in neurology: opportunities, challenges, and policy implications

Neurological conditions are the leading cause of disability and mortality combined, demanding innovative, scalable, and sustainable solutions. Brain health has become a global priority with adoption of the World Health Organization's Intersectoral Global Action Plan in 2022. Simultaneously, rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) are revolutionizing neurological research and practice. This scoping review of 66 original articles explores the value of AI in neurology and brain health, systematizing the landscape for emergent clinical opportunities and future trends across the care trajectory: prevention, risk stratification, early detection, diagnosis, management, and rehabilitation. AI's potential to advance personalized precision neurology and global brain health directives hinges on resolving core challenges across four pillars-models, data, feasibility/equity, and regulation/innovation-through concerted pursuit of targeted recommendations. Paramount actions include swift, ethical, equity-focused integration of novel technologies into clinical workflows, mitigating data-related issues, counteracting digital inequity gaps, and establishing robust governance frameworks balancing safety and innovation.

U.S. public perceptions of the sensitivity of brain data

As we approach an era of potentially widespread consumer neurotechnology, scholars and organizations worldwide have started to raise concerns about the data privacy issues these devices will present. Notably absent in these discussions is empirical evidence about how the public perceives that same information. This article presents the results of a nationwide survey on public perceptions of brain data, to inform discussions of law and policy regarding brain data governance. The survey reveals that the public may perceive certain brain data as less sensitive than other 'private' information, like social security numbers, but more sensitive than some 'public' information, like media preferences. The findings also reveal that not all inferences about mental experiences may be perceived as equally sensitive, and perhaps not all data should be treated alike in ethical and policy discussions. An enhanced understanding of public perceptions of brain data could advance the development of ethical and legal norms concerning consumer neurotechnology.

Human values in a digital age Wendy H. Wong MIT Press, 2023. 280 pp

Big Tech must center human rights in data decisions, argues a political scientist.

Minding Rights: Mapping Ethical and Legal Foundations of 'Neurorights'

The rise of neurotechnologies, especially in combination with artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods for brain data analytics, has given rise to concerns around the protection of mental privacy, mental integrity and cognitive liberty - often framed as "neurorights" in ethical, legal, and policy discussions. Several states are now looking at including neurorights into their constitutional legal frameworks, and international institutions and organizations, such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe, are taking an active interest in developing international policy and governance guidelines on this issue. However, in many discussions of neurorights the philosophical assumptions, ethical frames of reference and legal interpretation are either not made explicit or conflict with each other. The aim of this multidisciplinary work is to provide conceptual, ethical, and legal foundations that allow for facilitating a common minimalist conceptual understanding of mental privacy, mental integrity, and cognitive liberty to facilitate scholarly, legal, and policy discussions.

Neuroethics: Fostering Collaborations to Enable Neuroscientific Discovery

The NIH-funded Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies^® (BRAIN) Initiative has led to significant advances in what we know about the functions and capacities of the brain. This multifaceted and expansive effort supports a range of experimentation from cells to circuits, and its outputs promise to ease suffering from various neurological injuries, diseases, and neuropsychiatric conditions. At the midway point of the 10-year BRAIN Initiative, we pause to consider how these studies, and neuroscience research more broadly, may bear on human characteristics and moral concepts such as identity, agency, and others. This midway point also offers us an opportunity to evaluate the sociology and impacts of BRAIN Initiative-funded investigations to ensure that ethical standards of fairness and justice pervade the scientific process itself. Neuroethics inquiry provides a mechanism to invite relevant, novel expertise from the wide array of disciplines that intersect with biomedicine in neuroscience research. As the BRAIN Initiative and the broader field of neuroscience proceed, neuroethics serves as a central component of neuroscience inquiry to i) foster necessary and beneficial collaborations for responsible discovery; ii) ensure a rigorous, reproducible, and representative neuroscience research process; and iii) explore the unique nature of study of the human brain through accurate and representative models of its function and dysfunction.

Redefining genomic privacy: trust and empowerment

Current models of protecting human subjects create a zero-sum game of privacy versus data utility. We propose shifting the paradigm to techniques that facilitate trust between researchers and participants.

Fulfilling the promise of the genetic revolution requires the analysis of large datasets containing information from thousands to millions of participants. However, sharing human genomic data requires protecting subjects from potential harm. Current models rely on de-identification techniques in which privacy versus data utility becomes a zero-sum game. Instead, we propose the use of trust-enabling techniques to create a solution in which researchers and participants both win. To do so we introduce three principles that facilitate trust in genetic research and outline one possible framework built upon those principles. Our hope is that such trust-centric frameworks provide a sustainable solution that reconciles genetic privacy with data sharing and facilitates genetic research.

Bad nature, bad nurture, and testimony regarding MAOA and SLC6A4 genotyping at murder trials

Recent research-in which subjects were studied longitudinally from childhood until adulthood-has started to clarify how a child's environment and genetic makeup interact to create a violent adolescent or adult. For example, male subjects who were born with a particular allele of the monoamine oxidase A gene and also were maltreated as children had a much greater likelihood of manifesting violent antisocial behavior as adolescents and adults. Also, individuals who were born with particular alleles of the serotonin transporter gene and also experienced multiple stressful life events were more likely to manifest serious depression and suicidality. This research raises the question of whether testimony regarding a defendant's genotype, exposure to child maltreatment, and experience of unusual stress is appropriate to present during the guilt or penalty phases of criminal trials, especially when capital punishment is a consideration. The authors present their experience in genotyping criminal defendants and presenting genetic information at criminal trials.