Brain Implants, Neurorights, and the Corporate Race to Decode Thought

Precision Neuroscience, Synchron, Neuralink, and Paradromics are racing to develop brain implants for many applications including therapeutic use, cognitive enhancement, and in some cases for general, ‘everyday’ communication. The Paradromics website, for example, claims “we will continue to expand the capabilities of our massively scalable platform to support a pipeline of future applications that could benefit millions”. Precision Neuroscience celebrates the concept of “decoding the brain’s own language”. Elon Musk’s Neuralink has been approved for clinical trials in Canada.

This study investigates how a robust framework of “neurorights” can be instituted in step with neurotechnologies that are accelerating through breakthroughs in neurodata decoding. However, exceeding current personal data applications, these neurotechnologies will risk the further datafication of human lives.

Equally troubling is the prospect that decoded brain signals could be weaponised for coercive interrogation by law-enforcement or military agencies.

Advocacy is needed for future users now, necessitating a neuro-ethical, human rights
model to be conceived during the technology development, not after commercialization. A recent report by the NeuroRights Foundation states “there is little to no understanding of how neurotechnology companies manage their relationships with their customers and treat their neural data” (2024).

Scholars have examined neurorights in the context of biometrics—especially brain- implant technologies—including Yuste (2017); Michael, Michael, Perakslis, and Abbas (2020); López-Silva and Valera (2022); Duin and Pedersen (2023); Orth (2020) and Kak (2020). Yet a central challenge remains: no reliable framework currently exists for predicting how implantable neurotechnologies will commodify the brain data they generate.

Brain-computer interaction (BCI) is not a new science and technology field, but the decoding of neural data is new. For non-medical applications, the allure lies in the possibility for improving cognitive performance, memory, and attention span. Ironic to previous instantiations of hype, these companies ground marketing on a “not science fiction” promotional rhetoric.
Precision Neuroscience’s chief science officer, Dr. Ben Rapoport says in one video that its tech “harnesses the electrical nature of the brain to communicate with the outside world.
. . this allows people through thought alone to operate a computer to communicate, this is real”.

Meaning-making systems function through social contexts and people interpret the physical world through embodied interaction in ever-increasing technologized dataspheres. How will users’ ‘decoded thought’ data and the practice of using implanted neurotechnologies be protected in ways that respect social-ethical values, human agency, and human rights?

Dr. Isabel Pedersen is presenting this research project at the Canadian Communication Association Annual Conference in Toronto next month.

References

Duin, A. H., & Pedersen, I. (2023). Augmentation technologies and artificial intelligence in technical communication: Designing ethical futures. Routledge.

Genser, J., Damianos, S., & Yuste, R. (2024). Safeguarding brain data: Assessing the privacy practices of consumer neurotechnology c ompanies. NeuroRights Foundation.

Kak, A. (Ed.) (2020). Regulating biometrics: Global approaches and urgent questions. AI Now Institute.

López-Silva, P., & Valera, L. (2022). Protecting the mind: Challenges in law, neuroprotection, and neurorights. Springer.

Michael, K., Michael, M. G., Perakslis, C., & Abbas, R. (2020). Überveillance and the rise of last-mile implantables: Past, present, and future. In I. Pedersen & A. Iliadis (Eds.), Embodied computing: Wearables, implantables, embeddables, ingestibles (pp. 97– 130). MIT Press.

Orth, M. (2020). TechnoSupremacy and the final frontier: Other minds. In I. Pedersen & A. Iliadis (Eds.), Embodied computing: Wearables, implantables, embeddables, ingestibles (pp. 211– 236). MIT Press.

Yuste, R. (2017). Four ethical priorities for neurotechnologies and AI. Nature, 551(7679), 159– 163.