---
title: "Neuroethics"
chunk: 3/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroethics"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:23:50.583791+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Brain interventions ===
The ethics of neurocognitive enhancement, that is the use of drugs and other brain interventions to make normal people "better than well", is an example of a neuroethical issue with both familiar and novel aspects.  On the one hand, we can be informed by previous bioethical work on physical enhancements such as doping for strength in sports and the use of human growth hormone for normal boys of short stature.  On the other hand, there are also some arguably novel ethical issues that arise in connection with brain enhancement, because these enhancements affect how people think and feel, thus raising the relatively new issues of "cognitive liberty".  The growing role of psychopharmacology in everyday life raises a number of ethical issues, for example the influence of drug marketing on our conceptions of mental health and normalcy, and the increasingly malleable sense of personal identity that results from what Peter D. Kramer called "cosmetic psychopharmacology".
Transhumanist philosophers such as David Pearce and Mark Alan Walker have argued that advancements in neuroscience could eventually make it feasible to artificially eliminate all physical and psychological suffering and artificially induce states of perpetual bliss. Pearce has stated that: "It is predicted that the world's last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event." Pearce argues that physical pain could be replaced with "gradients of bliss" that provide the same functionality of pain, e.g. avoiding injury, but without the suffering. Walker coined the term "biohappiness" to describe the idea of directly manipulating the biological roots of happiness in order to increase it. However, it is also possible that brain intervention technologies could also increase the possible hedonic range in the opposite direction, and make it feasible to create "hyperpain" or "dolorium" that involves experiencing levels of suffering beyond the human range.
Nonpharmacologic methods of altering brain function are currently enjoying a period of rapid development, with a resurgence of psychosurgery for the treatment of medication refractory mental illnesses and promising new therapies for neurological and psychiatric illnesses based on deep brain stimulation as well as relatively noninvasive transcranial stimulation methods.  Research on brain-machine interfaces is primarily in a preclinical phase but promises to enable thought-based control of computers and robots by paralyzed patients.  As the tragic history of frontal lobotomy reminds us, permanent alteration of the brain cannot be undertaken lightly.  Although nonpharmacologic brain interventions are exclusively aimed at therapeutic goals, the US military sponsors research in this general area (and more specifically in the use of transcranial direct current stimulation) that is presumably aimed at enhancing the capabilities of soldiers. Philosopher and cognitive scientist William D. Casebeer has examined the ethical implications of applying neuroscience in military and security contexts, particularly in relation to neurocognitive enhancement and moral decision-making.

=== Brain imaging ===
In addition to the important issues of safety and incidental findings, mentioned above, some arise from the unprecedented and rapidly developing ability to correlate brain activation with psychological states and traits. One of the most widely discussed new applications of imaging is based on correlations between brain activity and intentional deception. Intentional deception can be thought of in the context of a lie detector. This means that scientists use brain imaging to look at certain parts of the brain during moments when a person is being deceptive. A number of different research groups have identified fMRI correlates of intentional deception in laboratory tasks, and despite the skepticism of many experts, the technique has already been commercialized.  A more feasible application of brain imaging is "neuromarketing", whereby people's conscious or unconscious reaction to certain products can purportedly be measured.
Researchers are also finding brain imaging correlates of myriad psychological traits, including personality, intelligence, mental health vulnerabilities, attitudes toward particular ethnic groups, and predilection for violent crime.  Unconscious racial attitudes may be manifest in brain activation.  These capabilities of brain imaging, actual and potential, raise a number of ethical issues.  The most obvious concern involves privacy.  For example, employers, marketers, and the government all have a strong interest in knowing the abilities, personality, truthfulness and other mental contents of certain people.  This raises the question of whether, when, and how to ensure the privacy of our own minds. Clinical neurology scholarship has emphasized that neural data are heterogeneous and that appropriate safeguards should depend on the source, sensitivity, context, and intended use of the data.
Another ethical problem is that brain scans are often viewed as more accurate and objective than in fact they are.  Many layers of signal processing, statistical analysis and interpretation separate imaged brain activity from the psychological traits and states inferred from it.  There is a danger that the public (including judges and juries, employers, insurers, etc.) will ignore these complexities and treat brain images as a kind of indisputable truth.
A related misconception is called neuro-realism:  In its simplest form, this line of thought says that something is real because it can be measured with electronic equipment.  A person who claims to have pain, or low libido, or unpleasant emotions is "really" sick if these symptoms are supported by a brain scan, and healthy or normal if correlates cannot be found in a brain scan. The case of phantom limbs demonstrate the inadequacy of this approach.