From Principles to Practice: Ethical Guidance for Neurotechnology Researchers

Neurotechnology raises novel ethics issues with significant implications, given the role of the brain in human thought, feeling, and behavior. This project aims to ensure that advancements in neurotechnology enhance societal well-being. The research team will analyze existing ethics guidance for neurotechnology researchers, ask neurotechnology researchers what they think about this guidance, and make recommendations which aim to ensure that neurotechnology research both advances science and promotes the good of the public.

Results will aid in crafting ethics resources that are most likely to be used and that will ensure positive outcomes. The project will yield insights for developing effective ethics requirements for research at the intersection of biomedical engineering, computer science, and neuroscience.

Neurotechnology research raises ethical issues that require special attention beyond traditional research ethics and training. Two key questions will guide the team as it seeks to investigate ethical issues emerging from neurotechnology research. To what extent does ethics guidance facilitate ethical conduct of neurotechnology research?

And, what are the circumstances that enable ethics guidance to have this effect? This project will address these questions across three phases that will identify and analyze ethics guidance in neurotechnology (phase 1), survey neural engineers about their awareness of existing ethics guidance and their perception of its utility for their practices (phase II), and develop a set of recommendations for translating ethics knowledge for neurotechnology research (phase III).

The main contributions of the project are twofold. First, by characterizing the interface between neurotechnology researcher practices and ethicist guidance, the project will yield a grounded appraisal of researcher-perceived value of current ethics resources and an understanding of what types of ethics resources are likely to have an effect on practice.

Second, the knowledge obtained about the ethics needs of researchers and the process-based issues they encounter in practice will be used to outline a pathway for improving the utility of existing ethics guidance and promoting its future development and impact.

This project is jointly funded through the ER2 program and the Science and Technology Studies (STS) program by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.