The right to cognitive freedom

These are extremely important questions socially, because many neurotechnologies are now found not only in the world of medicine but also in the world of commerce. Attempts to decipher mental information by means of imagery are also made to obtain legal evidence, in ways whose scientific validity is often questioned. For example, in 2008, a woman in India was charged with murder and sentenced to life in prison based on a brain scan that, according to the judge, showed "experiential knowledge" of the crime. The ability to use neurotechnology to detect lies in the investigation of suspects attracts special attention. Despite the skepticism of experts, commercial companies market truth and lie detectors based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) וElectroencephalography (EEG). Armies are also testing methods to monitor brain activity for another reason: to use brain stimulation to increase the alertness and attention of soldiers.

These mind-reading technologies can be seen as another inevitable trend that continues and erodes our personal space in the digital world. But given our basic right to freedom of thought, we may be less willing to accept this intrusion into our privacy. The truth is that it makes sense to think of such technology as a good reason to rethink basic human rights, and perhaps even formulate new and special rights regarding our neural activity.

Jurists are already talking about a right to "cognitive freedom" - the right that will give people the ability to make decisions in a free and informed manner regarding the use of technology that can influence their thoughts. The right to the privacy of thought will protect people both against access by some third party to brain data without their consent, and against the collection of such data without their approval. Violation of privacy at the neural level may be more dangerous than more routine types of privacy violation, because it can bypass the level of conscious thinking and leave us unprotected against having our thoughts read without our consent. This risk pertains not only to invasive marketing research or the excessive use of such technology for legal purposes, but also to applications that will affect the general consumer - a category that is currently growing. Facebook Recently unveiled Her plan is to develop a speech-to-text interface that will translate thoughts directly from the brain to the computer. Companies like Netflix and Samsung are also making similar attempts. In the future, brain control may replace keyboards and voice recognition as the primary means of human interaction with computers.

If brain scanning tools are a hackable vision, together with them new possibilities will open up to misuse them, including cyber hacks. Medical devices that are connected to the brain may be targets for acts of sabotage, and neuroscientists at the University of Oxford claim that brain implants are equally vulnerable, and that there is a danger of what they call "brain hijacking" (brainjacking). The possibility of such a dangerous exploitation of the technology may lead us to think in a new way about the right to "mental integrity" - the right to mental health that has already gained the status of a basic human right. In its new form, this right will be understood not only as a right that protects people from not receiving mental health treatments, but also as a right that protects all of us from harmful interference with our neural activity through the abuse of technological means.

Moreover, recognizing the right to psychological continuity can protect the mental lives of people from changes from the outside, by some third party. The same type of interventions in brain activity that are tested in the military as a way to reduce the need for sleep, can be applied to changing the temperament of soldiers, to increase their belligerence and reduce their fear responses. There is indeed benefit in neurotechnology, but to minimize the unintended risks inherent in it, we must have a discussion on the subject with the participation of neuroscientists, lawyers, ethics experts and the general public.

About the writers

Marcello was breastfeeding - PhD student at the Institute of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Basel and serves as chairman of the committee of students and postdoctoral fellows at the International Association for Ethics in Neuroscience.