Neurotechnology: Current Developments and Ethical Issues

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2017.00093/full

by Quinzel • 3 years ago

51 27 3 years ago

frontiersin.org

Quinzel2• 3 years ago

I was researching AI-enhanced BCI's a while ago, and this was an article I stumbled upon.

paraschopra• 3 years ago

I once went deep into rabbit hole of why neurotechnology progresses so slowly.

My conclusion was that it’s a chicken and egg situation. Tech advances depend on what we know about human brain and what we know about it is constrained by ethical concerns

Here’s the full write up https://notes.invertedpassion.com/Consciousness/Why+brain-ma...

_uhtu• 3 years ago

"constrained by ethical concerns" glosses over "chimps that we test on die at horrific rates" pretty hard.

pmarreck• 3 years ago

if we are just chemical reactions writ in meatspace, then where's the room for "ethical considerations" except as performative nod to the illusory problem of pain and death?

/speaking sarcastically about hard materialism, of which I am simultaneously a critic but also recommend to be the universal null hypothesis

wslh• 3 years ago

Neurotechnology involves more stuff that the article depict. It shows the author doesn't really know about the topic. One missing examples is transcraneal estimulation [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5180077/

apienx• 3 years ago

I haven't read the paper because I consider Frontiers Media a shit-tier publisher. Their acceptance rate is 90%. A few institutions don't consider their papers when judging the performance of researchers. The National Publication Committee of Norway doesn't consider their papers to be "academic".

Sorry for attacking the medium rather than the message. I just feel that more people need to know about the shady practices of Frontiers.

dr_dshiv• 3 years ago

There are some great Frontiers journals and plenty of amazing papers. Here is some nuance:

“As of 2022, 96 Frontiers journals are listed in the Norwegian Scientific Index, two of which are rated 'Level 2' (top 20% of all journals in the field), and more than 88 journals has been rated "Level 1" (standard). academic journals), 1 journal has a rating of Level X (probably predatory), and 5 have a “Level 0” (non-academic) rating.”

https://academic-accelerator.com/encyclopedia/frontiers-medi...

f6v• 3 years ago

I think this particular article doesn’t look credible. And the whole “Opinion” type probably shouldn’t be published in journals, just post your opinion on Twitter.

That being said, I know for a fact that publically funded Norwegian research is published in Frontiers and researchers from Norway do consider those to be real academic journals.

kensai• 3 years ago

One of the coauthors is a professor of Philosophy specializing in the field of Neurotechnology. Given that an academic journal is at least partly "peer-reviewed" let laymen post their opinions on Twitter and academics on... journals.

frontalier• 3 years ago

Nice to see someone is paying attention.

Wherecombinator• 3 years ago

Thanks I didn’t know that. I’ve read them with an interest in neuroscience. Can anyone suggest a better alternative

etrautmann2• 3 years ago

Pretty much anything in elife or nature communications for open access journals, or neuron, nature neuroscience for non open access. You can almost always find biorxiv preprints for closed access pubs too.

Quinzel2• 3 years ago

You can always check the impact factor of the journal you’re accessing, and their acceptance rate etc… it can give an indication of the credibility of article published, as well as the journal.

BSEdlMMldESB2• 3 years ago

such prejudice, I really really hope you're not an academic ethicist

londons_explore• 3 years ago

I reckon you could do some cool things with mice and neural implants and large language models.

Find a way to semi-automate the process of fitting the neural implant, and you should be able to do science a lot faster too.

sylvain_kerkour• 3 years ago

Neurotechnology is coming way faster than most people expect, especially with AR/VR headsets (EEG) and wristbands with electrodes (EMG), which are pushed hard by Meta, Apple & co.

I wrote a few notes about it: https://kerkour.com/nobody-cares-about-the-metaverse-neurote...

isaacremuant2• 3 years ago

Some of us didn't budge when entire nations, media, tech and security forces were trying to lock us down, denying are movement and associatio rights and trying to coerce us into taking things that presented no health benefit based on a played up risk profile.

We'll be okay not wearing the shit they push. You CAN say no.

feoren• 3 years ago

That's a very self-congratulatory way to say "I intentionally coughed on people in WalMart"

anonymouse008• 3 years ago

Nothing will depress you more than showing VCs how those on academic probationary can literally lift themselves to academic achievement only to be told “people don’t care about education” “who is actually going to spend money on this” “sounds nice but hardware is just too much” “keep in touch” etc —-

This technology is waiting for its Mike Markkula - the person who can shepherd neurotech’s next generation founders. Without his early leap of faith, marketing influence, and savvy capital, I’m convinced Apple wouldn’t have made it out the garage - who will be neurotech’s?

BSEdlMMldESB2• 3 years ago

but transhumanism is ideologically corrupt!

arisbe__• 3 years ago

The trend of employing optogenetics and optogenetic-like functional tech to this problem I find frightening. And keep in mind "opto" isnt just visible light.

The other big idea (which the paper mentions) is the coupling of systems being sensed. For example in the medical research they now couple fMRI (bloodflow) with EGG (coarse firing activity) and also EGG with pulsed ultrasound neuromodulation. This is interesting because the metabolic process is almost a "mind if its own".

etrautmann2• 3 years ago

Why is this frightening? Because of the use of viral vectors or some implication of interfacing with the brain more effectively?

TaylorAlexander• 3 years ago

Looks like this should say (2017)

Neurotechnology: Current Developments and Ethical Issues

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