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by Peter Reiner, PhD Dr. Reiner is Professor and co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics , at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Reiner began his academic career studying the cellular and molecular physiology of the brain, and in 1998, Dr. Reiner became President and CEO of Active Pass Pharmaceuticals, a drug discovery company that he founded to tackle the scourge of Alzheimer's disease. Upon returning to academic life in 2004, Dr. Reiner refocused his scholarly work in the area of neuroethics. He is also an AJOB Neuroscience board member. Louis Brandeis in his law office, 1890. In 1890, Samuel Warren and his law partner Louis Brandeis 
published what has become one of the most influential essays in the history of US law. Entitled The Right to Privacy [1], the article is notable for outlining the legal principles that protect privacy of thought. But it is not just their suggestions about privacy that are illuminating – it is their insight into the ways that law has ...

One of the most famous examples of reminiscence includes a madeleine dipped in tea, which lead to almost 3,000 pages of recollection by the narrator in the beginning of Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time, and we have all experienced these sensory triggers to a particular memory. Remembering the past helps us to re-examine our lives, make choices, and share personal accomplishments. We often use external devices to help us remember events big and small, and with advances in technology, we often record and make plans using a variety of digital devices such as iPhones, Microsoft’s Outlook, and even smart watches. We have the capability to store a lifetime of data with these advanced technologies, and with the advent of Facebook, Twitter, “selfies”, and blogs it has become routine for many people to document their lives on a daily basis in a digital form, a practice that has been referred to as “lifelogging.” The outcome of documenting activities digitally are human digital m...

Imagine opening your email on your computer not by typing a number code, a password, or even by scanning a finger, but instead by simply thinking of a password. Physical keys and garage door openers could also become artifacts of the past once they are replaced with what could be referred to as pass-thoughts . Just last year, researchers at UC Berkley used EEG signals emitted from subjects as biomarker identifiers to allow access to a computer. The entire system – the headset, the Bluetooth device, and the computer – had an error rate of less than 1%. 1 While wearing EEG headsets to open our devices may seem futuristic, this type of scenario could become more prevalent in the future due to advances in physiological computing (PC). Physiological computing is a unique form of human computer interactions because the input device for a computer is any form of real-time physiological data, such as a heart-rate or EEG signal. This is in stark contrast to the peripheral devices that we are...