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By Ian Stevens Ian is a 4th year undergraduate student at Northern Arizona University. He is majoring in Biomedical Sciences with minors in Psychological Sciences and Philosophy to pursue interdisciplinary research on how medicine, neuroscience, and philosophy connect.  Introduction Brain recording technologies (BRTs), such as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that collect various types of brain signals from on and around the brain could be creating privacy vulnerabilities in their users. 1,2 These privacy concerns have been discussed in the marketplace as BCIs move from medical and research uses to novel consumer purposes. 3,4  Privacy concerns are grounded in the fact that brain signals can currently be decoded to interpret mental states such as emotions, 5 moral attitudes, 6 and intentions. 7 However, what can be interpreted from these brain signals in the future is ambiguous. The current uncertainty that surrounds future capacities to decode complex mental states – and ...

By Karola Kreitmair  Karola Kreitmair , PhD, is a Clinical Ethics Fellow at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics . She received her PhD in philosophy from Stanford University in 2013 and was a postdoctoral fellow in Stanford’s Thinking Matters program from 2013-2016. Her research interests include neuroethics, especially new technologies, deep brain stimulation, and the minimally-conscious state, as well as ethical issues associated with wearable technology and citizen science.   Brain-computer interfaces, neurostimulation devices, virtual reality systems, wearables, and smart phone apps are increasingly available as consumer technologies intended to promote health and wellness, entertainment, productivity, enhancement, communication, and education. At the same time, a growing body of literature addresses ethical considerations with respect to these neurotechnologies (Wexler 2016; Ienca & Adorno 2017; Kreitmair & Cho 2017). The ultimate goal of ethical consum...

By Sorab Arora Sorab Arora is currently a Master’s in Public Health student at Emory University , specializing in Healthcare Management and Policy. He has researched health technology design and strategy focused on behavioral medicine, most recently at Northwestern University’s Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies . Arora is a graduate of both the University of Chicago (Summer Business Scholar – 2017) and Grinnell College (2016), where he has bridged social entrepreneurship with mobile technologies and medical innovation.  With median adult smartphone ownership rising to nearly 70% in advanced markets, individuals ranging from wealthy millennials to homeless youth have unprecedented access to mobile technologies (Poushter, 2016; Ben-Zeev et al., 2013). From “swiping” potential soulmates to ordering prescription glasses to one’s door, the proliferation of opportunities for immediate gratification through mobile applications only continues to grow. In what economists have ...

By Anna Farrell  Anna Farrell is a rising second year undergraduate student at Emory University. Early on in her Neuroscience major she became interested in Neuroscience’s interdisciplinary nature and continued on to declare a second major in English.  As cyber espionage and hacking are on the rise (Watson, 2016), major corporations, governments, and financial systems have pushed for using biometrics as a more secure way to guard their data. Biometrics measures unique physical characteristics as a way of ascertaining someone’s identity. A wide range of physical characteristics are currently used in biometrics, including DNA, iris, retina, face, fingerprint, finger geometry, hand geometry, odor, vein, and voice identification ( Types of Biometrics ). Governmental uses for biometrics span border control, customs services, and online access to critical systems. However, fingerprint and iris identification results are becoming more replicable as hacker’s abilities advance (Watson,...