AJOB Neuroscience最新文献

In this paper I explore the moral responsibility that is owed to post-enhanced military veterans who were enhanced with biotechnological interventions as part of their military service, but then suffer from these biotechnological interventions when returning to civilian life. By exploring two ways that these interventions can become detrimental to a veteran's quality of life, I suggest that the institutional duty of care to post-enhanced veterans arises even though the problems arise after service ends. When we see that soldiers can become disenhanced or de-enhanced, in both cases, the military as an institution owes those post-enhanced veterans a special duty of care because of the military's role in the initial enhancement. Finally, I argue why the conceptual clarity regarding enhancement, disenhancement, and de-enhancement is useful for assigning institutional responsibility with regard to post-enhanced veterans.

The pursuit to manufacture "super-soldiers" using neurotechnologies to enhance the physical and mental capabilities of soldiers creates potential calls to disenhance some of them. By disenhancement, we refer to the deactivation or removal of devices that have enabled persons to possess new or amplified capacities so that they return to their pre-enhanced or "normal" states of being. This paper argues that disenhancement could produce harms to a soldier's personality, identity, autonomy, authenticity, agency and/or self (or PIAAAS). Therefore, the pursuit of military enhancement generates the responsibility of military institutions to provide long-term care to soldiers undergoing disenhancement to mitigate any PIAAAS-related harms that may follow from their disenhanced state. This is a duty grounded in the values of beneficence and justice, especially the principle of reciprocity given the soldiers' contributions to compromise their bodily and mental integrity in the service of a state's sociopolitical goal.

Our enduring cultural narratives about technology-carried across generations and embedded in collective memory-shape how societies interpret and respond to emerging innovations such as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and neurotechnology. These stories may help shape regulatory discourse by embedding philosophical assumptions and ethical norms into governance frameworks. Frankenstein and Astro Boy serve here as illustrative archetypes that capture contrasting traditions of technological imagination: one foregrounding risk, hubris, and individual autonomy; the other emphasizing harmony, relationality, and technological partnership. Media representations continue to reinforce these orientations, framing debates over the integration of technology into human life. While Western narratives often highlight threats to personal freedom, many East Asian portrayals explore technology's role in sustaining social balance. Yet within all regions, there remains significant internal diversity. This paper develops a research agenda for understanding the relationship between cultural narratives, media portrayals, and neurotechnology governance. Drawing on examples from literature, film, and policy debates, it identifies patterns of correlation-not causation-between cultural imaginaries and regulatory approaches. Our approach builds on prior experiments in anticipatory governance, such as Responsible Research and Innovation and its application in the Human Brain Project. These initiatives showed both the value and the challenge of embedding ethical reflection into scientific practice. By extending this conversation to include cultural narratives, we highlight how global governance of neurotechnology can be broadened beyond a European focus to integrate diverse philosophical traditions and imaginaries. We conclude by outlining mechanisms for more inclusive governance-layered regulation, cross-cultural deliberation, international impact assessment, and a novel Narrative-Informed Governance Toolkit with five operationalizable components-offering conceptual scaffolding to guide future empirical research and practical design. Building on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) frameworks while addressing their documented limitations, our approach extends anticipatory governance by treating cultural narratives as resources for governance design.

This paper explores the complementarity of Nishida Kitarō's relational ontology with Western bioethics in addressing novel moral dilemmas arising from advanced neural technologies, including brain organoids, human-animal chimeras, and biocomputational systems. Nishida's philosophy transcends the subject-object dichotomy by emphasizing the interconnectedness and co-creative nature of all beings, thereby reframing traditional questions of moral status, personhood, and consent. We examine recent scientific advances and policy debates to demonstrate that Nishida's approach not only enriches ethical understanding but also provides more nuanced guidance that can account for both the technological dynamism and cultural diversity of contemporary research. We argue that this relational, context-dependent ethics, grounded in humility and continuous reflection, fosters an inclusive attitude toward emerging forms of life. Nishida's framework coexists harmoniously with Western philosophy and deepens our grasp of the relational networks that interconnect humans, animals, and even machine- or organoid-based intelligence. We propose an agile, forward-looking model of ethics to respond to the transformative developments of neural innovation.

Neurotechnology is a rapidly growing area in medicine. New neurotechnologies are often developed through partnerships between industry and academia (i.e., "IA partnerships"). These partnerships face ethical challenges due to differing goals and priorities among stakeholders (e.g. scientific vs. fiduciary obligations). We interviewed neuroethicists (N = 15) to understand their perspectives on prominent ethical issues and potential solutions. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts revealed 12 themes. These themes included the potential for industry to unduly influence research, increasing communication among stakeholders, needing clearer and more transparent data management practices, prioritizing patients and involving them in device development, protecting scientific integrity and institutional reputation, enhancing informed consent, recognizing the unique challenges posed by neurotechnology, considering both short- and long-term impacts of neurotechnology, and increasing oversight of IA partnerships. Future research should explore how best to address these challenges through new policies, practices, regulations, and patient education.