Grant: Team Grant: European Research Projects of Neuroscience

Neuroscientific research is providing novel and promising technologies for diagnosis, treatment and prognosis in the context of neurological and psychiatric conditions. While this research has been aimed at addressing disorders or deficits, the same interventions (e.g. externally applied electrical or magnetic stimulation of the brain) can often be turned toward enhancement uses in people without disorders or deficits, as they are currently conceived. These brain-based interventions may alter our perceptions of the agency and capacity of patients, and accordingly of their responsibility. People may be reproached for untreated problematic behaviours that could be avoided through treatment, or for the unintended behavioural consequences of therapeutic or enhancement uses of brain-interventions where they are applied. At the same time, a complex web of potential responsibility draws together the individual who chooses (or refuses) to use these interventions, the maker, marketer and medical personnel who provide the interventions, third parties who may be benefited or harmed by the use or non-use of the interventions, and the broader society that stands to be affected in more diffuse ways. The Canadian part of this interdisciplinary biomedical ethics project will provide a comprehensive analysis of the complexity of ethical and legal responsibility in relation to brain-based interventions intended to modify human capacities but that may also pose some risks of harm to the individual and to others. In particular, this project will provide patients, clinicians, and health policy-makers (e.g. drug and device licensing authorities) with the careful analysis necessary to understand the potential legal ramifications of these treatment decisions. These issues will form an important part of the context within which clinicians and patients will have to navigate as they consider whether to use the fruits of this neuroscientific research.