# Presentation: 513852

## Ethics in Neuroscience Technology: Perspective from a Clinician Technologist 

**Erik Viirre M.D. Ph.D.**
*U.C. San Diego*
- School of Medicine
- And
- Department of Cognitive Science

## My Background

- Physician, specialty Neurotology
- Treatment of Dizziness and Tinnitus
- Conditions that have no objective measure
- Researcher
- Ph.D. in Neurophysiology
- Technology Developer
- Hardware and Software for medical problems
- Applied Technologist
- US Navy laboratory that reviews Cognitive Science Technologies

## Where I am in the Process

- Developer/advocate
- Recognize the issues are present
- National Academy of Science Collaboration
- 	Study Panel on Neuroscience Technology
- UCSD Cognitive Science Review

## My Bias

- CS Tech will be a “tool for thinking”
- Current Emphasis on Deception Detection is damaging: Legal, DOD
- Don’t want to throw baby out with the bathwater
- GMO, Stem Cells
- Do I have time for this, developing the technology is hard enough?
- I have more questions than answers

## “People already worry about genetics. They should worry about brain science too” 

- “If asked to guess which group of scientists is most likely to be responsible, one day, for overturning the essential nature of humanity, most people might suggest geneticists. In fact neurotechnology **poses a greater threat—and also a more immediate one**. Moreover, it is a challenge that is largely ignored by regulators and the public, who seem unduly obsessed by gruesome fantasies of genetic dystopias.”
- The Economist May 23, 2002

## My Vision

- “A computer that knows what I’m thinking about”

## Slide 7

## To-too Process

- Develop sample or “training” set
- Requires dozens of repetitions of an individual “ meaning” , i.e. thousands of trials to develop a database even for a small control set
- Cooperation of Subject essential
- Build statistical model of signals for each meaning, test and refine
- Build application to use the signals

## Other Cognitive Technology

- Neural State Monitors
- Fatigue, Workload
- Workload
- Neural Damage: PTSD
- Higher Cognitive Systems
- Language, Math, Images, Ideas
- Self-Deception

## "Truth is the child of time, not of authority.  Our ignorance is infinite, let's whittle away just one cubic millimeter.  Why should we still want to be so clever when at long last we have a chance of being a little less stupid?“

 Bertolt Brecht's “Life of Galileo” 

-  *Bertolt Brecht's “Life of Galileo”*

## Self Deception

- The topographical differences between true
- Memory and false memory signatures
- 			Goldmann, 2003

## Self Deception in Orientation: Schacter Model

## Slide 13

## My Case Example

- In collaboration with Dr. Jaime Pineda at UCSD, we have developed a potential EEG marker for the presence of tinnitus
- This could be used to drive auditory inputs that would mitigate Tinnitus with negative feedback
- It could also be used as an objective test for the presence of tinnitus, for example, after a head injury in a car accident.

## EEG Marker of Tinnitus

- Kadner
- Viirre
- Et. al.
- 2002

## Neurotech: Too Good or Too Bad?

- Ethicist positions appear to be that the technology could really be used for nefarious purposes (i.e. it is bad) or that the technology will be so good it will give an unfair advantage to those who have access to it (i.e. it is too good)
- (of course, it could be both)

## Tinnitus Marker

- Good: Improved tinnitus treatment
- Will everybody be able to have it?
- Bad: Prove a complaintant doesn’t have the problem.

## My Confusion

- Law vs. Ethics
- For example, supposedly there is no right to privacy... What is that?

## Medical Model

- Primary effects from loss of function
- Secondary Gain

## Ethics Issue: Privacy

- I want the computer to read my mind, but do I prevent other people from reading my mind?
- Am I allowed to prevent them?
- Do I have a right to privacy of my own thoughts?
- What if I’m Depraved?

## My Position

- Cooperation
- Large individual differences will make development of a database generalizable across people difficult.

## Miller et. Al. 2002

- Extensive Individual Differences

## Privacy (continued)

- Is cooperation necessary
- What about coerced cooperation?
- Government, job
- Is there a techological fix?
- Is there a policy fix (unreasonable search and seizure)
- Problem
- We can read people

## Remote Viewing

## What are the Ethics of Remote Viewing? 

- Do you need to be warned that you are being observed? (Airport Check-in)
- How do we deal with low reliability?
- How do we deal with potentially damaging energy?

## Ethics Issue: Property Rights

- What are your property rights if technology is based on your brain activity patterns?
- Pathology
- Normal
- Informed Consent Issue?
- Skills/algorithms
- Cf. HELA cells

## Ethics Issues: Harm

- Dependency/addiction
- Video Games
- Head Tunes
- Individual
- Informed Consent
- Unknown Harms
- Society
- Self Deception
- Dying for the Cause

## Ethics Issues: Access

- Will neurotechnology become a divider in society
- Comparisons: books, computers, cell phones
- Education

## Action Items

- Get Politically Smart
- Articulate Beneficial Technologies
- Identify potential “hot-button” issues
- Deception
- Religion
- Mental Illness markers
- NAS Study
- Industry Advocates (good or bad?)

## References

- Miller MB, Van Horn JD, Wolford GL, Handy TC, Valsangkar-Smyth M, Inati S, Grafton S, Gazzaniga MS Extensive individual differences in brain activations associated with episodic retrieval are reliable over time. J Cogn Neurosci. 2002 Nov 15;14(8):1200-14.
- Goldmann RE, Sullivan AL, Droller DB, Rugg MD, Curran T, Holcomb PJ, SchacterDL, Daffner KR, Budson AE. Late frontal brain potentials distinguish true and false recognition. Neuroreport. 2003 Sep 15;14(13):1717-20.
- Kadner A. Viirre E. et. al. (2002) Lateral Inhibition in the Auditory Cortex: an EEG Index of Tinnitus? _Neuroreport._ 2002 13 (4): 443-6