Modern biology has not yet come to terms with the presence of many organic codes in Nature, despite the fact that we can prove their existence. As a result, it has not yet accepted the idea that the great events of macroevolution were associated with the origin of new organic codes, despite the fact that this is the most parsimonious and logical explanation of those events. This is probably due to the fact that the existence of organic codes in all (...) fundamental processes of life, and in all major transitions in the history of life, has enormous theoretical implications. It requires nothing less than a new theoretical framework, and that kind of change is inevitably slow. There are too many facts to reconsider, too many bits of history to weave together in a new mosaic. But this is what science is about, and the purpose of the present paper is to show that it can be done. More precisely, it is shown that the whole natural history of the brain can be revisited in the light of the organic codes. What is described here is only a bird’s-eye view of brain macroevolution, but it is hoped that the extraordinary potential of the organic codes can nevertheless come through. The paper contains also another message. The organic codes prove that life is based on semiosis, and are in fact the components of organic semiosis, the first and the most diffused form of semiosis on Earth, but not the only one. It will be shown that the evolution of the brain was accompanied by the development of two new types of sign processes. More precisely, it gave origin first to interpretive semiosis, mostly in vertebrates, and then to cultural semiosis, in our species. (shrink)

The genetic code appeared on Earth at the origin of life, and the codes of culture arrived almost four billion years later. For a long time it has been assumed that these are the only codes that exist in Nature, and if that were true we would have to conclude that codes are extraordinary exceptions that appeared only at the beginning and at the end of the history of life. In reality, various other organic codes have been discovered in the (...) past few decades and it is likely that more will come to light in the future. The existence of many organic codes in Nature is therefore an experimental fact, but also more than that. It is one of those facts that have extraordinary implications. In this book it is shown that the genetic code was a precondition for the origin of the first cells, the signal transduction codes divided the first cells into three primary kingdoms (Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya), the splicing codes were instrumental to the origin of the eukaryotic nucleus, the histone code provided a new regulation system in eukaryotic genomes, and the cytoskeleton codes allowed the Eukarya to perform internal movements, including those of mitosis and meiosis. It is shown, furthermore, that organic codes had a key role in multicellular life, in particular in the origin of animals, the origin of mind and the origin of language. The great events of macroevolution, in other words, were associated with the appearance of new organic codes, and we can easily understand why. The reason is that a new code brings into existence something that has never existed before because it creates arbitrary associations, relationships that are not determined by physical necessity. Another outstanding implication is the fact that codes involve meaning and we need therefore to introduce in biology, with the standard methods of science, not only the concept of biological information but also that of biological meaning. The research on biological codes, in conclusion, is bringing to light new mechanisms in evolution and new fundamental concepts in science. This research is the field of Code Biology, the study of all codes of life, from the genetic code to the codes of culture, from the origin of life to the origin of man. (shrink)

The genetic code appeared on Earth with the first cells. The codes of cultural evolution arrived almost four billion years later. These are the only codes that are recognized by modern biology. In this book, however, Marcello Barbieri explains that there are many more organic codes in nature, and their appearance not only took place throughout the history of life but marked the major steps of that history. A code establishes a correspondence between two independent 'worlds', and the (...) codemaker is a third party between those 'worlds'. Therefore the cell can be thought of as a trinity of genotype, phenotype and ribotype. The ancestral ribotypes were the agents which gave rise to the first cells. The book goes on to explain how organic codes and organic memories can be used to shed new light on the problems encountered in cell signalling, epigenesis, embryonic development, and the evolution of language. (shrink)

It is shown that information and meaning can be defined by operative procedures, and that we need to recognize them as new types of natural entities. They are not quantities (neither fundamental nor derived) because they cannot be measured, and they are not qualities because they are not subjective features. Here it is proposed to call them nominable entities, i.e., entities which can be specified only by naming their components in their natural order.

Biosemiotics is the synthesis of biology and semiotics, and its main purpose is to show that semiosis is a fundamental component of life, i.e., that signs and meaning exist in all living systems. This idea started circulating in the 1960s and was proposed independently from enquires taking place at both ends of the Scala Naturae. At the molecular end it was expressed by Howard Pattee’s analysis of the genetic code, whereas at the human end it took the form of Thomas (...) Sebeok’s investigation into the biological roots of culture. Other proposals appeared in the years that followed and gave origin to different theoretical frameworks, or different schools, of biosemiotics. They are: (1) the physical biosemiotics of Howard Pattee and its extension in Darwinian biosemiotics by Howard Pattee and by Terrence Deacon, (2) the zoosemiotics proposed by Thomas Sebeok and its extension in sign biosemiotics developed by Thomas Sebeok and by Jesper Hoffmeyer, (3) the code biosemiotics of Marcello Barbieri and (4) the hermeneutic biosemiotics of Anton Markoš. The differences that exist between the schools are a consequence of their different models of semiosis, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. In reality they go much deeper and concern the very nature of the new discipline. Is biosemiotics only a new way of looking at the known facts of biology or does it predict new facts? Does biosemiotics consist of testable hypotheses? Does it add anything to the history of life and to our understanding of evolution? These are the major issues of the young discipline, and the purpose of the present paper is to illustrate them by describing the origin and the historical development of its main schools. (shrink)

Systems Biology and the Modern Synthesis are recent versions of two classical biological paradigms that are known as structuralism and functionalism, or internalism and externalism. According to functionalism (or externalism), living matter is a fundamentally passive entity that owes its organization to external forces (functions that shape organs) or to an external organizing agent (natural selection). Structuralism (or internalism), is the view that living matter is an intrinsically active entity that is capable of organizing itself from within, with purely internal (...) processes that are based on mathematical principles and physical laws. At the molecular level, the basic mechanism of the Modern Synthesis is molecular copying, the process that leads in the short run to heredity and in the long run to natural selection. The basic mechanism of Systems Biology, instead, is self-assembly, the process by which many supramolecular structures are formed by the spontaneous aggregation of their components. In addition to molecular copying and self-assembly, however, molecular biology has uncovered also a third great mechanism at the heart of life. The existence of the genetic code and of many other organic codes in Nature tells us that molecular coding is a biological reality and we need therefore a framework that accounts for it. This framework is Code biology, the study of the codes of life, a new field of research that brings to light an entirely new dimension of the living world and gives us a completely new understanding of the origin and the evolution of life. (shrink)

Thomas Sebeok and Noam Chomsky are the acknowledged founding fathers of two research fields which are known respectively as Biosemiotics and Biolinguistics and which have been developed in parallel during the past 50 years. Both fields claim that language has biological roots and must be studied as a natural phenomenon, thus bringing to an end the old divide between nature and culture. In addition to this common goal, there are many other important similarities between them. Their definitions of language, for (...) example, have much in common, despite the use of different terminologies. They both regard language as a faculty, or a modelling system, that appeared rapidly in the history of life and probably evolved as an exaptation from previous animal systems. Both accept that the fundamental characteristic of language is recursion, the ability to generate an unlimited number of structures from a finite set of elements (the property of ‘discrete infinity’). Both accept that human beings are born with a predisposition to acquire language in a few years and without apparent efforts (the innate component of language). In addition to similarities, however, there are also substantial differences between the two fields, and it is an historical fact that Sebeok and Chomsky made no attempt at resolving them. Biosemiotics and Biolinguistics have become two separate disciplines, and yet in the case of language they are studying the same phenomenon, so it should be possible to bring them together. Here it is shown that this is indeed the case. A convergence of the two fields does require a few basic readjustments in each of them, but leads to a unified framework that keeps the best of both disciplines and is in agreement with the experimental evidence. What is particularly important is that such a framework suggests immediately a new approach to the origin of language. More precisely, it suggests that the brain wiring processes that take place in all phases of human ontogenesis (embryonic, foetal, infant and child development) are based on organic codes, and it is the step-by-step appearance of these brain-wiring codes, in a condition that is referred to as cerebra bifida, that holds the key to the origin of language. (shrink)

The existence of different types of semiosis has been recognized, so far, in two ways. It has been pointed out that different semiotic features exist in different taxa and this has led to the distinction between zoosemiosis, phytosemiosis, mycosemiosis, bacterial semiosis and the like. Another type of diversity is due to the existence of different types of signs and has led to the distinction between iconic, indexical and symbolic semiosis. In all these cases, however, semiosis has been defined by the (...) Peirce model, i.e., by the idea that the basic structure is a triad of ‘sign, object and interpretant’, and that interpretation is an essential component of semiosis. This model is undoubtedly applicable to animals, since it was precisely the discovery that animals are capable of interpretation that allowed Thomas Sebeok to conclude that they are also capable of semiosis. Unfortunately, however, it is not clear how far the Peirce model can be extended beyond the animal kingdom, and we already know that we cannot apply it to the cell. The rules of the genetic code have been virtually the same in all living systems and in all environments ever since the origin of life, which clearly shows that they do not depend on interpretation. Luckily, it has been pointed out that semiosis is not necessarily based on interpretation and can be defined exclusively in terms of coding. According to the ‘code model’, a semiotic system is made of signs, meanings and coding rules, all produced by the same codemaker, and in this form it is immediately applicable to the cell. The code model, furthermore, allows us to recognize the existence of many organic codes in living systems, and to divide them into two main types that here are referred to as manufacturing semiosis and signalling semiosis. The genetic code and the splicing codes, for example, take part in processes that actually manufacture biological objects, whereas signal transduction codes and compartment codes organize existing objects into functioning supramolecular structures. The organic codes of single cells appeared in the first three billion years of the history of life and were involved either in manufacturing semiosis or in signalling semiosis. With the origin of animals, however, a third type of semiosis came into being, a type that can be referred to as interpretive semiosis because it became closely involved with interpretation. We realize in this way that the contribution of semiosis to life was far greater than that predicted by the Peirce model, where semiosis is always a means of interpreting the world. Life is essentially about three things: (1) it is about manufacturing objects, (2) it is about organizing objects into functioning systems, and (3) it is about interpreting the world. The idea that these are all semiotic processes, tells us that life depends on semiosis much more deeply and extensively than we thought. We realize in this way that there are three distinct types of semiosis in Nature, and that they gave very different contributions to the origin and the evolution of life. (shrink)

Today there are two major theoretical frameworks in biology. One is the ‘chemical paradigm’, the idea that life is an extremely complex form of chemistry. The other is the ‘information paradigm’, the view that life is not just ‘chemistry’ but ‘chemistry-plus-information’. This implies the existence of a fundamental difference between information and chemistry, a conclusion that is strongly supported by the fact that information and information-based-processes like heredity and natural selection simply do not exist in the world of chemistry. Against (...) this conclusion, the supporters of the chemical paradigm have pointed out that information processes are no different from chemical processes because they are both described by the same physical quantities. They may appear different, but this is only because they take place in extremely complex systems. According to the chemical paradigm, in other words, biological information is but a shortcut term that we use to avoid long descriptions of countless chemical reactions. It is intuitively appealing, but it does not represent a new ontological entity. It is merely a derived construct, a linguistic metaphor. The supporters of the information paradigm insist that information is a real and fundamental entity of Nature, but have not been able to prove this point. The result is that the chemical view has not been abandoned and the two paradigms are both coexisting today. Here it is shown that an alternative does exist and is a third theoretical framework that is referred to as the ‘code paradigm’. The key point is that we need to introduce in biology not only the concept of information but also that of meaning because any code is based on meaning and a genetic code does exist in every cell. The third paradigm is the view that organic information and organic meaning exist in every living system because they are the inevitable results of the processes of copying and coding that produce genes and proteins. Their true nature has eluded us for a long time because they are nominable entities, i.e., objective and reproducible observables that can be described only by naming their components in their natural order. They have also eluded us because nominable entities exist only in artifacts and biologists have not yet come to terms with the idea that life is artifact making. This is the idea that life arose from matter and yet it is fundamentally different from it because inanimate matter is made of spontaneous structures whereas life is made of manufactured objects. It will be shown, furthermore, that the existence of information and meaning in living systems is documented by the standard procedures of science. We do not have to abandon the scientific method in order to introduce meaning in biology. All we need is a science that becomes fully aware of the existence of organic codes in Nature. (shrink)

The discovery of the genetic code has shown that the origin of life has also been the origin of semiosis, and the discovery of many other organic codes has indicated that organic semiosis has been the sole form of semiosis present on Earth in the first three thousand million years of evolution. With the origin of animals and the evolution of the brain, however, a new type of semiosis came into existence, a semiosis that is based on interpretation and is (...) commonly referred to as interpretive, or Peircean semiosis. This suggests that there are two distinct types of semiosis in Nature, one based on coding and one based on interpretation, and all the experimental evidence that we have does support this conclusion. Both in principle and in practice, therefore, there is no conflict between organic semiosis and Peircean semiosis, and yet they have been the object of a fierce controversy because it has been claimed that semiosis is always based on interpretation, even at the cellular level. Such a claim has recently been reproposed in a number of papers and it has become necessary therefore to reexamine it in the light of the proposed arguments. (shrink)

There are currently three major theories on the origin and evolution of the genetic code: the stereochemical theory, the coevolution theory, and the error-minimization theory. The first two assume that the genetic code originated respectively from chemical affinities and from metabolic relationships between codons and amino acids. The error-minimization theory maintains that in primitive systems the apparatus of protein synthesis was extremely prone to errors, and postulates that the genetic code evolved in order to minimize the deleterious effects of the (...) translation errors. This article describes a fourth theory which starts from the hypothesis that the ancestral genetic code was ambiguous and proposes that its evolution took place with a mechanism that systematically reduced its ambiguity and eventually removed it altogether. This proposal is distinct from the stereochemical and the coevolution theories because they do not contemplate any ambiguity in the genetic code, and it is distinct from the error-minimization theory because ambiguity-reduction is fundamentally different from error-minimization. The concept of ambiguity-reduction has been repeatedly mentioned in the scientific literature, but so far it has remained only an abstract possibility because no model has been proposed for its mechanism. Such a model is described in the present article and may be the first step in a new approach to the study of the evolution of the genetic code. (shrink)

Biosemiotics asserts the idea that semiosis is fundamental to life, and that all living creatures are therefore semiotic systems. The idea itself is strongly supportedby the evidence of the genetic code — but thus far it has made little impact in the scientific world, and is largely regarded as the basis for a philosophy of meaning, rather than a basis for a science of meaning. This is regrettable, but perhaps understandable from the scientists’ point of view. Scientists know that the (...) cell is the necessary unit of all life. I will argue here, then, that Biosemiotics can become a science only if it can prove that the cell is, in fact, a semiotic system — i.e., that semiosis exists at the cellular level. To do this, we first need to define what is semiosis, so that we can be explicit about what exactly constitutes a semiotic system. So far, we have had two main answers to this question. One is the model proposed by Saussure, who defined a semiotic system as a duality of ‘signifier and signified’. The other is the model of Peirce, who pointed out that interpretation is an essential component of semiosis and defined a semiotic system as a triad of ‘sign, object and interpretant’. After the discovery of the genetic code, each of these two models have been applied to biology and have given rise to two distinct schools of biosemiotics. One is the school of Marcel Florkin (1974), which is based on the model of Saussure, and the other is the school of Thomas Sebeok (1972, 2001), which is based on the model of Peirce. Unfortunately, neither of them can be applied to the cell, and that is why most biologists continue to be skeptical about biosemiotics. There is however a third model of semiosis that is actually applicable to the cell. It is based on the theory that the cell is a trinity of genotype, phenotype and ribotype (Barbieri 1981, 1985, 2003). Here, the ribotype is the ribonucleoprotein system of the cell and represents its ‘codemaker’, i.e., the seat of the genetic code. This model assumes that semiosis is defined by coding, not by interpretation, and is therefore referred to as the code model of semiosis. This paper is dedicated to illustrating this third model and, above all, to showing that the cell is a true semiotic system. (shrink)

The New World of the Organic CodesThe genetic code appeared on Earth at the origin of life, and the codes of culture arrived almost 4 billion years later, at the end of life’s history. Today it is widely assumed that these are the only codes that exist in Nature, and if this were true we would have to conclude that codes are extraordinary exceptions because they appeared only at the beginning and at the end of evolution. In reality, various other (...) organic codes have been discovered in the past few decades.In 1975, the American biochemist Gordon Tomkins published a paper entitled The Metabolic Code. Biological symbolism and the origin of intercellular communication . That was the very first announcement of a new organic code after the discovery of the genetic code, but tragically Tomkins died that very year and his new world of organic symbolism remained unexplored. Some 10 years later, Edward Trifonov started a life-long campaign in favour .. (shrink)

Coding characteristics have been discovered not only in protein synthesis, but also in various other natural processes, thus showing that the genetic code is not an isolated case in the organic world. Other examples are the sequence codes, the adhesion code, the signal transduction codes, the splicing codes, the sugar code, the histone code, and probably more. These discoveries however have not had a significant impact because of the widespread belief that organic codes are not real but metaphorical entities. They (...) are supposed to lack arbitrariness and codemakers, the two qualifying features of real codes. Here it is shown that the arbitrariness issue can be solved on an experimental basis, while the codemaker issue is dependent on our theoretical description of the cell and can only be solved by a new concept. In order to appreciate the reality of the organic codes, in short, it is necessary to have not only a more critical evaluation of the experimental data but also a new theory of the living system. (shrink)

The classical theories of the genetic code claimed that its coding rules were determined by chemistry—either by stereochemical affinities or by metabolic reactions—but the experimental evidence has revealed a totally different reality: it has shown that any codon can be associated with any amino acid, thus proving that there is no necessary link between them. The rules of the genetic code, in other words, obey the laws of physics and chemistry but are not determined by them. They are arbitrary, or (...) conventional, rules. The result is that the genetic code is not a metaphorical entity, as implied by the classical theories, but a real code, because it is precisely the presence of arbitrary rules that divides a code from all other natural processes. In the past 20 years, furthermore, various independent discoveries have shown that many other organic codes exist in living systems, which means that the genetic code has not been an isolated case in the history of life. These experimental facts have one outstanding theoretical implication: they imply that in addition to the concept of information we must introduce in biology the concept of meaning, because we cannot have codes without meaning or meaning without codes. The problem is that at present we have two different theoretical frameworks for that purpose: one is Code Biology, where meaning is the result of coding, and the other is Peircean biosemiotics, where meaning is the result of interpretation. Recently, however, a third party has entered the scene, and it has been proposed that Robert Rosen’s relational biology can provide a bridge between Code Biology and Peircean biosemiotics. (shrink)

Coding characteristics have been discovered not only in protein synthesis, but also in various other natural processes, thus showing that the genetic code is not an isolated case in the organic world. Other examples are the sequence codes, the adhesion code, the signal transduction codes, the splicing codes, the sugar code, the histone code, and probably more. These discoveries however have not had a significant impact because of the widespread belief that organic codes are not real but metaphorical entities. They (...) are supposed to lack arbitrariness and codemakers, the two qualifying features of real codes. Here it is shown that the arbitrariness issue can be solved on an experimental basis, while the codemaker issue is dependent on our theoretical description of the cell and can only be solved by a new concept. In order to appreciate the reality of the organic codes, in short, it is necessary to have not only a more critical evaluation of the experimental data but also a new theory of the living system. (shrink)

tific sentences from non-scientific ones, the folscientific areas, but try to get forward in discurlowing failure of all trials to establish a scientific sive truthfulness “in the long run” (Peirce) princilanguage of theory which would be coherent with pally ending with human species in an “ultimate the language of observations, or to define a sciopinion” (Peirce) of the things which are discussed. entific language which could be able to depict..

Biosemiotics argues that “sign” and “meaning” are two essential concepts for the explanation of life. Peircean biosemiotics, founded by Tomas Sebeok from Peirce’s semiotics and Jacob von Uexkül’s studies on animal communication, today makes up the mainstream of this discipline. Marcello Barbieri has developed an alternative account of meaning in biology based on the concept of code. Barbieri rejects Peircean biosemiotics on the grounds that this discipline opens the door to nonscientific approaches to biology through its use (...) of the concept of “interpretation.” In this article, it is noted that Barbieri does not adequately distinguish among Peirce’s semiotics, Peircean biosemiotics, and “interpretation-based” biosemiotics. Two key arguments of Barbieri are criticized: his limited view of science and his rejection of “interpretation-based” biosemiotics. My argument is based on tools taken from a different approach: Robert Rosen’s relational biology. Instead of “signs” and “meanings,” the study begins in this case from the “components” and “functions” of the organism. Rosen pursues a new definition of a law of nature, introduces the anticipatory nature of organisms, and defines the living being as a system closed to efficient cause. It is shown that Code Biosemiotics and Peircean biosemiotics can share a common field of study. Additionally, some proposals are suggested to carry out a reading of Rosen’s biology as a biosemiotic theory. (shrink)

When subjects view stimulation of a rubber hand while feeling congruent stimulation of their own hand, they may come to feel that the rubber hand is part of their own body. This illusion of body ownership is termed ‘Rubber Hand Illusion’ . We investigated sensitivity of RHI to spatial mismatches between visual and somatic experience. We compared the effects of spatial mismatch between the stimulation of the two hands, and equivalent mismatches between the postures of the two hands. We created (...) the mismatch either by adjusting stimulation or posture of the subject’s hand, or, in a separate group of subjects, by adjusting stimulation or posture of the rubber hand. The matching processes underlying body ownership were asymmetrical. The illusion survived small changes in the subject’s hand posture, but disappeared when the same posture transformations were applied to the rubber hand. Mismatch between the stimulation delivered to the subject’s hand and the rubber hand abolished the illusion. The combination of these two situations is of particular interest. When the subject’s hand posture was slightly different from the rubber hand posture, the RHI remained as long as stimulation of the two hands was congruent in a hand-centred spatial reference frame, even though the altered posture of the subject’s hand meant that stimulation was incongruent in external space. Conversely, the RHI was reduced when the stimulation was incongruent in hand-centred space but congruent in external space. We conclude that the visual–tactile correlation that causes the RHI is computed within a hand-centred frame of reference, which is updated with changes in body posture. Current sensory evidence about what is ‘me’ is interpreted with respect to a prior mental body representation. (shrink)

How can we determine what are just boundaries or just criteria for inclusion or exclusion in contemporary states, nations, peoples, or other 'communities of justice'? As Barbieri demonstrates, recent theories of justice have failed to grapple squarely with this fundamental problem, either wholly ignoring it, or approaching it, inadequately, in terms of distributive or commutative justice, or simply declaring the problem insoluble. Developing a clear understanding of the peculiarities of constitutive justice, Barbieri contends, is a task that has (...) important implications for political philosophy as it bears on topics such as citizenship, migration, multiculturalism, self-determination, and the drafting of new constitutions. To this end, Constitutive Justice critically discusses some present approaches that promise to shed light on constitutive questions involving inclusion and the ethics of boundaries; provides an analysis of some of the central topics that plausible normative theories of constitutive justice will need to address; and develops the author's own constructive account. (shrink)

Rapid advancements in human neuroscience and neurotechnology open unprecedented possibilities for accessing, collecting, sharing and manipulating information from the human brain. Such applications raise important challenges to human rights principles that need to be addressed to prevent unintended consequences. This paper assesses the implications of emerging neurotechnology applications in the context of the human rights framework and suggests that existing human rights may not be sufficient to respond to these emerging issues. After analysing the relationship between neuroscience and human rights, (...) we identify four new rights that may become of great relevance in the coming decades: the right to cognitive liberty, the right to mental privacy, the right to mental integrity, and the right to psychological continuity. (shrink)

The increasing availability of brain data within and outside the biomedical field, combined with the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to brain data analysis, poses a challenge for ethics and governance. We identify distinctive ethical implications of brain data acquisition and processing, and outline a multi-level governance framework. This framework is aimed at maximizing the benefits of facilitated brain data collection and further processing for science and medicine whilst minimizing risks and preventing harmful use. The framework consists of four primary (...) areas of regulatory intervention: binding regulation, ethics and soft law, responsible innovation, and human rights. (shrink)

One of the central methodological issues for contemporary practitioners of comparative ethics is how to conceptualize and relate to the "other" encountered in cross-cultural studies. A valuable resource for reflection on this problem is the work of the French historian and cultural theorist Michel de Certeau, whose diverse opus coheres around his notion of heterology--a "science of the other." In this article I explore perspectives on the cultural "other" emerging from Certeau's analyses of a series of "travel narratives" documenting the (...) European encounter with the peoples of the New World. Certeau's meditations on the metaphor of the voyage, the interplay of orality and literacy, the politics of ethnography, and the semiotics of the "return of the repressed" offer, I suggest, important insights for comparative ethicists. (shrink)

Brain–computer interfacing technologies are used as assistive technologies for patients as well as healthy subjects to control devices solely by brain activity. Yet the risks associated with the misuse of these technologies remain largely unexplored. Recent findings have shown that BCIs are potentially vulnerable to cybercriminality. This opens the prospect of “neurocrime”: extending the range of computer-crime to neural devices. This paper explores a type of neurocrime that we call brain-hacking as it aims at the illicit access to and manipulation (...) of neural information and computation. As neural computation underlies cognition, behavior and our self-determination as persons, a careful analysis of the emerging risks of malicious brain-hacking is paramount, and ethical safeguards against these risks should be considered early in design and regulation. This contribution is aimed at raising awareness of the emerging risk of malicious brain-hacking and takes a first step in developing an ethical and legal reflection on those risks. (shrink)

The use of Intelligent Assistive Technology in dementia care opens the prospects of reducing the global burden of dementia and enabling novel opportunities to improve the lives of dementia patients. However, with current adoption rates being reportedly low, the potential of IATs might remain under-expressed as long as the reasons for suboptimal adoption remain unaddressed. Among these, ethical and social considerations are critical. This article reviews the spectrum of IATs for dementia and investigates the prevalence of ethical considerations in the (...) design of current IATs. Our screening shows that a significant portion of current IATs is designed in the absence of explicit ethical considerations. These results suggest that the lack of ethical consideration might be a codeterminant of current structural limitations in the translation of IATs from designing labs to bedside. Based on these data, we call for a coordinated effort to proactively incorporate ethical considerations early in the design and development of new products. (shrink)

[1] Contributi -- [2] Rassegne bibliografiche.