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Rationales and Approaches to Protecting Brain Data: a Scoping Review

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Abstract

Advances in neurotechnologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data analytics are allowing interpretation of patterns from brain data to identify and even predict and manipulate mental states. Furthermore, there are avenues through which brain data can move into the consumer sphere, be reidentified and brokered. In response to these developments, there have been a number of approaches proposed to strengthen protections of brain data. To better understand the landscape of brain data protection discussions, we conducted a scoping review to identify the rationales for establishing brain data protections and the proposals for protecting brain data offered in the ethics and neuroscience literature. To draw comparisons, we also surveyed the rationales given in the literature for the protection of sensitive behavioral inferences drawn from other types of personal data and associated approaches to achieving protection. This systematic examination of the rationale behind heightened protection for brain data should be useful to clarify the functional and conceptual bases given for brain data protection and to provide a better grounding for evaluating how the different approaches to brain data protection address these concerns.

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Data Availability

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Notes

  1. For example, the article identified through this tertiary search [10] was in a preprint format at the time of the primary PubMed search.

  2. A list of target articles on brain data and themes/subthemes appeared in the articles are available in the Supp. Figure 1.

  3. A list of target articles on inferential data and themes/subthemes appeared in the articles are available in the Supp. Fig. 2.

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Funding

AJ is supported by National Institute of Mental Health R24 MH117179-04S1. NM is supported by NIH/National Institute of Mental Health K01 MH118375-01A1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Anita S. Jwa

  2. Biomedical Ethics Center, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Nicole Martinez-Martin

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Jwa, A.S., Martinez-Martin, N. Rationales and Approaches to Protecting Brain Data: a Scoping Review. Neuroethics 17, 2 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-023-09534-1

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