UNESCO expert committee

Neurotechnology is moving faster than the frameworks meant to govern it. Devices that read and modulate brain activity are leaving the laboratory, and the questions they raise about mental privacy, consent and cognitive liberty do not have settled answers.

I was invited to join UNESCO’s expert committee at the Latin American regional meeting convened to discuss the ethical challenges of neurotechnologies, on the strength of the neurotechnology community work described elsewhere on this page.

The regional framing matters. Most of the debate about neurorights is written in and for the global north, while the countries that will import these technologies — rather than build them — have the least say in how they are regulated. Being in the room as someone who works on both the research and the community side of neurotechnology in Latin America is a small correction to that imbalance.