Inside the New Science of Neuroengineering

palegray.net writes "Wired brings us a look into the world of neuroengineering, the science of hacking the brain to improve its function. Dr. Ed Boyden is the director of MIT's Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Lab, focusing on innovative methods of physically altering neuroanatomy for various purposes. As useful as discoveries in the field may be, the work certainly raises moral and ethical questions. From the article: '"If we surgically or electrically modify someone's personality... that raises many questions about personal identity, (of) who we are at our core," says Dr. Debra Matthews of The Berman Institute of Bioethics. "We place ourselves in the mind and therefore the brain. (Mood-altering surgery) feels like fundamentally modifying who a person is."'"

Comments

Re:Boring question

[Iyonesco]

I'm sick of reading how any and all work related to human enhancement raises moral and ethical questions. Moralists are the reason medical science is stuck in the stone age since the stop all human experimentation and if you can't experiment you can't progress. This work could vastly enhance peoples' lives in ways such as curing mental conditions like depression to increasing intelligence and dexterity. However, progress will no doubt be stopped while morons who know nothing about the subject debate the moral and ethical issues. There's no way that "rewiring the brain" will be permitted in a Luddite society like ours where we still need to debate what human rights should be given to a clump of cells.