This month's IEEE Spectrum has an excellent article, Neurotechnology: Bioethics and the Brain, that describes how rapid advancements in brain imaging technologies will have significant implications for society in the relative near future.

To make their point, the authors describe how one of their colleagues has recently used fMRI scans to show highly significant correlations between lying and truth telling and the metabolic activity in the region of the brain important to paying attention and monitoring errors.

The article highlights several important neuroethical issues:

• Compulsory brain testing: Should society allow the government to scan the brain of convicted criminals or terrorists to test for emotional predispositions or a specific knowledge base (i.e. anthrax manufacturing processes)?  Should we allow companies to scan the brain of potential employees to understand their natural propensities (i.e. anger) and let them deny employment on the basis of these scans?
  
• National brain imaging database: Should we allow the government to keep "brain fingerprints" just like they currently have a database of our fingerprints and are building for DNA?
  
• Scanning of children: What will parents or teachers do with brain scanning information?  If they find out a child has little natural propensity for music should they not even let that child try?

Neurotechnology will never be 100% deterministic but it will provide some very powerful predictive information, much more than most people currently want to believe. 

Later this week I will be joining the Gruter Institute for its annual neuroethics conference.  The first day includes the following talks:

• Paul Glimcher on From the Senses to Action: How the Brain Makes Decisions
  
• Howard Fields and Sharif Taha on Biology of Motivation: Compulsion or Choice
  
• Oliver R. Goodenough on Free Will, Punishment and Law

I look forward to exploring the above issues and extending the discussion to include the societal implications of human performance enhancing neuroceuticals.