Zack Lynch is author of The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World (St. Martin's Press, July 2009).
By providing new tools to influence human emotion, cognition and sensory systems, neurotechnology will have profound consequences for how people perceive social, political and cultural problems. This is why studying the societal implications of neurotechnology is so critical, and so different from previous technological waves.
In Looking for Spinoza, Antonio Damasio, details a theory that describes a chain reaction that begins when an emotion (defined as a change in body state in response to an external stimulus) triggers a feeling (the representation of that change in the brain as well as specific mental images). In other words, feelings do not cause bodily symptoms but are caused by them: we do not tremble because we feel afraid; we feel afraid because we tremble.
By directly influencing the neurochemistry of our central nervous systems, i.e. reducing our bodies reactivity to trembling, via sensoceuticals, we in fact influence our minds conception/self-reflection of our selves and our environment.
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