Devices that can record and change brain activity will create privacy issues that challenge existing human-rights legislation, say researchers.

Scientific advances are rapidly making science-fiction concepts such as mind-reading a reality — and raising thorny questions for ethicists, who are considering how to regulate brain-reading techniques to protect human rights such as privacy.

On 13 July, neuroscientists, ethicists and government ministers discussed the topic at a Paris meeting organized by UNESCO, the United Nations scientific and cultural agency. Delegates plotted the next steps in governing such ‘neurotechnologies’ — techniques and devices that directly interact with the brain to monitor or change its activity. The technologies often use electrical or imaging techniques, and run the gamut from medically approved devices, such as brain implants for treating Parkinson’s disease, to commercial products such as wearables used in virtual reality (VR) to gather brain data or to allow users to control software.

How to regulate neurotechnology “is not a technological discussion — it’s a societal one, it’s a legal one”, Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO’s assistant director-general for social and human sciences, told the meeting.

Advances in neurotechnology include a neuroimaging technique that can decode the contents of people’s thoughts, and implanted brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) that can convert people’s thoughts of handwriting into text¹.

The field is growing fast — UNESCO’s latest report on neurotechnology, released at the meeting, showed that, worldwide, the number of neurotechnology-related patents filed annually doubled between 2015 and 2020. Investment rose 22-fold between 2010 and 2020, the report says, and neurotechnology is now a US$33-billion industry.