With the exponential development of neuroscience and neurotechnology in the past few years, Brain-to-Brain Interface (BBI), as a new paradigm, has been realized both in rats (DNews, 2013) and humans (Armstrong & Ma, 2013). A research team at Duke University has successfully transmitted sensorimotor information between two rats using intracortical microstimulation (ICMS), leading the “decoder” rat to be able to make binary behavioral selections by receiving the corresponding cortical activity of the “encoder” rat (Pais-Vieira, Lebedev, Kunicki, Wang, & Nicolelis, 2013). Furthermore, the first BBI in humans has been realized by researchers at University of Washington (Rao et al., 2014). In the study, by transmitting the cortical activity extracted by EEG from one participant to the brain of another participant through transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), the two participants are able to perform a simple task involving playing a game that requires pressing a touchpad at a given time cooperatively. Last year, a follow-up study involving multi-person BBI has also been conducted, suggesting the possibility of forming “‘social networks’ of connected brains” (Jiang et al., 2018).
Although these are just rudimentary trials involving mostly sensorimotor information, the potential of BBI development and usage in the future is enormous. On the bright side, transmission of sensory information, emotions, or even memories may become realizable and be applied to scientific research, education, or clinical treatments after further improvement of these technologies. However, from the other side, there is a possibility that these technologies may eventually enable us to directly exercise control over others’ behaviors and thoughts. As a result, what naturally comes with these enhancements is the ethical consideration regarding how we should utilize them appropriately and avoid them from being abused in the future. In this paper, I would like to particularly focus on one of the essential ethical concepts that would be greatly impacted by BBI – free will – and argue why BBI application should be limited to certain purposes and restrained by regulation and legislation in the future.
BBI’s Potential Development and Impact on Free Will
Free will is usually defined as the person’s ability to exercise control over her choices or behaviors. That is to say, she is the “source of her action” (O'Connor & Franklin, 2018). Although to what extent does free will really exist is still under hot debate among philosophers, it seems that by intuition, we do possess free will, as we feel like we are the agents deciding every single action and thought in our daily life. Normally, individuals are considered to be separated from each other, as everyone exercises his own control over his mind and body. Even under circumstances involving coercion (e.g. A pointing a gun at B), the two individuals are still independent to each other, as B is exercising her free will to “follow” the control of A. However, as BBI may develop to an extent that it may be able to let A directly exercise control over B’s sensations and behaviors, a significant problem would occur, as B may lose his free will to a certain extent.
This is a very realistic while crucial problem for all of us to face and deal with. Based on our current knowledge of how the brain works, the transmission of sensations and motor commands are relatively more probable comparing to transmitting thoughts, emotions, and memories, as it is not until we understand how these functions are “produced” by the brain that we can design the algorithm for transmitting these information. Since our existing knowledge for sensorimotor information is much more complete after decades of research involving the brain mapping of the primary somatosensory and motor cortices, these information may become the first to be greatly transmitted between humans (as we can notice from the first human BBI experiment).
Imagine in the future, when a BBI is set up between A and B where A may send all kinds of sensorimotor information he wants to send to B, B would be subject to A’s control. In this case, B may lose part of his free will, as part of his brain is controlled by A over BBI, and maybe he still possesses the free will for his own thoughts and other cognitive functions. In some other cases, the extent of free will that the person possess can become even more complicated. According to an experiment conducted by Ammon & Gandevia (1990), the decision of which hand the participants choose to move can be significantly affected by a single magnetic stimulus that is subthreshold for movement. In their study, right-handed participants, instead of choosing to move the right hand as 60% of people would normally do, choose to move their left hand 80% of the time after part of their right hemisphere is stimulated. Even more surprising with this experiment is that the participants continue to report that they have made their decisions freely, indicating the possibility of retrospective construction over their own choices. Therefore, we can see how BBI may result in complicating the degree of free will by subconsciously influencing the receiver’s decision, instead of directly causing it. These cases are all posing significant challenges to human rights.
Benefits Come With Necessary Regulations and Legislation
While noticing the potential troubles BBI may bring to us, we should definitely acknowledge its potential benefits. As BBI will be capable of transmitting information from brain to brain without relying on any kind of symbols, it may enhance communication between people by overcoming the language barriers. BBI may also benefit education and sports activities, as previously nondeclarative knowledge and skills (e.g. playing tennis) can probably be transmitted to others in a more efficient way. Furthermore, for clinical purposes, doctors may be able to communicate with patients who are originally unable to respond either in verbal or behavioral ways. For example, patients in the minimally conscious state (MCS), as defined by professor Monti at UCLA (2012), may probably benefit from BBI as this can potentially help them to express their feelings and thoughts to a certain degree to the doctors and their families.
For all of these benefits not to be overwhelmed by the potential ethical challenges, I argue that several kinds of regulations and legislation must be implemented. Firstly, we should temporarily limit the application of BBI to certain fields and people. For instance, only licensed scientists, doctors, or teachers should be able to use this technology after sufficient training and ethical education. I believe this technology should not be easily available to the general public unless every ethical and safety concern is fully addressed. Secondly, informed consent and mutual agreement of BBI usage must be enforced. The sender and the receiver must both agree with using BBI and be fully informed about the potential benefits and dangers involved in this process. They should also reach an agreement upon the content of information being transmitted. Finally, and most importantly, I argue that the receiver must be given the right to stop BBI transmission at any time by their will. As the loss of free will is one of the most significant concerns discussed in this article, the receiver must not be fully controlled by the sender and should always be offered the choice to protect themselves by terminating this transmission process under any circumstances.
Conclusion
With our current technology, certainly nothing mentioned above can really become realized in a short time. As one of the researchers of the human BBI study has said, "[t]here's no possible way the technology that we have could be used on a person unknowingly or without their willing participation" (Armstrong & Ma, 2013). However, through the discussion, we should realize the significant challenges BBI might bring to us in the next few decades. BBI is certainly beneficial in a variety of ways; but at the same time, we need to always keep in mind its potential impacts on individuals and on the society as a whole. I argue that the regulations and legislation suggested in this article are necessary for us to avoid misusing BBI and really help this state-of-the-art technology to reach its full potential in enhancing human life quality.
References
Ammon, K., & Gandevia, S. C. (1990). Transcranial magnetic stimulation can influence the selection of motor programmes. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 53(8), 705–707. https://doi.org/10.1136/jnnp.53.8.705
Armstrong, D., & Ma, M. (2013, August 27). Researcher controls colleague's motions in first human brain-to-brain interface. Retrieved January 29, 2019, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130827122713.htm
DNews. (2013, February 28). Two Rats Communicate Brain To Brain. Retrieved January 29, 2019, from https://www.seeker.com/two-rats-communicate-brain-to-brain-1767260658.html
Jiang, L., Stocco, A., Losey, D. M., Abernethy, J. A., Prat, C., & Rao, R. P. N. (2018). BrainNet: A Multi-Person Brain-to-Brain Interface for Direct Collaboration Between Brains. BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/425066
Monti, M. M. (2012). Cognition in the Vegetative State. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 8(1), 431–454. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032511-143050
O'Connor, T., & Franklin, C. (2018, August 21). Free Will. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#Bib
Pais-Vieira, M., Lebedev, M., Kunicki, C., Wang, J., & Nicolelis, M. A. L. (2013). A Brain-to-Brain Interface for Real-Time Sharing of Sensorimotor Information. Scientific Reports, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep01319
Rao, R. P. N., Stocco, A., Bryan, M., Sarma, D., Youngquist, T. M., Wu, J., & Prat, C. S. (2014). A Direct Brain-to-Brain Interface in Humans. PLoS ONE, 9(11), e111332. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111332