Recent Developments in I.T. Applied to Neuroscience:
Legal, ethical, security-related, and sociopolitical concerns

A number of ethical issues could arise within these new developments applied to neuroscience:

• At the current stage of brain mapping tools, experiments are being conducted solely on non-human mammals, mainly mice – a potential animal rights issue (“Mapping Brain Circuits,” 2009).
• An issue with a wider range and impact might be regarding military-funded neuroscientific research and developments. The technology the government could have at its disposal includes an effective lie detector test through functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, and the ability to target and influence a person’s hormones.
• "‘People have begun to speculate on these issues, but right now it's really unclear,’ says [Professor Hank Greely, Director of Stanford's Center for Law and the Biosciences]. ‘Alternatively, some have argued that we'll need something new—that the existing Bill of Rights doesn't protect mental privacy adequately enough in the face of these emerging technologies.’” (Ghorayshi, 2012)
• Privacy – of data as well as identity – is also a concern with regard to cloud computing. There is less of a guarantee of privacy by nature of using a cloud, and in one example, “system administrators are custodians of a huge quantity of [aggregated] data” (Ryan, 2011).

Brain mapping could lead to an incredible wealth of new information – which could have an incredible impact on society, though not necessarily in a positive way.

There already has, for some time, been an ongoing debate as to what, or whom, has the most influence over our thoughts, actions, and behavior (Schwartz, 2012). As mentioned in the previous section, a definitive conclusion would almost certainly bring drastic, unforseeable sociopolitical change.