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Man, machine and in between

Nature volume 457, pages 1080–1081 (2009)Cite this article

Brain-implantable devices have a promising future. Key safety issues must be resolved, but the ethics of this new technology present few totally new challenges, says Jens Clausen.

This is no future prediction; it is already happening. Brain–machine interfaces are clinically well established in restoring hearing perception through cochlear implants, for example. And patients with end-stage Parkinson's disease can be treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS) (see 'Human brain–machine applications'). Worldwide, more than 30,000 implants have reportedly been made to control the severe motor symptoms of this disease. Current experiments on neural prosthetics point to the enormous future potential of such devices, whether as retinal or brainstem implants for the blind or as brain-recording devices for controlling prostheses1.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks for fruitful discussions to Ad Aertsen and his colleagues from the Bernstein group, Freiburg, and to Rejko Krüger and colleagues from stimulator conferences in Tübingen.

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  1. Jens Clausen is at the Institute of Ethics and History in Medicine, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany. jens.clausen@uni-tuebingen.de ,

    Jens Clausen

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  1. Jens Clausen
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Clausen, J. Man, machine and in between. Nature 457, 1080–1081 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/4571080a

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