Neuroethics is an analysis and discussion of the ethical and legal implications of mapping or reading the brain with techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).  It also analyzes and discusses interventions in the brain to treat brain injury and disease and restore brain function.  These include psychotropic drugs, neural stimulation, and various types of brain implants.  Antipsychotic drugs can enable people with diseases such as schizophrenia to control their symptoms and have flourishing lives.  Deep brain stimulation can restore motor control in people with Parkinson’s disease.  Yet access to information about a person’s brain from neuroimaging by unauthorized third parties can harm them by violating their privacy and confidentiality. 

The book discuses both the ethics of neuroscience and the neuroscience of ethics.  The first branch of neuroethics concerns how reading and intervening in the brain can benefit or harm patients, as well as the obligations of medical professionals to patients and research subjects in clinical and research settings.  The second branch of neuroethics concerns the neurobiological basis of reasoning and decision-making.  This is particularly relevant to judgments of responsibility in the criminal law.  Brain imaging showing abnormalities in brain regions mediating these executive functions may, or may not, shed light on whether an individual who committed a criminal act had control over their behavior when they acted.  These two branches of neuroethics may overlap. For example, in considering whether to involuntarily treat a patient with schizophrenia with a psychotropic drug, the psychiatrist must assess whether the patient has the capacity to understand the reasons for treatment, and to make a decision for or against treatment based on this information.

Neuroethics considers ethical and legal issues in six areas of experimental and clinical neuroscience:  brain imaging; disorders of consciousness; brain death; cognitive and moral enhancement; the neurobiological basis of reasoning and decision-making; and neural prosthetics (brain implants involving brain-computer interfaces to restore movement and communication in people with varying types and degrees of paralysis).  The book is distinctive in offering a comprehensive view of debates on the ethics of neuroscience and the neuroscience of ethics over the last 25 years.  It is also distinctive in considering emerging and future-oriented aspects of neuroscience, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in diagnostic and predictive neuroimaging, potentially conscious brain organoids, and neurorights to protect information about people’s brains.

One of the main take-aways of the book is that mapping and intervening in the brain as such are not harmful and do not violate individual autonomy.  Individuals must give informed consent to undergo or receive these actions and for medical professionals to be permitted or obligated to provide them.  Whether they benefit or harm people depends on whether or to what extent they restore the sensory, motor, cognitive, emotional, and motivational capacities impaired by brain injury and disease and thereby enable them to interact with others and engage with the natural and social environment.