The Asilomar Survey: Stakeholders’ Opinions on Ethical Issues Related to Brain-Computer Interfacing

Abstract

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) research and (future) applications raise important ethical issues that need to be addressed to promote societal acceptance and adequate policies. Here we report on a survey we conducted among 145 BCI researchers at the 4th International BCI conference, which took place in May–June 2010 in Asilomar, California. We assessed respondents’ opinions about a number of topics. First, we investigated preferences for terminology and definitions relating to BCIs. Second, we assessed respondents’ expectations on the marketability of different BCI applications (BCIs for healthy people, BCIs for assistive technology, BCIs-controlled neuroprostheses and BCIs as therapy tools). Third, we investigated opinions about ethical issues related to BCI research for the development of assistive technology: informed consent process with locked-in patients, risk-benefit analyses, team responsibility, consequences of BCI on patients’ and families’ lives, liability and personal identity and interaction with the media. Finally, we asked respondents which issues are urgent in BCI research.

The brain-computer interface researcher’s questionnaire: from research to application

“…Across all six scenarios, respondents indicated that safety issues are not a bottleneck, indicating that the risks of non-invasive BCI systems are considered negligible and that there is sufficient evidence for this. Notably, this result corresponds with the conclusions on the safety of non-invasive BCIs in the Asilomar researchers' survey on ethical issues [9]. A significant hurdle for non-invasive BCI tools, however, is long-term system performance, which is considered insufficient for most applications described.…”

“…The background and training of the respondents was quite variable, with a strong representation of technical disciplines and neurosciences. This corresponds with a previous survey among BCI researchers about ethical issues [9] and with the multidisciplinary character of the BCI research and development process, in which in-depth knowledge about brain function needs to be combined with advanced mathematical and engineering solutions, in order to develop products that can be used in the daily life of patients or healthy subjects. Almost 10% of BCI researchers had a medical training, which may be indicative of a promising interest from the treatment and rehabilitation professions.…”

Reaching and grasping a glass of water by locked-in ALS patients through a BCI-controlled humanoid robot

“…Motivation is important because it can affect P300 BCI performance (Nijboer et al, 2008bKleih et al, 2010;Baykara et al, 2016), and because the question of whether ALS patients and related patients would be motivated to use a BCI has been controversial (Nijboer et al, 2013). Our results relating to motivation and satisfaction support the general consensus that ALS patients might indeed want to use P300 BCIs, even given their current limitations (Zickler et al, 2009;Huggins et al, 2011;Blain et al, 2012).…”

Brain computer interfaces as intelligent sensors for enhancing human-computer interaction

“…From that point on the processing pipeline is, most likely, essentially different. Recently, there has been a vivid discussion on the definition of BCI, which is described in [9]. However, for reasons of brevity, in this article, we adopt the definition of Pfurtscheller and colleagues [11], who determined that a (conventional) BCI should satisfy the following criteria:…”

“…To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. control [9,11,21]. However, most Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) do not provide a reliable and efficient means of input control and are difficult to learn and use relative to other available modes.…”