Neuroethics and neurotechnology: Instrumentality and human rights

If neuroethics is distinct from mainstream medical ethics, it is an ethics of technology, framing and posing novel questions that have normative implications. For example, advances in functional neuroimaging have informed our understanding of disorders of consciousness, posing questions about our ethical obligations to individuals now appreciated to be in liminal states of consciousness. Although this new knowledge derives from technological progress, technology alone can not address the ethical implications of our expanded gaze into the injured brain. To fully apprehend the meaning and significance of this new knowledge necessitates a response that is more than technical, requiring substantive contributions from the humanities and social sciences. Interdisciplinary inquiry can help inform and sustain scientific progress and realize the instrumentality of technology in advancing the human rights of individuals with neuropsychiatric conditions.