The Interplay of Computing, Ethics, and Policy in Brain-Computer Interface Design

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) connect biological neurons in the brain with external systems like prosthetics and computers. They are increasingly incorporating processing capabilities to analyze and stimulate neural activity, and consequently, pose unique design challenges related to ethics, law, and policy. For the first time, this paper articulates how ethical, legal, and policy considerations can shape BCI architecture design, and how the decisions that architects make constrain or expand the ethical, legal, and policy frameworks that can be applied to them.