Correcting the Brain? The Convergence of Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, Psychiatry, and Artificial Intelligence
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Correcting the Brain? The Convergence of Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, Psychiatry, and Artificial Intelligence Stephen Rainey1 · Yasemin J. Erden2
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The incorporation of neural-based technologies into psychiatry offers novel means to use neural data in patient assessment and clinical diagnosis. However, an overoptimistic technologisation of neuroscientifically-informed psychiatry risks the conflation of technological and psychological norms. Neurotechnologies promise fast, efficient, broad psychiatric insights not readily available through conventional observation of patients. Recording and processing brain signals provides information from ‘beneath the skull’ that can be interpreted as an account of neural processing and that can provide a basis to evaluate general behaviour and functioning. But it ought not to be forgotten that the use of such technologies is part of a human practice of neuroscience informed psychiatry. This paper notes some challenges in the integration of neural technologies into psychiatry and suggests vigilance particularly in respect to normative challenges. In this way, psychiatry can avoid a drift toward reductive technological approaches, while nonetheless benefitting from promising advances in neuroscience and technology. Keywords Neurotechnology · Artificial intelligence · Ethics · Normativity · Psychology · Psychiatry
Introduction Neurosciences and psychiatry overlap when the identification of anomalous neural activity is mapped to behavioural or cognitive phenomena in the context of assessment or diagnosis of patients. This means in practice that technologies developed for recording neural activity can come to play a role in psychiatry. Given this, there is a clear need to examine not only the relationship between neuroscience and * Stephen Rainey [email protected] 1
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Suite 8, Littlegate House, St Ebbes Street, Oxford OX1 1PT, UK
2
St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, UK
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S. Rainey, Y. J. Erden
psychiatry, but also the use of neurotechnology in psychiatry. The specifics of how such technologies operate become particularly salient when they are placed in the context of a practice aimed at evaluating human behaviour, such as psychiatry. In some cases, neurotechnology can rely on artificial intelligence (AI), especially in the prediction, or analysis of neural recording data (Glaser et al. 2017; Kellmeyer 2018). This represents a significant element worth its own investigation, again because it is deployed in a context of evaluating human behaviour. How AI develops and is used in this kind of context is in need of analysis. In this paper the analysis will involve identification of key normative differences between brain-based intelligence and artificial intelligence. To do this we point to some general complexities of human intelligence (HI), especially as based in complex, reasoned activity. As a means of blending technological advances with human understanding, we
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