The Battle for Your Brain

This book skillfully pulls the curtain back on a series of startling advances into understanding the physiology of thought.

I study the intersection of neuroscience and law, and I still learned a lot from Farahany’s book. But Farahany is not just providing an expose. She thoughtfully weighs the costs and benefits of neuroscience’s infiltration into new territories, analyzing which new medical techniques and commercial devices are worth the intrusion and which should be barred from entering the most private space we have left: our minds.

They say the law is perpetually at least five years behind new developments in technology.

Nowhere is it more important to reverse this phenomenon than in neurotechnology. We may not understand the brain, but that hasn’t stopped neurotech startups and big tech companies from trying to eavesdrop on and interpret its bioelectric signals.

Farahany, a bioethics professor at Duke University, says that this market is expected to reach $21 billion by 2026 largely because it will be a boon for surveillance capitalism. The devices don’t even have to actually tell you what a person is thinking or feeling for the… show more.