Out of my mind: Advances in brain tech spur calls for ‘neuro-rights’

A file photo of a man with an electroencephalography (EEG) cap which measures brain activity. Yuste is part of a group of scientists and lawmakers, stretching from Switzerland to Chile, who are working to rein in the potential abuses of neuroscience by companies from tech giants to wearable startups. — Reuters

BERLIN: A turning point for Rafael Yuste, a neuroscientist at New York’s Columbia University, came when his lab discovered it could activate a few neurons in a mouse’s visual cortex and make it hallucinate.

The mouse had been trained to lick at a water spout every time it saw two vertical bars, and researchers were able to prompt it to drink even with no bars in sight, said Yuste, whose team published a study on the experiment in 2019.