Hands off my brainwaves: Latin America in race for ‘neurorights’

A file photo of brain research being conducted in a lab. A US neurotech firm was ordered to erase data it had collected on a Chilean brain: a world first for neurorights. — Image by DCStudio on Freepik

MEXICO CITY: Lawmakers in Latin America are carving out new rights for the human brain in response to advances in neurotechnology that make scanning, analysing and selling mental data ever more possible.

Last month, the Chilean Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision ordering Emotiv, a US producer of a commercial brain scanning tool, to erase the data it had collected on a former Chilean senator, Guido Girardi.