La Voz de Galicia – December 7, 2025 →
This week I read an interview with the prestigious Spanish-American neuroscientist Rafael Yuste in which, on the occasion of the publication of his latest book, Neurorights: A Journey Toward the Protection of What Makes Us Human (Spanish Edition, Paidós), he spoke about brain rights and the capacity of neurotechnology to “decode and alter” brain activity. In addition to being a researcher, Yuste is also a co-founder of the Neurorights Foundation, an organization dedicated, among other things, to guiding the regulation of neurotechnology and neuronal rights.
The “neurorights” Yuste refers to are connected to the fact that his laboratory is already able to “decode brain activity and change it in an effective way (…) today in mice, tomorrow in human beings.” It is precisely from this research that the need arises to regulate neurotechnology in order to protect “the right to mental privacy (that the contents of the mind not be decoded without consent),” “the right to free will (the ability to make decisions without external interference),” “the right to personal identity (that psychological integrity cannot be altered from the outside),” “the right to equitable access to enhancement technologies,” and “protection against bias in neurotechnology algorithms.”
His fascinating work leads me to think about a million different questions, but also to reflect on the idea that, if we are not able to regulate it, the likelihood that in the future we will no longer be the owners of our own minds no longer seems like science fiction. That is to say, now that we are no longer masters of our time (thanks to the lack of regulation in the attention economy), perhaps we may also lose the right to be the owners of our own thoughts…
