Technology to Unlock the Mind: Citizen Science and Sandbox Approach for a New Model of BCI Governance

The benefits and harms of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) deserve to be explored in depth. The evaluation of the fundamental conceptual, ethical and legal questions associated with BCI applications should be scrutinized. Finally, the resulting insights should be leveraged to benefit both medicine and society. We will perform this exploration with two focuses: the first one will look at the epistemic and ethical impact of the peer-production of knowledge (citizen science) and the second one will look at the legal criteria that should inform the introduction of a novel form of regulation which is envisioned by the sandbox approach [1]. With a view to complying with a translational research approach, it is required to foster co-creation of knowledge and therefore to include the active participation of patients, their families, clinicians, healthy users and the public in the process aimed at the regulation of the use of BCIs. Citizen science is emerging as an important policy orientation but is still largely unknown [2]. Users are holders of practical knowledge which should be emphasized in a translational approach. There is a close connection between the emergence of a new model of governance of BCIs, which takes into account the issues of epistemic injustice and the deep and profound implications on science as a discipline, a profession, and as a practice, foreseen by the policy orientation of citizen science [3]. Moreover, considering the user as merely a passive participant amounts to an injustice done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower [4]. This part of the special session is about providing a state-of-the-art account of what is going on in co-creation theory, which is the necessary premise for designing co-creation activities in the framework of the sandboxes. How is the co-creation of knowledge possible? Why does co-creation of knowledge matter? These questions are central in the epistemology of the co-creation and have significant effects on [...]