Rafael Yuste, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, describes a pivotal moment a decade ago when his team was able to manipulate a mouse's brain to create false visual experiences. This experience unnerved him, highlighting the immense potential and risks of neurotechnology. "By studying the visual cortex of a mouse, we were able to not only decipher what it was seeing, but also manipulate its brain activity to make it believe that it was seeing things that it wasn't. I didn't sleep that night, he recalls."
The ethical implications of neurotechnology are significant, as Yuste warns about the potential to invade and alter human consciousness. He likens this emerging field to the developments brought on by the physicist Robert Oppenheimer with the atomic bomb, posing a same level of ethical dilemma. "We've opened the door to some very serious ethical and social problems, as happened to the physicist Robert Oppenheimer with the atomic bomb," he reflects.
Collection
[
|
...
]