DrNicole Vincent

The development of modern diagnostic neuroimaging techniques led to discoveries about the human brain and mind that helped give rise to the field of neurolaw. This new interdisciplinary field has led analytic jurisprudence and philosophy of law in novel directions by providing an empirically informed platform from which scholars have reassessed topics such as mental privacy and self-determination, responsibility and its relationship to mental disorders, and the proper aims of criminal law. Similarly, the development of neurointervention techniques that promise to deliver new ways of altering people’s minds (by intervening in their brains) creates opportunities and challenges that raise important and rich conceptual, moral, jurisprudential, and scientific questions and help us to tease apart analytic jurisprudence from synthetic jurisprudence. This volume advances the field of neurolaw by investigating issues raised by the development and use of neurointerventions (actual, proposed, and potential) to regulate human mental capacity, and by the law’s regulation of the use of neurointerventions.

Daniel Kolitz from Gizmodo, who writes the “Giz Asks” column, asks experts to respond to the question “Do smart drugs work?”. My response to this question headlines this issue of Giz Asks. I argue that for a given definition of “smart drugs” – the popular definition – smart drugs do indeed work, and that many people already use them. However, I also point out a problem — namely, that the popular definition of “smart drugs” dovetails in with a very socially problematic narrative, one which does not necessarily benefit people who use so-called “smart drugs”, but rather results in everyone working harder and longer.