Neurotech and Human Futures-36753-ICOS-210-01
Professor: James Giordano
Neuroscience is forging new directions and capabilities in the ability to engineer materials and
apply discoveries to the brain that enable access and control of thought, emotion and behavior
at a rate and level of profundity that has been heretofore unprecedented. Spawned by iterative
funding efforts, such as the United States’ Decade of the Brain (1990-2000) and Brain Research
through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnology (BRAIN) initiative, the European Union’s
Human Brain Project, and large scale projects including the China Brain Project, Korea Brain
Project, and the Japan Brain-Mind initiative, the use of these technologies as tools has allowed
equivalently impressive progress in medicine (e.g.- neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry),
bioengineering, the daily conduct of public life, and even national security and defense.
This course addresses how and why neuroscience has ‘evolved’ to become a dynamic force in
society. Lectures will depict how key areas of neuroscience and neurotechnology have
developed to become potent forces that enable assessment, access and manipulation of brain
function (in individuals, groups and perhaps even communities at-large). Next an overview of
specific frontier areas of neuroscience and technology will be presented, with emphasis upon
(a) the extent and scope of new knowledge and capability that such developments afford to
impact the human condition, and (b) key issues that are incurred by such neuroscientific and
neurotechnological progress on the 21st century world stage.
