Technological challenges of neuroscience and their ethical dimension

Technological advances have revolutionised the study and treatment of brain diseases in the last two decades of the 21st century, opening up hopeful prospects for many sufferers. These advances also raise the everlasting problems about the relationship between the brain, thought and the person: how far will we go? Are there insurmountable engineering frontiers in the brain? The main objective of this course is to present the state-of-the-art techniques used to record and manipulate the nervous system, along with the limitations imposed by neurobiology itself and the ethical issues that arise from both. Specific objectives:

• To explain the biological possibilities and limits in the repair of the nervous system.
• To show new advances in the in vivo study of the brain and the application of AI for its analysis.
• To show new advances in deep brain intervention and intervention from outside the skull.
• Discuss the possibilities of organoids as models for studying the brain
• To discuss the technical, biological and ethical limits of bioengineering.

From Monday to Thursday, the mornings will be devoted to lectures by experts in each of the topics, and the afternoons will be devoted to round tables to deepen the discussion of the topics covered in the mornings. On Friday morning, the course will close with a new round table to synthesise the conclusions of the course and the proposal of future research topics.

This course is aimed at university students, researchers at any stage of their careers and professionals interested in learning about the latest technological advances in engineering for the study and treatment of the nervous system, as well as its ethical challenges. It will be of interest to people from biomedical fields, engineering, physics, mathematics, psychology, humanities and social sciences.