The International Neurotechnology Governance Observatory (INEGOV) is a CINET initiative dedicated to anticipating, conceptualizing, and developing governance frameworks for neurotechnology as it moves beyond clinical and experimental settings into everyday social contexts.
International Neurotechnology Governance Observatory
(INEGOV)
A governance framework development initiative led by CINET
What is the Observatory?
INEGOV focuses on areas where neurotechnology is advancing faster than the frameworks intended to govern it.
As neurotechnologies and neurotechnology-enabled systems extend into education, work, consumer applications, and digital environments, they generate challenges that cannot be addressed solely through technical performance or existing regulatory categories. These developments affect autonomy, mental privacy, social norms, and institutional responsibilities, calling for governance approaches that consider their broader cognitive and societal implications.
INEGOV provides a space for interdisciplinary analysis and governance framework development at the intersection of technology, mind, and society, with particular attention to non-clinical contexts.
Our approach
INEGOV focuses on anticipating, conceptualizing, and developing governance frameworks for neurotechnology in non-clinical contexts, supporting informed institutional and policy decision-making as these technologies extend beyond the medical domain.
Neurotechnology is no longer confined to clinical and experimental settings and is increasingly present in non-clinical everyday contexts such as education, work, consumer technologies, and digital environments. INEGOV engages with regulatory and policy debates by contributing governance frameworks, interdisciplinary analysis, and conceptual insights that help bridge the gap between high-level ethical principles and the practical challenges of governing neurotechnology in real-world social settings.
The Neurotechnology Shift
INEGOV’s work is structured around the concept of the Neurotechnology Shift: a structural transformation in the relationship between technology, mind, and society driven by the expansion of neurotechnology beyond clinical settings.
This framework provides the conceptual architecture that connects the Observatory’s activities, events, collaborations, and outputs, and organizes them across technoscientific, cognitive, and sociocultural dimensions.
Activities and publications
INEGOV develops its work through a focused set of outputs:
Governance framework development
Conceptual and governance-oriented frameworks addressing emerging challenges in non-clinical neurotechnology.
International convening
Including the CINET Neurotechnology Conference as a flagship event, alongside workshops, seminars, and expert meetings.
Publications
Reports, policy briefs, and other outputs produced independently or in collaboration with external partners and institutions.
Direction
José M. MUÑOZ
Ph.D. Head of Neurotechnology, CINET
Profile
José M. Muñoz is a researcher, speaker, and advisor specializing in the ethical, legal, and social implications of neurotechnology, with a particular focus on global neurotechnology governance. He is the Founding Director of the International Neurotechnology Governance Observatory (INEGOV), a global platform based at the International Center for Neuroscience and Ethics (CINET). He also serves on the Board of Directors of the International Neuroethics Society. His research experience includes fellowships at Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Navarra. He holds a B.S./M.S. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Logic and the History and Philosophy of Science.
He is the author of nearly 100 publications, with work appearing in Nature, Science, The Lancet Psychiatry, Neuroethics, the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Financial Times, The Boston Globe, and Scientific American (Spanish edition). He has also been featured and interviewed in leading media outlets, including Wired, El País, El Mundo, TVE (Spanish public television), and Cadena SER. He has been invited as a speaker and advisor by institutions such as the United Nations, INTERPOL, the Organization of American States, the Government of Spain, the Royal Spanish Academy, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Senate of Mexico, and the Chamber of Deputies of Argentina, as well as TEDx. He also served as an expert in the first judicial ruling worldwide that granted legal protection to a consumer’s brain data (Supreme Court of Chile).