Understanding societal challenges: a NeurotechEU perspective

Abstract

Futuristic universities like The NeurotechEU and the technological innovations they provide will shape and serve society, but will also require support from society. Positive attitudes about neuro-technologies will increase their reach within society and may also impact policy-making, including funding decisions. However, the acceptability rates, especially of invasive neuro-technologies, are quite low and the majority of people are more worried than enthusiastic about them. The question therefore arises as to what neuro-technological advances should entail. In a rare e􀀀ort to reach out to the public, we propose to conduct a trans-national survey with the goal to better understand the challenges of our NeurotechEU nations. We aim to compare and contrast our nations specifically with respect to their perspectives on neuro-technological advances, i.e., their needs for, interests in, access to, knowledge of and trust in neuro-technologies, and whether these should be regulated. To this end, we have developed the first version of a new tool—the Understanding Societal Challenges Questionnaire (USCQ)—which assesses all six of these dimensions (needs, interest, access, knowledge, trust, and policy-making) and is designed for administration across EU/AC countries. In addition to trans-national comparisons, we will also examine the links of our nations’ perspectives on neuro-technological advances to demographic and personality variables, for example, education and socio- economic status, size of the residential area, the Big Five personality traits, religiosity, political standings, and more. We expect that this research will provide a deeper understanding of the challenges that our nations are facing as well as the similarities and di􀀀erences between them, and will also help uncover the variables that predict positive and negative attitudes toward neuro- technological advances. By integrating this knowledge into the scientific process, The NeurotechEU may be able to develop neuro-technologies that people really care about, are ethical and regulated, and actually understood by the user.