Organizations and Programs

With the help of our members, INS maintains this list of organizations and programs focused on neuroethics.

Links to external parties are provided as a courtesy and are not an endorsement of products or services.

Disclaimer

Research / Education

Neuroethics Canada

The University of British Columbia's Neuroethics Canada program is an interdisciplinary research group dedicated to tackling the ethical, legal, policy and social implications of frontier technological developments in the neurosciences. Our objective is to align innovations in the brain sciences with societal, cultural and individual human values through high impact research, education and outreach.

Emory Neuroethics Program

The Neuroethics Program at Emory University is an interdisciplinary, inter-departmental group of scholars interested in the intersection of neuroscience, ethics, and society. The Program aims to become a center of excellence that informs responsible applications of neuroscience in research, the clinic, and society as well as engages and activates our community in neuroethics discourse.

Penn Center for Neuroscience & Society

The Center for Neuroscience & Society is a group of faculty and students from departments spanning the Schools of Arts and Sciences, Medicine, Law, and Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania, whose work addresses the ethical, legal and social implications of neuroscience.

Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School

The Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics was launched to ensure that values and ethics are always part of medical training, laboratory and clinical research, and professional education. The Center is designed as a platform for integrating ethics and scientific discovery more closely than ever before, generating new forms of collaboration among students, bench scientists, clinical researchers, clinicians, practicing bioethicists, academic philosophers, historians of medicine, humanities scholars and others able to bring their disciplinary perspectives to bear on the ethical challenges posed by present and future biomedical advances.

Neuroethics Research Unit

The Neuroethics Research Unit at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM) pursues research to address the spectrum of challenges in neurological and psychiatric care such as providing quality patient information, diminishing stigma, and promoting respectful healthcare services. Their research program aims at bridging these various challenges to identify practical solutions. Research activities are funded by grants, scholarships, fellowships, and private foundations. They cover a broad and evolving range of ethical and social issues associated with research, healthcare, public services and public policy as well as foundational issues in neuroethics. Several other studies have also expanded the scope of the Unit beyond the context of neuroscience and clinical neurology and psychiatry.

Oxford Centre for Neuroethics

The Oxford Centre for Neuroethics aims to address concerns about the effects neuroscience and neurotechnologies will have on various aspects of human life. Its research focuses on five key areas: cognitive enhancement; borderline consciousness and severe neurological impairment; free will, responsibility and addiction; the neuroscience of morality and decision making; applied neuroethics.

Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics

The Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics is dedicated to the interdisciplinary research and education in biomedical experts, and provides clinical and ressearch ethics consultation. They serve as a scholarly resource on emerging ethical issues raised by medicine and biomedical research.

Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences

Stanford University's Center for Law and the Biosciences, directed by Professor Hank Greely, examines biotech discoveries in the context of the law, weighing their impact on society and the law's role in shaping that impact. The Center is part of the Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology.

Johns Hopkins Program in Ethics and Brain Sciences

The goal of Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics' Program in Ethics and Brain Sciences is to ensure that research in brain science proceeds with an informed and sophisticated understanding of attendant ethical and social issues, and that philosophical and empirical analysis of the advances in brain research proceeds with an informed and sophisticated understanding of the science.

Wisconsin Neuroscience and Public Policy Program

The University of Wisconsin-Madison established an integrated double degree program in Neuroscience and Public Policy Program addresses an unfortunate truth: that science policy and the law in the United States and elsewhere is frequently made by individuals who have little or no training in science, and, therefore, rely on scientists and engineers for advice, most of whom have little or no understanding of how public policy or the law is made.

Georgetown Center for Clinical Bioethics

The Edmund D. Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics (PCCB) at Georgetown University Medical Center was established over two decades ago in order to create a center of excellence, filling a unique need for bioethics that is directly oriented towards clinical medicine and strongly rooted in the Catholic and Jesuit tradition.

Neuroethics Concentration Program at George Mason University

The neuroethics concentration program explores emerging ethical questions raised by recent neuroscientific discoveries on genetic and environmental factors that influence human behavior, decision-making, personality traits, and mental states.

Dalhousie Department of Bioethics

The Department of Bioethics is an academic department at Dalhousie Medical School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Our primary focus is on advancing ethics in and of health care practice.

Johannes Gutenberg Focus Program Translational Neurosciences

The Focus Program Translational Neurosciences is a network of scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University working in the field of biomedical research. Research group leaders from basic and clinical research work together on an interdisciplinary basis.

Tübingen International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities

The University of Tübingen's International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities is an interdisciplinary research centre that explores ethical problems arising from the sciences and humanities. The centre aims to conduct research in cooperation with scholars of different disciplines and promotes the advancement of the next generation of researchers in the field of ethics within the sciences and humanities.

Neuroscience and the Law Graduate Program at Michigan State University

Designed for students and working professionals, the Neuroscience and Law online graduate certificate provides the scientific knowledge necessary to understand how neuroscience can be applied to the field of criminal justice. Included in the curriculum are neuroscience principles, methods, ethics, enhancement, substance use and behavioral disorders. Seminars by professionals survey the ethical, legal, and social implications of neuroscientific research, in addition to the experiences they have had with neurotechnology in their respective fields.

Associations / Foundations

The Dana Foundation

The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropic organization that supports brain research through grants, publications, and educational programs—including a focus on neuroethics.

British Neuroscience Association

The British Neuroscience Association is the largest UK organisation representing all aspects of neuroscience from ion channels to whole animal behaviour to neuroscience applications in the clinic.

NIO logo
Neurotechnology Industry Organization

The Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO) is the first and only trade group that advocates on behalf of companies involved neurotechnology. Since 2006, over 120 organizations have joined us in our mission to accelerate neurotechnology research, development and commercialization, including neuroscience companies, brain research institutes, and patient advocacy groups across the spectrum of neurological disease, psychiatric illnesses and nervous system injuries. NIO is a non-profit trade association that is focused on lifting the burden of brain disease and accelerating the economic benefits from advancing neuroscience which is a unique challenge that can only be met by fostering a dedicated commercial neuroscience ecosystem.

NEW Leaders

Neuroethics is a fairly young field, pioneered by many women scholars. This is reflected in the name, an opportunity for a guard of NEW (Neuro Ethics Women) Leaders. NEW Leaders aims to continue to cultivate professional networks and skills for women currently in and entering into the field of neuroethics by way of a women in neuroethics network.

Society for Neuroscience

The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 40,000 members in more than 90 countries and 130 chapters worldwide.

MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience

Vanderbilt University, headquarters of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience, is a leading institution for the study of law and neuroscience. Whether enrolled in law, neuroscience, psychology, or the nation's first joint JD/PhD program in Law & Neuroscience, students at Vanderbilt have access to unparalleled opportunities at the law/neuroscience intersection.

AAAS's Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

Building on the American Association for the Advancement of Science's long-standing commitment to relate scientific knowledge and technological development to the purposes and concerns of society at large, the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) facilitates communication between scientific and religious communities.

AAAS's Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

The American Association for the Advancement of Science's Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program addresses ethical, legal and human rights issues related to the conduct and application of science and technology.

Macquarie Center for Agency, Values and Ethics

The Macquarie University's Centre for Agency, Values and Ethics provides a platform for interaction and collaboration between researchers in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, law, medicine, applied ethics and bioethics. A distinctive feature is its focus upon the philosophical, ethical and legal issues raised by the cognitive neurosciences.

Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics

The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE) is a network of scholars elaborating the law, policy and ethics of freedom of thought. Their mission is to develop social policies that will preserve and enhance freedom of thought into the 21st century.

Institutes / Government

Canadian Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research's Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction supports research to enhance mental health, neurological health, vision, hearing, and cognitive functioning and to reduce the burden of related disorders through prevention strategies, screening, diagnosis, treatment, support systems, and palliation.

Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues is an advisory panel of the nation's leaders in medicine, science, ethics, religion, law, and engineering. The Bioethics Commission advises the President on bioethical issues arising from advances in biomedicine and related areas of science and technology. The Bioethics Commission seeks to identify and promote policies and practices that ensure scientific research, health care delivery, and technological innovation are conducted in a socially and ethically responsible manner.

Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies is a nonprofit think tank which promotes ideas about how technological progress can increase freedom, happiness, and human flourishing in democratic societies.

Initiative on Neuroscience and Law

The Initiative on Neuroscience and Law brings together neuroscientists, legal scholars, programmers, ethicists, judges, and policy makers with the goal of constructing a cost-effective legal system with higher utility and lower cost. From the vantage point of science, we are developing new technologies that can directly intersect with the criminal justice system in a novel way.

 

All the information provided in the INS website is provided for informational purposes only. INS makes no representations or guarantees about the information. Links are provided as a convenience and INS is not responsible for the information contained in the links.

Scientific and medical information found in articles throughout the site should not be interpreted as medical advice. This can only be obtained from a qualified medical professional.