AJOB NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-07-07DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2025.2519457
Elise G Annett, John R Shook, James Giordano
{"title":"Super Soldiers or Social Burden? Ethical Exploration of the Benefits and Costs of Military Bioenhancement.","authors":"Elise G Annett, John R Shook, James Giordano","doi":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2519457","DOIUrl":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2519457","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Biotechnological enhancements for military personnel arouse scrutiny, beyond the ethics of experimental research and due care during operational service, to the eventual return to a civilian life. Reversal of enhancements-by withdrawal, extraction, deactivation, modification, destruction, etc.-will be just as experimental and consequential. Super soldiering may not smoothly transition to ordinary habilitation and lifestyle. Complete reversions of dramatic augmentations, such as prosthetics or brain-computer interfacing, could be more damaging to the person than the initial installation. Partial reversions would be just as perplexing, as discharged personnel retain workable technology to prevent disability while other careers next beckon for a suitably empowered individual. Either way, all such biotechnological enhancements must be treated as ethical and social experiments having both positive and negative potential outcomes. Life stages of technologically modified military personnel require special ethical consideration beyond the lifecycle of the technology itself. The post-enhancement veteran is a largely unexplored area, and we propose that these civilian \"supra-soldiers\" will become a cohort of increasing interest, requiring continued care and ethical support. To that end, we suggest a system of guidelines to ensure ethically sound support for those who serve, and have served, in national defense.</p>","PeriodicalId":39022,"journal":{"name":"AJOB Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"212-221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144585154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AJOB NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-07-22DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2025.2530948
Vincent Guérin
{"title":"Veteran and Brain-Computer Interfaces: The Duty to Care.","authors":"Vincent Guérin","doi":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2530948","DOIUrl":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2530948","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Anticipated by science fiction, the enhanced soldier crystallized in the United States at the dawn of the 21st century within the Pentagon's scientific agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Fueled by the fear of being overtaken by the enemy, and then by its own technology, this agency's new vision produced a \"bifurcation\" within anthropotechnics: the modification of humans for war. The soldier is now at the heart of a process of radical innovation, with as yet unknown implications. Emblematic of this enhancement, the use of the brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) will not only expose the soldier to previously unknown psychocognitive and emotional effects, but also offer the enemy potential access to his/her inner self. By giving birth to a new kind of veteran, this hybridization will generate new responsibilities for military commanders and politicians, as well as a new type of care.</p>","PeriodicalId":39022,"journal":{"name":"AJOB Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"300-308"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144691800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AJOB NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-06-25DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2025.2519454
Sheena M Eagan, Daniel D Moseley
{"title":"The Unfinished War: Ethical Challenges in Enhanced Warfighter Reintegration and Long-Term Care.","authors":"Sheena M Eagan, Daniel D Moseley","doi":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2519454","DOIUrl":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2519454","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As military institutions explore the use of enhancement technologies to improve combat readiness and operational effectiveness, critical ethical and policy questions emerge about the long-term consequences of these interventions. This paper examines the reintegration challenges facing enhanced veterans-those who undergo cognitive, neurological, genetic, or physiological modifications during service-and explores the military's obligations to support their post-service lives. We analyze how enhancements, though often framed as temporary or mission-specific, may result in lasting changes to cognition, emotion, and identity that complicate veterans' ability to rejoin civilian life. Drawing from military ethics, bioethics, and neuroethics literature, we examine issues of autonomy, informed consent, and structural coercion within the hierarchical nature of military service. We argue that enhancement may not only exacerbate existing barriers to healthcare, employment, and social belonging but also generate novel forms of stigma and challenge existing systems of support. To address these challenges, we recommend policy interventions including the establishment of an enhanced veteran registry, expanded research funding, and the development of tailored long-term care strategies. We conclude that protecting the rights and dignity of enhanced service members requires proactive ethical and institutional planning-before, during, and long after their time in uniform.</p>","PeriodicalId":39022,"journal":{"name":"AJOB Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"321-330"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144498280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AJOB NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-09-29DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2025.2560519
Paul Tubig, Frederic Gilbert
{"title":"No Longer \"Super\": Soldier Disenhancement, PIAAAS Harms, and the Duty of Long-Term Care.","authors":"Paul Tubig, Frederic Gilbert","doi":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2560519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2025.2560519","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The pursuit to manufacture \"super-soldiers\" using neurotechnologies to enhance the physical and mental capabilities of soldiers creates potential calls to disenhance some of them. By disenhancement, we refer to the deactivation or removal of devices that have enabled persons to possess new or amplified capacities so that they return to their pre-enhanced or \"normal\" states of being. This paper argues that disenhancement could produce harms to a soldier's personality, identity, autonomy, authenticity, agency and/or self (or PIAAAS). Therefore, the pursuit of military enhancement generates the responsibility of military institutions to provide long-term care to soldiers undergoing disenhancement to mitigate any PIAAAS-related harms that may follow from their disenhanced state. This is a duty grounded in the values of beneficence and justice, especially the principle of reciprocity given the soldiers' contributions to compromise their bodily and mental integrity in the service of a state's sociopolitical goal.</p>","PeriodicalId":39022,"journal":{"name":"AJOB Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-11"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145193440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AJOB NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-09-22DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2025.2557810
Adam Henschke
{"title":"From Enhancement To Disenhancement To De-Enhancement: Institutional Responsibility, and the Duty of Care to Post-Enhanced Veterans.","authors":"Adam Henschke","doi":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2557810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2025.2557810","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this paper I explore the moral responsibility that is owed to post-enhanced military veterans who were enhanced with biotechnological interventions as part of their military service, but then suffer from these biotechnological interventions when returning to civilian life. By exploring two ways that these interventions can become detrimental to a veteran's quality of life, I suggest that the institutional duty of care to post-enhanced veterans arises even though the problems arise after service ends. When we see that soldiers can become disenhanced or de-enhanced, in both cases, the military as an institution owes those post-enhanced veterans a special duty of care because of the military's role in the initial enhancement. Finally, I argue why the conceptual clarity regarding enhancement, disenhancement, and de-enhancement is useful for assigning institutional responsibility with regard to post-enhanced veterans.</p>","PeriodicalId":39022,"journal":{"name":"AJOB Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145114386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AJOB NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-07-17DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2025.2530953
Ryo Uehara
{"title":"Neuroethical Significance and Practical Scope of Alternative Virtues in Japan.","authors":"Ryo Uehara","doi":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2530953","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2025.2530953","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39022,"journal":{"name":"AJOB Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144650868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AJOB NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-07-09DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2025.2519459
Aileen Van Gyseghem, Kris Dierickx, Andrew J Barnhart
{"title":"Consciousness and Human Brain Organoids: A Conceptual Mapping of Ethical and Philosophical Literature.","authors":"Aileen Van Gyseghem, Kris Dierickx, Andrew J Barnhart","doi":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2519459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2025.2519459","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Human brain organoids (HBOs) are three-dimensional structures derived from human pluripotent stem cells that model aspects of fetal brain development. As HBO models grow more complex, ethical concerns arise, particularly around the potential for consciousness. Defining and detecting consciousness in HBOs remains unresolved, with existing theories offering conflicting predictions. This systematic review examines how consciousness is conceptualized in the ethical and philosophical literature concerning HBOs. We selected peer-reviewed publications written in English from 2013 onward that directly address consciousness regarding HBOs. After screening 51 sources, 24 were analysed in themes: Consciousness Terminology, Biological Limitations, Theories of Consciousness, Detecting Consciousness, Comparisons with Conscious Entities, and Special Entities. Uncertainty about consciousness in general complicates the conversation around HBOs. Clear communication is essential to avoid misconceptions, and future research may benefit from focusing on organoid intelligence as a more tractable concept.</p>","PeriodicalId":39022,"journal":{"name":"AJOB Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144601833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AJOB NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-07-01Epub Date: 2025-07-09DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2025.2519435
Ricardo Diaz Milian, Ferenc Rabai
{"title":"Disorders of Consciousness Are Not Necessarily Disorders of Permanence: Reconsidering Risk-Making in a Dynamic Spectrum.","authors":"Ricardo Diaz Milian, Ferenc Rabai","doi":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2519435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2025.2519435","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39022,"journal":{"name":"AJOB Neuroscience","volume":"16 3","pages":"153-155"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144592556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AJOB NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-07-01Epub Date: 2025-07-09DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2025.2519447
Ren Yagawara
{"title":"Facilitating Patient Flourishing Through the Application of Positive Psychology: Cultivating Motivation Through Self-Determination Theory.","authors":"Ren Yagawara","doi":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2519447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2025.2519447","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39022,"journal":{"name":"AJOB Neuroscience","volume":"16 3","pages":"192-195"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144592559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AJOB NeurosciencePub Date : 2025-07-01Epub Date: 2025-07-09DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2025.2519449
Lia Curtis Fine
{"title":"The Implications of Motivational Barriers to Care in Mental Health Contexts.","authors":"Lia Curtis Fine","doi":"10.1080/21507740.2025.2519449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2025.2519449","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39022,"journal":{"name":"AJOB Neuroscience","volume":"16 3","pages":"186-189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144592568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}