Safety Failures in Neurodevices

Definition

Safety Failures in Neurodevices examines hazardous malfunction, degradation or interaction failure in neural devices within the broader domain of the protection of neural devices, signals, identities and interfaces from attack, compromise and unsafe failure.

Why this matters

Failures concerning hazardous malfunction, degradation or interaction failure in neural devices can cause physical or psychological harm, loss of function, privacy invasion, identity compromise, exclusion, coercion or irreversible impact on human agency.

Research questions

Under which conditions can hazardous malfunction, degradation or interaction failure in neural devices be delivered, measured or protected reliably, and how do outcomes vary by person, device, duration, context and governance controls?

Hypotheses

A transparent, safety-bounded and person-centred approach to safety failures in neurodevices, combining validated measurement, informed consent, privacy and security controls, human oversight and longitudinal monitoring, will improve benefit–risk outcomes compared with opaque or technology-centred approaches.

Proposed methods

cybersecurity threat modelling; penetration testing; signal spoofing simulation; adversarial input testing; device-failure analysis; red-team exercises; incident-response drills; expert and affected-user review; reproducibility testing; methods adapted specifically to Safety Failures in Neurodevices

Stakeholders and beneficiaries

neurotechnology users; clinicians; manufacturers; cybersecurity teams; regulators; hospitals; researchers; carers; emergency responders