RRI Tools

The project aims to inform stakeholders and citizens about neuro-enhancement: what it is; its uses, benefits and risks; and legal issues regarding its regulation. NERRI aims to foster global debate and obtain people’s opinions to later shape recommendations for the European Community. Activities are designed to anticipate the future of neuro-enhancement and to challenge existing beliefs and traditional ways of thinking.

The project explicitly anticipates possible futures that may or may not be brought to existence by current research and innovation. It confronts the public with scenarios both to grasp relevant “definitions of the problem(s) at issue, commitments, practices, and individual and institutional values, assumptions and routines” and to consider adequate actions (including governance and regulation) before neuro-enhancement becomes widespread and established.

Emerging knowledge and different perspectives are shared in public debates, ‘SuperMI’, in which stakeholders from different fields take turns presenting their own expertise. In this way, neuro-enhancement professionals get to know one another while learning about and discussing each other’s ideas.

Event organisation, including content and presentation, is modified based on external factors. Activities are modified to include new technological developments. Similarly, presentation styles are adapted to the social perceptions and current knowledge of neuro-enhancements in a given area. Finally, as national economic situations may change citizens’ views on how public money is spent, the project’s framework takes this aspect into account.