ABSTRACT
This chapter examines several of the most pressing ethical issues as neuroscience is moved online by commercial entities offering brain-training programs and mental health and wellness mobile apps and by academic investigators in search of "citizen scientist" technical labor. It focuses on internet brain-training programs, a phenomenon that highlights some of the issues brought on by efforts to integrate online commercial marketing and basic science research, where the lines between health/fitness and consumer/patient/research subject have become blurry. The chapter demonstrates the incredible potential as well as the significant risks of brain data collection for consumers and society. Internet-based brain-training programs exemplify three trends that pose new ethical issues for consumers, regulators, and society: a move toward massive-scale scientific efforts; less distinction among consumers, study participants, and research subjects; and a shift toward direct-to-consumer delivery of interventions that largely bypass regulatory oversight. Brain-training companies are similarly tapping into their vast collections of data to perform experiments on a massive scale.
