Neurodata, Ai, and the Right to Think: What the Industry Is Building and Why Cognitive Liberty Matters

A 2019 moment that predicted the future

In 2019, IKEA ran a pop up that quietly foreshadowed the neurotech era. The He(art) Scanner tracked shoppers’ heart rate and brain waves while they viewed limited edition art. If your body showed you truly loved a piece, you earned the right to buy it. It was clever experiential marketing, but the deeper message was clear. Neurodata can drive real decisions at the point of sale. 

(Source: Contagious, 2019)

How Synchron reads intent through brain blood vessels

The most interesting technical shift is endovascular brain computer interfaces. Instead of open brain surgery, Synchron threads a stent‑like mesh electrode array into a blood vessel that runs alongside the motor cortex, typically entering through the jugular vein. Once in place, the device listens for motor intent and transmits those signals wirelessly so the user can point, click, and type on a screen. It is minimally invasive compared with traditional implants, and early studies focus on safety and restoring basic digital control for people with severe paralysis. Peer‑reviewed work has documented the approach, the vascular route to the superior sagittal sinus, and the ability to perform daily tasks like messaging by thought. It is still early, but the safety and feasibility evidence is growing. 

(Sources: Synchron publications and clinical reports)

Apple plus Synchron and why native support matters

This is where platform integration becomes meaningful. Apple and Synchron are collaborating so thought‑based input can be recognized natively by iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro through an accessibility protocol for brain interfaces. For a person with paralysis, that means less custom software and more out‑of‑the‑box compatibility with Apple features like Switch Control. It also signals a future where a mainstream platform expects neural input the same way it already expects touch, type, voice, or gaze. In parallel, the broader race in clinical neurotech keeps accelerating. Alongside Synchron you will see Neuralink, Precision Neuroscience, and Paradromics pursue different routes to record or stimulate brain activity. Analysts expect permanent BCI implants to more than double in clinical trials over the next year. 

(Sources: Patently Apple, 2025; industry analyses)

The consumer wave: your brain, your earbuds, your apps

Outside the clinic, consumer neurotech is scaling quickly. A recent market atlas found that EEG sits at the core of most consumer products and is gradually blending into mainstream wearables such as headphones, earbuds, glasses, and even wrist devices. Forty eight percent of consumer neurotech firms are based in North America, and many products focus on wellness like sleep, relaxation, and focus. 

(Source: CFG Neurotech Market Atlas)

Examples you can buy today:

• Headphones with EEG that estimate attention and prompt breaks when your focus drops.

• EEG headbands for meditation and sleep training that provide real‑time audio feedback on brain activity.

• Earbud‑style EEG is emerging, since the ear is a comfortable and repeatable place to measure signals.

Questions we should ask now:

• If your headphones can infer when you are stressed or deeply focused, who owns that state data and where does it go?

• Could productivity metrics from EEG become part of school or workplace analytics?

• If a device can guess anxiety or mood, should that information be sellable, shareable, or subpoenaable?

A recent review of consumer neurotech privacy found uneven safeguards across companies and regions. Many policies lag behind the sensitivity of the data. The concern is not a distant future. It is a retail shelf issue. 

(Source: privacy law and ethics reviews)

From lab to life: translating thoughts to text

On the research frontier, Alex Huth’s group at The University of Texas showed that a noninvasive decoder can reconstruct continuous language from brain activity measured with fMRI while a person listens or imagines speech. It does not read exact words, and it requires long supervised training per person, but the system can summarize the gist of stories people hear or imagine. For people who cannot speak, this points to a future where thoughts can become text without any implant at all. Powerful help, and also a powerful reason to protect mental privacy. 

(Source: Texas Exes feature on Alex Huth, 2023)

Why cognitive liberty belongs in your vocabulary

Cognitive liberty is the simple idea that your mind should remain a safe and private space. Scholars describe a cluster of neurorights that follow from this idea. These include the right to mental privacy, the right to mental integrity, and the right to psychological continuity. In plain language, you should control whether your brain data is collected, how it is used, and whether technology can alter the continuity of who you are. Some governments are already moving. Chile amended its constitution to protect brain activity and information derived from it. In the United States, a new wave of state privacy laws now treats neural data as sensitive. Colorado, California, and Montana have passed protections that target consumer devices which collect brain data outside medical settings. This is a smart focus because most early neurotech will arrive not as medical implants, but as everyday products. 

(Source: KFF Health News; state privacy statutes)

Why this matters now: the human context in numbers

• Dementia: About 57 million people worldwide live with dementia. Alzheimer disease accounts for an estimated 60 to 70 percent of cases. More than 60 percent of people with dementia live in low and middle income countries. 

(Source: WHO Dementia facts)

• Depression: About 280 million people live with depression. 

(Source: WHO Depression facts)

• Mental disorders overall: Roughly one billion people worldwide were living with a mental disorder in 2019, a burden that rose during the pandemic. 

(Source: WHO Mental health overview)

These numbers explain the urgency. If neurotechnology can help people speak, move, learn, focus, and sleep, the potential public good is enormous. The same capability to infer internal states also creates risk if it is used to sort, score, or manipulate people without consent.

Where this is going

My view is simple. Push the clinical tools forward, and set bright legal lines for consumer uses. Platform level support from companies like Apple matters because it normalizes accessibility for people with paralysis. Consumer products will keep experimenting with EEG and other signals in headphones, headbands, glasses, and earbuds. The policy conversation must keep pace, not to stop innovation, but to protect the right to think.

Right to cognitive liberty means a right to think with a safe space in the brain, to think free and different. If this technology falls into the hands of dictators or authoritarian regimes, people will lose their ability to think freely or even dream big. That is why governance is not abstract. It is personal.

I am thankful that 48 percent of consumer neurotech firms are based in North America, with many in the United States. That gives me comfort that such technologies will not be developed primarily in authoritarian regimes and dictatorship systems like China and Russia. In the United States, California, Montana, and Colorado have already passed privacy laws to protect brain data collected by devices. 

(Sources: CFG Neurotech Market Atlas; KFF Health News)

References

- Contagious (2019). IKEA He(art) Scanner campaign. 

- Patently Apple (2025). Apple and neurotechnology startup Synchron collaborating on a brain‑computer interface for those with disabilities. 

- CFG Neurotech Market Atlas. 

- Texas Exes (2023). UT Ai research translates thoughts to text. 

- KFF Health News. California, Montana, and Colorado privacy laws to protect brain data collected by devices. 

- World Health Organization. Dementia fact sheet. 

- World Health Organization. Depression fact sheet. 

- World Health Organization. Mental health: strengthening our response. 

- Synchron scientific publications and clinical reports (overview).