Correlation of neuroethics and bioethics

Neuroethics is an interdisciplinary field of study that considers ethical issues raised by increased understanding of how the brain works and development of technologies of research and influence the brain function. In addition, neuroethics is understood as the study of neural processes of moral decision-making. Originally, the problems of neuroethics have developed in bioethical context. With the expansion of the set of questions and the emergence of a separate discussion of the ethics of neuroscience, as well as the development of research on classical issues of ethics using neuroimaging technologies, neuroethics is becoming a separate field of study. In the article, the authors consider two approaches to the relationship between neuroethics and bioethics: (1) neuroethics as a special area of ​​bioethics and (2) neuroethics as an independent discipline that has its specific features. Understanding neuroethics as a part of bioethics predetermines the consideration of its problems as a study of the social consequences of the achievements of neurosciences and the normative regulation of medical and research practice. The approaches that define neuroethics as an independent field emphasize the combination of multidirectional study (ethics of neuroscience and neuroscience of ethics) as a specific feature of the discipline. These studies are related by their common object of research – the brain. The approach of reductionism underlying the dominant research in neuroethics is noted in the article as a factor of a shift of neuroethics from the humanitarian context of bioethics towards neuroscience.