Consumer products that read brainwaves are already on the market. Regulations have yet to catch up. Here is an overview of the technology, data collection, and legislative initiatives now taking shape.
What Is Neurotechnology?
Neurotechnology is an umbrella term for technologies that interact with the nervous system. It includes everything from medical implants that help paralyzed patients communicate, to consumer products that measure brain activity for wellbeing and productivity.
The fastest development is currently occurring in the consumer segment. Some examples:
EEG headsets from companies like Muse (Canada) and Brainbit (Germany) are marketed for meditation and focus training. They measure brainwaves via electrodes placed against the head.
Neurostimulation through products like Halo Sport claims to improve learning and athletic performance through weak electrical stimulation of the brain.
Brain-reading earbuds are being developed by several actors. Apple has a patent from 2023 for AirPods that passively register brain activity. Chinese Enertech and French myBrain are working on similar technology.
Sleep and dream technology has taken the step from laboratories to the consumer market. MIT's Dormio project has shown that wearables can detect hypnagogic sleep states and deliver targeted stimuli to influence dream content.
What Data Is Collected?
Neural data is information generated by the brain, spinal cord, or peripheral nervous system. In consumer contexts, this primarily concerns EEG signals, electroencephalography, which measures electrical activity in the brain.
From these signals, companies can derive:
Focus and concentration levels
Stress levels and emotional states
Reactions to specific content, such as advertisements
Cognitive load and mental fatigue
Unconscious preferences and impulses
A study from Neurorights Foundation in 2024 examined 30 leading neurotech companies in the consumer market. The result: 29 out of 30 had access to users' neural data without meaningful restrictions. A majority also allowed sharing of this data with third parties.
What Is the Data Used For?
The obvious use is what is marketed: personal feedback for meditation, focus, or sleep. But the possibilities extend further.
Real-time behavioral analysis. By measuring brain response to content, companies can understand what truly captures attention, evokes emotions, or creates purchase impulses, beyond what the user themselves is aware of.
Targeted influence. Neurofeedback apps that reward certain mental states function as digital conditioning tools. They train users to adapt to predefined patterns.
Dream advertising. A survey from 2021 showed that 77% of surveyed marketing companies planned to experiment with dream-targeted advertising. Molson Coors ran a 2021 campaign claiming to shape dreams about their products, which prompted over 40 cognitive scientists to write an open letter to the US FTC warning about the risks.
Where Does Legislation Stand Today?
EU: GDPR Is Not Enough
GDPR defines sensitive personal data as including health data, biometric data, and genetic data. Neural data lacks explicit mention. This means that brainwave data in practice can be treated with the same rules as any other data.
The Medical Device Regulation (MDR) regulates medical technology products, but many neurotech products are marketed as wellness products and therefore fall outside its scope.
Chile: First in the World
Chile became the first country in 2021 to enshrine neurorights in its constitution. The law protects mental integrity, cognitive freedom, and the right to fair access to cognitive technology.
USA: States Take the Lead
Colorado, California, and Montana have legislated neural data as sensitive personal information, requiring explicit consent and limiting how data may be used. Montana's law goes furthest and prohibits the use of neural data for discriminatory profiling.
International Initiatives
UNESCO gathered global leaders, ethicists, and technologists in 2023 who jointly demanded stronger governance of neurotechnology to protect mental integrity, freedom of thought, and cognitive freedom. Their communiqué warned that neurotechnology must never be used to exploit or manipulate human thoughts.
The European Parliament's science panel STOA published a 2024 report calling for new policy frameworks to protect mental autonomy and integrity against non-consensual manipulation through neurotechnology.
Six Proposed Measures for the EU
The report from Our Kindred Future proposes a package of measures to protect European citizens' cognitive rights:
1. Classify brain data as sensitive personal data. Amend GDPR or issue guidance that explicitly categorizes neural data, EEG signals, cognitive states, and emotional profiles, as sensitive data with stricter requirements for consent and usage restrictions.
2. Extend medical device regulation. Clarify that EEG wearables and neurofeedback tools qualify as medical devices if they interpret or influence cognitive states. Also include passive brain monitoring in the regulatory framework.
3. Enshrine cognitive self-determination in law. Introduce a Neurorights Charter that guarantees mental integrity (protection against unauthorized data collection), cognitive autonomy (freedom from manipulation), and psychological integrity (protection against subtle behavioral programming).
4. Require ethical transparency and user control. Mandatory clear information about what is collected and how it is used. Independent review of wellness claims. Opt-in consent as standard. Manual override functions on all neurofeedback products.
5. Introduce NeuroSafe certification. A label similar to CE or Energy Star for brain interface technology, with requirements for transparent data handling, prohibition of covert behavioral manipulation, and strict limitations on third-party access.
6. Fund independent research and public education. Support long-term studies on the effects of consumer neurotechnology and invest in public understanding of brain data, dream manipulation, and mental sovereignty.
Why This Matters
Neural data is the most intimate information that exists about a human being. It reveals thoughts, feelings, and impulses that we ourselves may not be aware of. Unlike other forms of personal data, it goes directly to the source of who we are.
When this data can be collected, analyzed, and potentially used to shape our behavior, fundamental questions about human autonomy are at stake. The right to think freely has historically been considered so self-evident that it rarely needed to be explicitly formulated. That premise is changing.
A New Door for Influence
Neurotechnology is the latest in a series of technological shifts that have opened new pathways into our cognition. Social media and smartphones changed the brain's attention patterns through dopamine-driven design and constant fragmentation. Large language models shift the interpretive process from human to machine. Now comes technology that can read and potentially shape brain activity directly.
Each shift has increased the pressure on our cognitive structure. Each shift has opened new surfaces for external influence. Together they constitute a systematic reshaping of the conditions for human thought.
It is in this context that the concept of cognitive integrity becomes relevant: the ability to maintain a coherent and autonomous interpretive structure despite systemic fragmentation, algorithmic influence, and now also direct neural access. Protecting this ability requires both legislation and understanding of the mechanisms that shape us.
For an in-depth analysis of cognitive integrity and what neurorights mean in a broader context of digital influence, see Neurorights and Cognitive Integrity: When Policy Meets Neuroscience.
Sources
Europe's Neurotech Moment: A Test of Cognitive Rights, Our Kindred Future, December 2025
Safeguarding Brain Data: Assessing the Privacy Practices of Consumer Neurotechnology Companies, Neurorights Foundation, April 2024
The protection of mental privacy in the area of neuroscience, European Parliament STOA, 2024
UNESCO International Conference on the Ethics of Neurotechnology, July 2023
