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Neurofeedback is a brain-training technique that continues to develop via ongoing innovations, and that has broadening potential impact. Once confined primarily to clinical and research settings, it is increasingly being used in the general population. Such development raises concerns about the current regulatory mechanisms and their adequacy in protecting patterns of economic and political decision-making from the novel technology. As studies have found neurofeedback to change subjects' preferences and mental associations covertly, there is a possibility it will be abused for political and commercial gains. Current regulatory practices (including disclaimer requirements, unfair and deceptive trade practice statutes and undue influence law) may be avenues from which to regulate neurofeedback influence. They are, however, limited. Regulating neurofeedback will face the line-drawing problem of determining when it induces an unacceptable level of influence. We suggest experiments that will clarify how the parameters of neurofeedback training affect its level of influence. In addition, we assert that the reactive nature of the traditional models of regulation will be inadequate against this and other rapidly transforming technologies. An integrated and proactive regulatory system designed for flexibility must be adopted to protect society in this era of modern technological advancement. This article is part of the theme issue 'Neurofeedback: new territories and neurocognitive mechanisms of endogenous neuromodulation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION 2 I. DETECTING MENS REA IN THE BRAIN 7 A. Background: Initial Obstacles 7 B. The Paradigm: Eliciting Knowing and Reckless Mental States 8 C. Virtues of the Paradigm [...]

Neural precursors of voluntary actions appear before subjects report having decided on their behavior, leadingsome to dismiss a causal role for consciousness in decision-making. But the voluntary actions studied are typically arbitrary– bearing no purpose, meaning or consequence. We used EEG to directly compare deliberate and arbitrary decisions in adonation-preference task. Two NPOs appeared on the left/right of the screen, and subjects pressed the left/right button withthe corresponding hand. In the deliberate condition, subjects’ choices led to monetary donations to the NPOs. In the arbitrarycondition, both NPOs received donations irrespective of the choice. Early left/right ERP differences appeared 1s before theaction only for arbitrary decisions. Following our earlier work, we interpreted these ERPs as reflecting random bias activity disjointfrom decision-making processes. Our findings challenge previous studies, suggesting that early predictability of voluntaryaction does not generalize from arbitrary to more-interesting deliberate decisions.