Neuroscientific research and its associated technological applications raise a number of philosophical, ethical, social and regulatory issues. The need to explore these has resulted in the emergence of a new field of research: neuroethics. Many explanations of neuroethics have been proposed, and how to understand its nature, methodologies, themes and goals is still under discussion. Indeed, even the particularly influential two-step understanding of the field (the ethics of neuroscience and the neuroscience of ethics) has been challenged as incomplete. Taking this into account, a different approach to the field has been proposed, arguing that the different forms and methodologies of neuroethics since its formal introduction 15 years ago allow three main approaches to be distinguished: neurobioethics, empirical neuroethics and conceptual neuroethics.
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0274-y