In bioethics, the first decade of the 21st century was characterised by the emergence of interest in the ethical, legal and social aspects of neuroscientific research. At the same time, there has been a steady expansion of the topics and phenomena addressed by neuroscientists and its development as one of the leading disciplines in the biomedical sciences. One of these phenomena addressed by neuroscientists and moral psychologists has been the neural processes involved in moral decision-making. Today, both strands of research are often referred to as neuroethics. To understand this development, the paper cites literature from 1995-2012 to examine the quantitative development of neuroethics research publications; to examine changes in neuroethics research topics over a specific time period; to illustrate the interdependence of different research topics in the neuroethics literature; to show the development of the distribution of neuroethics research in peer-reviewed journals; and to show the academic background and affiliations of neuroethics researchers. This analysis reveals that there has been an increase in neuroethics research. The article suggests that, after more than a decade, there is still no dominant agenda for the future of neuroethical research, and it calls for deeper reflection on the theoretical foundations and prospects for establishing neuroethics as a distinct field of research, independent of neuroscience and the various branches of bioethics.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/21507740.2019.1632958