Neural Data Privacy

Neural data includes direct measurements of brain or nervous-system activity as well as mental-state signals inferred from eye tracking, facial expressions, voice, wearables, and other physiological data.

The central questions are who may collect and use these intimate signals, what organizations can infer from them, and how consent, retention, security, de-identification, and commercial profiling should be governed. California and other jurisdictions have begun treating neural data as sensitive information, while proposals such as the federal MIND Act seek to address regulatory gaps. Consumer devices such as wearable brain-computer interfaces make these issues relevant to students, shoppers, workers, patients, and the broader public.