Announcing Artificial Intelligence, NeuroData, and Society: Law at the Edge of Cognition
(casually: brAIn)
For centuries, the legal order has assumed that certain frontiers were inviolate. Our words could be compelled, our actions scrutinised, our bodies measured. But our thoughts—our unarticulated perceptions, intentions, and hesitations—remained immune. Freedom of thought, codified as an absolute right under international law, was the guarantee that no institution, public or private, could penetrate the interiority of the mind.
That assumption is collapsing.
Neurotechnologies—EEG headsets, functional MRI, invasive and non-invasive brain–computer interfaces—now generate vast amounts of neurodata: digital traces of cognition in motion. These are not static identifiers like fingerprints or faces; they are dynamic signals that reveal recognition, intent, emotion, and even subconscious predisposition. When processed by machine-learning models, they allow AI to decode mental states before they become conscious, to reconstruct inner speech, and to predict behaviour at the pre-decisional stage.
What emerges is not merely another layer of personal data, but a qualitatively distinct substrate of inference. Neurodata collapses the boundary between the external and the internal, between what was once observable and what was presumed private. The implications are profound: when AI systems can access, interpret, and act upon signals of thought itself, the conditions of autonomy, consent, and agency are reconfigured at their root.
Law at the edge of cognition
Artificial Intelligence, NeuroData, and Society: Law at the Edge of Cognition (brAIn) examines this shift with doctrinal and philosophical precision. It asks whether our existing rights architecture—data protection, privacy, freedom of thought, mental integrity—can withstand the pressures of a technological paradigm that treats cognition as data.
Across its chapters, the book traces how NeuroAI is already reordering legal practice and regulatory discourse:
In data protection, where neurodata sits uneasily within categories designed for biometrics and health information, it raises questions of scope, proportionality, and treatment as a special category.
In human rights, where the jurisprudence of freedom of thought has long been under-theorised, it is suddenly confronted with practical questions about forced neural testing, cognitive profiling, and predictive modelling.
In criminal justice, courts are already asked to consider AI-interpreted brain scans as evidence, straining the epistemic scaffolding of adversarial process and due process safeguards.
In regulatory governance, the European AI Act, human rights bodies, and comparative initiatives (Chile, UNESCO, UN Human Rights Council) struggle to delineate the permissible contours of cognitive intrusion.
The book insists on a simple but urgent point: the issue is not whether to create wholly new “neurorights,” but how to adapt and reinterpret existing ones before practice outpaces principle. The dominant trajectory, reflected in European and international soft law, is toward doctrinal evolution rather than radical invention. brAIn aligns with this path, showing how reinterpretation of freedom of thought, privacy, and mental integrity can—and must—be operationalised in the NeuroAI age.
Beyond privacy: agency, contestability, and epistemic rupture
Much of the public discourse on neurotechnology has focused on privacy. But the real challenge is deeper: contestability and agency in a system where cognition itself becomes evidence.
In courtrooms, the prospect of admitting AI-interpreted neurodata destabilises the communicative logic of adversarial trials. Unlike testimony, it cannot be cross-examined. Unlike physical evidence, it is not a discovered artefact but an elicited and computationally inferred signal. When cognition is treated as a probative fact, the legitimacy of legal contestation—the very premise of procedural justice—comes under strain.
In workplaces and commercial settings, neurodata-driven monitoring threatens to normalise continuous cognitive surveillance. Once employers, insurers, or platforms know the patterns of optimal focus or engagement, deviations from those baselines risk being framed as inefficiency, disloyalty, or vulnerability. What begins as optimisation quickly shades into coercion.
In policing and security, the allure of neural lie detection or memory recognition promises efficiency at the expense of epistemic humility. As your chapters argue, the epistemic fragility of such technologies is often obscured by their aura of objectivity. Yet once adopted, their logic tends to sediment into practice, producing precedents and policies that are far harder to roll back.
This is why brAIn describes the rise of NeuroAI not as a neutral tool to be managed, but as an epistemic rupture. The question is not only whether it works, but what kind of legal order it presupposes—and what kind it risks creating.
From neurodata to NeuroAI
At the heart of this book lies the claim that the most consequential transformation is not simply the capture of brain signals, but their use to train AI systems. NeuroAI represents a decisive shift: machine-learning models trained on neurodata do not just interpret neural signals in isolation, they integrate them into predictive architectures capable of anticipating, shaping, and optimising human behaviour at scale. The feedback loop is profound—neurodata becomes both the input and the training set, enabling AI systems to model cognition itself. This does not merely raise questions of data protection; it reconfigures agency, autonomy, and responsibility at the level of thought. In NeuroAI, the brain is no longer only observed; it is rendered legible for algorithmic governance. That is the frontier this book interrogates.
A book written for experts, by an expert
This is not a popular science primer. It is a doctrinally rigorous, interdisciplinary intervention aimed at judges, regulators, policymakers, and scholars who are already immersed in debates on AI governance and rights protection. It draws on EU and Council of Europe frameworks, as well as comparative insights from Latin America and North America, and international policy debates. It integrates case law, legal theory, cognitive science, and ethics to construct a roadmap for defending cognitive sovereignty in the age of NeuroAI.
Artificial Intelligence, NeuroData, and Society: Law at the Edge of Cognition will be published by Bloomsbury in 2026.
Over the coming months, I will use this space to share excerpts, reflections, and provocations from the manuscript. The stakes are not hypothetical. Neurodata is already entering commercial markets, law enforcement practice, and policy debate. The time to articulate a principled response is now.
This is law at the edge of cognition: where the sovereignty of thought itself is in question.
I look forward to reading it and discussing your conclusions.