TikTok recently announced that its users in the European Union will soon be able to switch off its infamously engaging content-selection algorithm. The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) is driving this change as part of the region's broader effort to regulate AI and digital services in accordance with human rights and values. TikTok's algorithm learns from users' interactions--how long they watch, what they like, when they share a video--to create a highly tailored and immersive experience that can shape their mental states, preferences, and behaviors without their full awareness or consent. An opt-out feature is a great step toward protecting cognitive liberty, the fundamental right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. Rather than being confined to algorithmically curated For You pages and live feeds, users will be able to see trending videos in their region and language, or a "Following and Friends" feed that lists the creators they follow in chronological order.

You can see your stress levels rising as the deadline to finish your memo approached, causing your beta brain wave activity to peak right before an alert popped up, telling you to take a brain break.

Private thoughts may not be private for much longer, heralding a nightmarish world where political views, thoughts, stray obsessions and feelings could be interrogated and punished all thanks to advances in neurotechnology. Or at least that is what one of the world's leading brain scientists believes. In a new book, The Battle for Your Brain, Duke University bioscience professor Nita Farahany argues that such intrusions into the human mind by technology are so close that a public discussion is long overdue and lawmakers should immediately establish brain protections as it would for any other area of personal liberty. Advances in hacking and tracking thoughts, with Orwellian fears of mind control running just below the surface, is the subject of Farahany's scholarship alongside urgent calls for legislative guarantees to thought privacy, including freedoms from "cognitive fingerprinting", that lie within an area of ethics broadly termed "cognitive liberty". Certainly the field is advancing rapidly.

If you've ever wished your brain was more user-friendly, neurotechnology might seem like a dream come true. It's all about offering you ways to hack your brain, getting it to do more of what you want and less of what you don't want. There are "nootropics" -- also known as "smart drugs" or "cognitive enhancers" -- pills that supposedly give your brain a boost. There's neurofeedback, a tool for training yourself to regulate your brain waves; research has shown it has the potential to help people struggling with conditions like ADHD and PTSD. There's brain stimulation, which uses electric currents to directly target certain brain areas and change their behavior; it's shown promise in treating severe depression by disrupting depression-linked neural activity. Oh, and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are working on brain-computer interfaces that could pick up thoughts directly from your neurons and translate them into words in real time, which could one day allow you to control your phone or computer with just your thoughts. Some of these technologies can offer very valuable help to people who need it.

The United Nations Human Rights Council recently adopted a draft resolution entitled Neurotechnology and Human Rights. It's aimed at protecting humanity from devices that can "record, interfere with, or modify brain activity." To describe the risks, the resolution uses euphemistic phrases like cognitive engineering, mental privacy, and cognitive liberty, but what we're really talking about is mind control. I applaud the UN for taking up the issue of mind control, but neurotechnology is not our greatest threat on this front. That's because it involves sophisticated hardware ranging from "brain implants" to wearable devices that can detect and transmit signals through the skull.