ETHICAL NEUROSCIENCE IN UNEQUAL WORLDS: ASYMMETRIES AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN THE AGE OF AI

This paper advances transdisciplinary research—integrating anthropology, archaeology, neuroscience, and experimental psychology—for conducting empirically grounded research across culturally diverse contexts within the XSCAPE framework. The XSCAPE Material Minds project establishes an experimental program designed to investigate how the material cultures of human societies have shaped the development of the mind over historical time. At its core, the project empirically tests the hypothesis of materiality-based cognitive change through culturally situated inquiry.
Beyond its empirical aims, the paper addresses a pressing methodological and ethical question: how can neuroscience and psychological experiments be conducted in ethically robust and community-oriented ways at a moment when AI-driven analytics, large-scale data extraction, and emerging neurotechnologies are rapidly reshaping experimental practice? We argue that these technologies intensify long-standing asymmetries between researchers and researched communities, particularly in contexts historically marked by extractivism, epistemic marginalization, and uneven access to research benefits.
The paper examines the challenges of implementing rigorously designed experimental protocols across heterogeneous contexts while critically reorienting how scientific research conceptualizes participation. Since 2023, the project has developed community-specific forms of engagement and reciprocity across laboratory and field settings in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Particular attention is devoted to a case study developed in collaboration with the Aché, an Indigenous hunter-gatherer community from Paraguay. We propose an approach that treats “bridge building” not as a metaphor, but as a concrete ethical practice. In AI- and neurotechnology-mediated research, scientific rigor and ethical accountability are not competing aims, but interdependent commitments requiring reciprocity, transparency, and long-term responsibility.