Cognitive Liberty
Cognitive liberty is the right to self-determination over one's own mental life and neurochemistry. It has two faces: a negative dimension — freedom from non-consensual interference with one's mental processes (surveillance, manipulation, coerced modification) — and a positive dimension — the freedom to alter one's own cognition, including by using or refusing neurotechnology and psychoactive means.
The concept generalizes freedom of thought from a purely internal guarantee to one that must be actively defended given technologies that can monitor and influence cognition. It underlies debates on compelled brain-based interrogation, workplace or educational neuromonitoring, and the right to cognitive enhancement or its refusal.
An employer that requires staff to wear an attention-monitoring headband, or a school that mandates neurofeedback, engages the negative dimension of cognitive liberty — interference with mental self-determination — even if the stated aim is productivity or learning.
Mandated monitoring can violate cognitive liberty regardless of the benevolent rationale.
Cognitive liberty is often treated as the umbrella neuroright from which mental privacy and mental integrity are derived; tension arises when one person's positive liberty to enhance meets fairness concerns about equity of access.