 Imagine what might be possible if we could plug our brains directly into our smartphones. The whole world would be at our neurological fingertips, from speed of thought social media and Google searches to super fast gaming. We might even be able to supercharge ourselves as we merge our minds with intelligent machines. And of course, this would be a game changer for how we treat brain injuries and diseases. But amazing as all of this sounds, what are the potential downsides and how do we navigate around them? As brain machine interface technologies become ever more sophisticated, this is becoming an increasingly important question. Underlining this, Elon Musk's company Neuralink is already well on the way to developing cutting edge brain interfaces that wirelessly connect to your phone. Musk even talks about this tech as a fit bit in your skull, albeit one that can literally rewrite how you think, act and behave. Of course, we're still a long way from walking brain implant surgery becoming a reality, but the closer we get, the more important it is that we understand what the challenges are and how to navigate these. To help come to grips with some of the more complex ethical risks that advanced brain machine interfaces present, here are five things we should probably be thinking about now. One, what if your brain was hacked through your brain machine implant? Fortunately, there's a lot of attention being paid to the security of brain machine interfaces at the moment. But as soon as we have wireless devices that are able to write to your brain as well as read from it, we're opening the door to a hacker's paradise. Two, who owns your thoughts? These days, data is money. And when brain machine interfaces start to suck out your every thought from your head, the resulting neuro data is going to be worth its waiting goal. The question is, who is going to have control over how this is used or even abused? Three, who owns your brain? Of course, you do. But if a brain machine interface changes how you think or how you perceive the world around you or even how you behave, what happens when it needs an upgrade or a service? If we're not careful, you may still own your brain in the future, but you're relinquished control over how you use it in a service contract you cannot afford to break. Four, similarly, who owns your identity? Imagine we get to the point where you can alter how you feel through an iPhone app or where someone else can alter how you feel as part of, say, an online multiplayer brain machine gaming setup. Or more worrying still, what if the police or your doctor or even your employer gets to determine how you feel through that seemingly harmless Fitbit in your brain? These are all rather speculative possibilities, but if the technology has this capacity, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone's going to try and use it to benefit themselves at your expense. And finally, five, who gets to have a supercharged brain and who does not? It's one thing if performance enhancing brain machine interfaces are accessible to most people, but if only the rich and the privileged get to use the tech and they then use it to become even more rich and even more privileged, we have a problem. Of course, there are incredible potential benefits that could come from advanced brain machine interfaces if they're developed responsibly. Just imagine, for instance, being able to get rid of brain fog at the flick of a switch or control your mood with the swipe of an iPhone app. Or what if you had a device that could help you recall memories with ease or Google anything with a single thought? Yet this is a technology that is potentially so transformative that it places us on a knife edge between a future full of wonder and promise and one that could echo our worst nightmares if we're not careful, which is why even though advanced brain machine interfaces are still some way over the horizon, it's not too early to start thinking about what sort of future we want and how we're going to get there. For more information, please do check out the links in the blurb below and as always, stay safe.