The Need for Guidance around Recruitment and Consent Practices in Intracranial Electrophysiology Research

The BRAIN Initiative data-sharing ecosystem: Characteristics, challenges, benefits, and opportunities

In this paper, we provide an overview and analysis of the BRAIN Initiative data-sharing ecosystem. First, we compare and contrast the characteristics of the seven BRAIN Initiative data archives germane to data sharing and reuse, namely data submission and access procedures and aspects of interoperability. Second, we discuss challenges, benefits, and future opportunities, focusing on issues largely specific to sharing human data and drawing on N = 34 interviews with diverse stakeholders. The BRAIN Initiative-funded archive ecosystem faces interoperability and data stewardship challenges, such as achieving and maintaining interoperability of data and archives and harmonizing research participants' informed consents for tiers of access for human data across multiple archives. Yet, a benefit of this distributed archive ecosystem is the ability of more specialized archives to adapt to the needs of particular research communities. Finally, the multiple archives offer ample raw material for network evolution in response to the needs of neuroscientists over time. Our first objective in this paper is to provide a guide to the BRAIN Initiative data-sharing ecosystem for readers interested in sharing and reusing neuroscience data. Second, our analysis supports the development of empirically informed policy and practice aimed at making neuroscience data more findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

Two Practices to Improve Informed Consent for Intraoperative Brain Research

As the clinical applications of neurologically implanted devices increase, so do opportunities for intracranial investigations in human patients. In some of these studies, patients participate in research during their awake brain surgery, performing additional tasks without the prospect of personal therapeutic benefit. These intraoperative studies raise persistent ethical challenges because they are conducted during a clinical intervention, in a clinical space, and often by the treating clinician. Whether intraoperative research necessitates innovative informed consent methods has become a pressing conversation. Familiar worries about inadequate participant understanding and undue influence dominate these discussions, as do calls for increasing information retention (e.g., using methods such as "teach-back") and minimizing enrollment pressures (e.g., preventing surgeons from consenting their own patients). However, efforts have yet to inspire widespread consent practices that mirror the scope of ethical concern. Focusing on awake, intraoperative intracranial research, we identify 2 underappreciated problems in approaches to informed consent. The first is epistemic: Many practices do not fully consider when and under which conditions participants are adequately informed. The second is relational: Many practices do not fully consider the effects of trust between patient-participants and surgeon-researchers. In exploring these concerns, we also raise questions about whether additional steps beyond preoperative consent may improve the process because decisions at this time are decoupled from both the experiences and vulnerability of awake brain surgery. Motivated by these considerations, we propose 2 practices: first, requiring a third-party patient advocate in initial consent and second, requiring verbal intraoperative reconsent before initiating research.