Neurotechnological Natives and the Neurotechnology Shift: A Research Agenda for the Brain-as-Interface Era

Neurotechnologies are increasingly moving beyond clinical and laboratory environments into a growing range of everyday contexts, including consumer markets, workplaces, and educational settings. This article presents the concept of the neurotechnology shift, understood as a technoscientific, cognitive, and sociocultural transformation through which neurotechnologies progressively expand into daily life, turning the brain itself into a shared interface between biological cognition and digital systems. This condition may eventually give rise to neurotechnological natives, a concept that is introduced here as a heuristic hypothesis intended to guide interdisciplinary research. Rather than predicting the emergence of a homogeneous generation shaped by neurotechnologies, the concept functions as an analytical tool to structure inquiry into the implications of brain-technology interaction in everyday contexts. To this end, the article outlines a research agenda organized across three dimensions of the neurotechnology shift: technoscientific infrastructures enabling scalable brain-technology interaction and neurodata ecosystems; cognitive implications related to neural plasticity, identity, impulse control, and language processes; and sociocultural transformations concerning governance, inequality and access, and collective imaginaries. Understanding the dynamics and bidirectional interactions across these three dimensions is essential for anticipating the ethical, legal, and societal implications of the emerging brain-as-interface era.