A Practical Approach to Identifying Ethical and Social Problems during Research and Development: A Model for a National Research Project of Brain-Machine Interface Nozomi Mizushima and Osamu Sakura Received: 8 April 2011 / Accepted: 12 April 2012 q National Science Council, Taiwan 2012 Abstract In spite of growing interest in neuroethics, the process of research and development (R&D) is not focused enough on the context of ethical, legal, and social issues. These processes present a unique and largely overlooked opportunity to inte- grate ethical and societal considerations into interactions with these technologies. We implemented a research ethics consultation during the R&D phase of Japan’s national project for brain-machine interfaces; our goal was to capture the ethical and social concerns of researchers in the early stages of R&D. Furthermore, we analyzed the project’s structure and found two specific features related to the researchers’ ethical and social concerns: (1) the segmented structure of the project and (2) the nested structure of the project. We argue that this insight has the potential to provide neu- roethics with a better understanding of R&D as well as more effective intervention strategies. Keywords neuroscienceÁresearch ethicsÁbrain-machine interfacesÁnational research projects We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Mitsuo Kawato, Dr. Hiroshi Yokoi, Dr. Toshiki Yoshimine, Dr. Masayuki Hirata, and Dr. Junichi Ushiba, who provided expert opinions about research on brain- machine interfaces. We also thank our collaborators, Dr. Akira Akabayashi, Dr. Misao Fujita, and Dr. Yoshinori Hayashi, for conducting the research ethics consultations at the Strategic Research Program for Brain Sciences, and Taichi Isobe, Marika Uchida, Natsuko Otsu, and Ikuko Kase for their helpful contributions to the meetings of the ethics research group. We thank Enago (www.enago.jp) for reviewing this English version of our findings. This study is the result of the Brain-Machine Interface Development Research Project conducted under the Strategic Research Program for Brain Sciences by MEXT. This work was also supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) 21300321, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), and MEXT. N. Mizushima (*) Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan e-mail: mizushima@iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp O. Sakura (*) Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan e-mail: sakura@iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (2012) 6:335–345 DOI 10.1215/18752160-1730938