The Brain at Work: The Biopolitics of Neurotechnology and Labor Subjectivities

A new generation of neurotechnology is rapidly transitioning from clinical laboratories into the modern workplace. Wearable electroencephalography (EEG) devices are now integrated into safety gear and everyday apparel to monitor brain activity in real time. In heavy industries, logistics, and aviation, wearables like SmartCap track worker alertness and fatigue. Simultaneously, consumer-grade EEG headsets are marketed to corporate offices, training programs, and wellness schemes with promises to measure focus, attention, and emotional states.While framed in the benign language of occupational safety, productivity, and self-optimization, these technologies share a fundamental operational logic: they render the worker’s nervous system legible as data and actionable for management. This shift marks a transition from traditional Taylorism - which disciplined the worker’s physical body and outward movements - to a digital “neuro-Taylorism” that reaches inward to monitor and manage cognitive and affective states. As biometric, neural, and emotional data are increasingly folded into algorithmic management, the cranium itself becomes a managed workplace surface.The goal of this Research Topic is to convene an interdisciplinary dialogue to analyze what becomes of work, workers, and the boundary of the self when the brain becomes the newest frontier of workplace governance. We seek to understand these developments through biopolitical, postphenomenological, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) lenses. We invite researchers to move beyond technological hype and reflexive dystopia. Instead, this collection aims to curate grounded, empirically rigorous, and normatively serious accounts of how neurotechnology is actively restructuring the human dynamics of labor, agency, and cognitive liberty.This Research Topic welcomes theoretical, empirical, normative, legal, and critical design contributions that address the biopolitics of neurotechnology and labor. We encourage submissions from across anthropology, sociology of work, neuroethics, legal studies, labor relations, human-computer interaction, and affective computing.Potential themes and topics include, but are not limited to:- Theoretical Frameworks: Biopower, governmentality, and the “management of the mind” (Rose & Abi-Rached, 2013); neuroliberalism and the neurobiological subject; the historical genealogy from Taylorism to neuro-Taylorism; and postphenomenological, 4E, and biosemiotic accounts of neural agency and situated affect.- Empirical & Cross-Cultural Case Studies: Real-world deployments of neurodevices in sectors such as mining, transport, aviation, logistics, call centers, and knowledge work; cross-cultural variations in their adoption, reception, and regulation; and workers’ lived experiences of accommodation, negotiation, and resistance.- Ethics, Governance, & Neurorights: Critical evaluations of mental privacy, cognitive liberty, mental integrity, and psychological continuity in employment; neurodata sovereignty and the dynamics of consent and coercion under asymmetric power structures; and the efficacy of emerging regulatory frameworks, including the 2025 UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology.- Critical & Participatory Design: Technical investigations into how neurodevices are engineered, marketed, and validated; the gap between vendor claims and empirical capabilities; and worker-centered, participatory, or refusal-enabling approaches to design.- Socio-Political Impacts: The differential exposure of precarious, low-wage, and gig workers to brain monitoring; “wellbeing-washing” and neoliberal self-optimization; collective bargaining, labor organizing, and the right to refuse neuro-surveillance; and the long-term reshaping of worker dignity and autonomy. Topic editors: Peter Andrew Mantello, Douglas Ponton Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84564/the-brain-at-work-the-biopolitics-of-neurotechnology-and-labor-subjectivities