Dr David Lyreskog
About
Dr David Lyreskog is a Senior Researcher with the Neuroscience, Ethics and Society (NEUROSEC) team in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford. He is also Director of the Design Bioethics Laboratory with NEUROSEC and the Wellcome Discovery Platform ANTITHESES.
Dr Lyreskog is Co-Investigator on the Horizon Europe project AI-PROGNOSIS – an international and multidisciplinary effort to develop an ethical ecosystem for diagnosis, prognosis and disease management in Parkinson's Disease using Big Data and AI – and Lead Researcher on the Wellcome Ethics & Humanities research line Rethinking Collective Minds, investigating conceptual and ethical impacts of emerging technologies for collective thinking and decision-making.
While he is broadly interested in impactful research and innovation in the intersection of neuroscience, psychiatry and technology, specific domains of interests include ethical analysis, decision-making and innovation in: new and emerging neurotechnologies; mental health in child and adolescent populations; exercise, sports and health; diagnosis, prevention and treatment strategies for neurodegenerative disease; frailty and multimorbidity; and artificial, hybrid and collective intelligence.
Dr Lyreskog's PhD thesis, The Ethics of Mind Maintenance (2020), analysed ethical trade-offs in the context of emerging technologies aimed at preventing and treating age-related neural decline and disease. The project sought to facilitate our understanding of the value trade-offs involved in utilising technologies for neurodegenerative diseases, the aim being to provide a guiding and ethically sound decision-making structure for patients and other users of the technologies.
Between 2019 and 2021, Dr Lyreskog worked on the Wellcome-funded project BeGOOD Early Intervention Ethics in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, developing novel tools for bioethics research and engagement with young people. The project included building a digital game – Tracing Tomorrow – to study the values and preferences of young people in the context of digital phenotyping for mental health in schools.
Expertise
- Ethical issues in neuroscience
- Ethical issues in mental health interventions
- Ethical issues in psychiatry
- Ethical issues in AI
- Deep moral conflicts / divided opinions – radical moral disagreements
Selected publications
- Decentralising the Self – Ethical Considerations in Utilizing Decentralised Web Technology for Direct Brain Interfaces (2024)
- The ethics of thinking with machines: brain-computer interfaces in the era of artificial intelligence (2023)
- Where Do You End, and I Begin? How Relationships Confound Advance Directives in the Care of Persons Living with Dementia (2020)
- Debate: Promoting capabilities for young people's agency in the COVID-19 outbreak (2020)
Media experience
During the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdowns, Dr David Lyreskog participated in an episode of the Global Cycling Network’s podcast, discussing the ethical intricacies of exercising outside during the lockdown in the UK. Dr Lyreskog was also interviewed by Neuroethics Today for their column ‘A day in the life of a neuroethicist’.
Languages
English, Swedish