In his commentary Brave Neuro World Paul McFedries at IEEE Spectrum highlights how "the term neuro made the leap from prefix to adjective recently with the publication last month of The Neuro Revolution."

As you can imagine, we thought long and hard about the title for the book. Years back I considered Brain Wave (a play on the physical phenomenon, the patterns of historical techno-economic waves, and the close association with the name of this blog). Obviously, The Neuro Revolution won for multitude of reasons, one of them being the desire to raise "neuro" to a new status.

The prefix to adjective shift is of monumental significance. Neuro refers to more than just the ways that neuroscience and neurotechnologies will drive social, economic and political developments but also to the many new ways of viewing, understanding and existing that will emerge as we assimilate neuro-derived and inspired tools and practices into our lives throughout the 21st century. This is similar to how the adjectives Industrial and Information placed before Revolution connoted much greater meaning than a type of technology or science.

At all of my discussions over the two last week in DC, NYC, Boston, Palo Alto, San Francisco, I continually shared that the primary reason for writing the book was to spark an ongoing broad public dialogue about how brain science, neurotechnology and new ways of viewing situations will transform nearly every aspect of human life - from law enforcement to the financial markets, to marketing, art, entertainment, religion, warfare and even what it means to be human.

I was heartened a few days after my talk at MIT, attended by over 100 neuroscientists, that it generated enough interest in the societal implications of their research that they are already working on a follow on series focused on emerging issues.

While there is already a burgeoning neuroethics community, it is time to expand the community. Given the extraordinary changes coming, it must begin to include people from all walks of life, yet another reason to write a book less laden in terminology and more focused on story and human interest. Let the conversations grow!