Ethics & Data Privacy
NeuroBehavior Clinic works with sensitive clinical, forensic, behavioral, and neurobiological information. Our ethics framework is built around independent review, informed consent, proportional measurement, participant dignity, and disciplined data governance.
Review & Oversight
Studies are routed through the appropriate ethics, institutional, or sponsor review pathway before participant-facing procedures begin.
Informed Consent
Consent is treated as an ongoing informed process, not a signature collected once.
Data Safeguards
Sensitive data is minimized, coded, access-controlled, retained only as justified, and documented.
Accountability
Reports, publications, and clinical communications must state limits, uncertainty, and context.
1. Ethical Foundation and Scope
Our work follows established principles for research involving human participants: respect for persons, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, scientific validity, privacy, transparency, and independent oversight. The framework applies to clinical assessment, research participation, neurotechnology protocols, psychometric testing, forensic referral work, data repository activity, and institutional collaborations connected with Spain, Switzerland, or cross-border partners.
2. Review Pathways and Protocol Responsibility
Research protocols: participant-facing studies are reviewed through the relevant ethics committee, institutional review board, sponsor process, or competent authority route before recruitment.
Clinical protocols: assessments and interventions are governed by professional standards, safety screening, scope of practice, documentation, and patient welfare duties.
Forensic protocols: legal or institutional assessments require a defined referral question, impartial role, evidence limits, and documented authorization.
Each protocol should identify the responsible investigator or clinician, inclusion and exclusion criteria, risk management, adverse-event escalation, data flows, storage, retention, publication plans, and procedures for protocol deviations.
3. Consent, Withdrawal, and Participant Rights
Participants and patients receive understandable information about purpose, procedures, expected duration, foreseeable risks, discomforts, benefits, alternatives, confidentiality, data use, voluntary participation, withdrawal, and contact points.
Consent is revisited when procedures change, new data uses are proposed, biological or neurodata samples are repurposed, or a project moves into a new institutional context. Withdrawal is respected subject to legal, clinical, scientific, or safety obligations already triggered.
4. Separation of Clinical Care, Research, and Forensic Work
Clinical care: focused on assessment, formulation, treatment planning, follow-up, and patient welfare.
Research: focused on protocol-defined questions, eligibility criteria, participant consent, coded data, and aggregate interpretation.
Forensic work: focused on the referral question, evidentiary limits, impartial reporting, and clear separation from therapeutic advocacy.
5. Vulnerability, Capacity, and Coercion Risk
Additional safeguards are required when a person may have impaired decision-making capacity, acute distress, legal pressure, dependency on an institution, minority status, language barriers, or limited health literacy. Where appropriate, the process may require capacity assessment, plain-language materials, interpreter support, legally authorized representatives, assent procedures, cooling-off periods, or exclusion when participation would be disproportionate.
6. Neurotechnology, Imaging, Biometrics, and Neuromodulation
Neuroimaging, EEG, fNIRS, eye-tracking, biometrics, psychophysiology, and neuromodulation protocols can generate highly sensitive information. These methods are used only with appropriate screening, contraindication checks, calibration, participant information, trained staff, documented interpretation limits, and equipment safety procedures. A measurement is not treated as diagnostic merely because it is technologically advanced.
7. Incidental or Clinically Relevant Findings
Protocols using imaging, electrophysiology, biometrics, psychological testing, or biological samples should define in advance how unexpected findings are handled. This includes who reviews the finding, whether confirmatory clinical evaluation is needed, how the participant is informed, what is documented, and when urgent safety escalation is required. Research measurements are not used as stand-alone clinical diagnoses without appropriate clinical validation.
8. Data Governance and Privacy by Design
Minimization: collect only what is necessary for the documented purpose.
Coding: separate identifiers from research data where possible.
Access: restrict sensitive data by role, project, and clinical need.
Auditability: document data sources, changes, exclusions, and protocol deviations.
Retention, sharing, international transfer, and secondary use must be tied to the relevant consent language, ethics approval, legal basis, data-processing agreement, or institutional authorization.
9. AI, Computational Models, and Automated Inference
Computational models, machine-learning tools, risk scoring, and automated pattern detection may support research analysis or clinical review, but they must not replace professional judgment. Model outputs require documented data provenance, bias review, validation limits, human oversight, and clear communication that probabilistic outputs are not definitive individual conclusions.
10. Responsible Reporting and Dissemination
Reports, publications, teaching material, media communication, and partner briefings should distinguish data from interpretation, describe uncertainty, avoid unsupported causal claims, protect confidentiality, disclose relevant conflicts or funding relationships, and prevent overstatement of individual-level conclusions from research tools.
11. Ethics and Privacy Concerns
Questions or concerns about research conduct, consent, participant welfare, conflicts of interest, data privacy, confidentiality, or reporting may be sent to privacy@neurobehaviorclinic.com. Concerns are reviewed confidentially and directed to the appropriate responsible person, ethics pathway, or institutional review process.