Current Research

Please see Dr. Wexler's Google Scholar page for the most up-to-date research.


DO-IT-YOURSELF (DIY) AND DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER (DTC) MEDICINE & SCIENCE

In do-it-yourself medicine and science, lay individuals replicate or mimic experimental techniques outside of medical and academic settings. Our research investigates the sociology of these movements, their concomitant risks and benefits, and the ethical and legal questions they raise. Previously, Dr. Wexler has studied the DIY brain stimulation movement; ongoing projects investigate DIY fecal microbiota transplants (FMT) and DIY dentistry.

     Relevant publications



CONSUMER NEUROTECHNOLOGY

There is an increasing number of products--such as neurostimulation devices, consumer brainwave recording devices, brain training games, and apps marketed for wellness--that are marketed directly to consumers to modify or improve their brain function. Who uses these technologies and for what purposes? What are the benefits and risks of these neurotechnologies? How are these technologies currently regulated, and how should they be regulated?

     Relevant publications



NEUROETHICS & NOVEL NEUROTECHNOLOGY

Although much of the above-mentioned research falls under the umbrella of neuroethics, we also work more broadly on neuroethical issues, particularly in the areas of cognitive enhancement and brain stimulation. We have an NIH-supported neuroethics project that examines the phenomenological experience of undergoing awake deep brain stimulation (DBS) and patients' motivations for participating in an intraoperative neuroscience experiment.

     Relevant publications



ALTERNATIVE AND EXPERIMENTAL NEUROTHERAPIES

Many neurotherapies being marketed to the general public, both for clinical indicaitons and for cognitive enhancement, are not accepted by mainstream medicine. Our ongoing ethical, empirical and sociological work in this area aims to shed light on the alternative neurotherapy landscape.



CITIZEN SCIENCE & CROWDSOURCED HEALTH

One of the benefits of the democratization of science and medicine is the capability of "crowdsourcing" large amounts of data from users--and the potential for using that data to create generalizable knowledge. While citizen science holds a tremendous amount of promise, we must also be cognizant both of its practical feasibility and limitations, as well as how this new research paradigm challenges existing protections for human subjects research.

     Relevant publicationsDIGITAL HEALTH INFORMATION & ONLINE FORUMS

How are digital health information, apps, and online forums transforming medicine, and how they are impacting the doctor-patient relationship? We are particularly interested in these questions in the context of pregnancy--as Dr. Wexler wrote about in a July 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post--and have launched several research projects in this domain.


BIOETHICS

Past Research


HISTORY OF ELECTRICAL THERAPY
The use of electricity for medicinal purposes dates back hundreds of years. In a paper published in Brain Stimulation, Dr. Wexler demonstrated that many of the features characterizing the contemporary home use of tDCS—a do-it-yourself movement, anti-medical establishment themes, and conflicts between lay and professional usage—are a repetition of themes that arose a century ago with regard to electrical medicine. In a longer paper published in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Dr. Wexler explored the history of a portable shock-producing electrotherapeutic device known as the “medical battery,” which was thought to cure a wide variety of ailments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
    
     Relevant publications