[Research developments in neurostimulation after 1945: historical and ethical aspects of medical manipulations of the human brain].

For nearly fifteen years, the impact of modern neuroscience has become a central focus of public debate, not just following the Decade of the Brain in the United States. Newly developed options for manipulating the central nervous system (CNS) are not only of primary medical concern but have come to be regarded as extremely questionable in recent bioethical discourse. This article provides an in-depth comparison between modern neuromanipulative approaches from "Deep Brain Stimulation" (DBS) with methods from earlier historical periods. After World War II, electrophysiological stimulation was developed, which changed the functional capacity of the human brain. It is argued that many contemporary debates questioning neuroethical applications are flawed in significant respects: A unique neuroethical position can neither be upheld philosophically nor with regard to consumer-oriented clinical practice. By drawing on individual case examples from the contemporary and recent history of neuroscience, some related problem fields and consequences are mapped out and discussed. They show an increasingly blurred conceptual boundary furnished by the complex relations between clinical research, physiological restitution, and functional enhancement inherent in modern biomedicine.