Chile is often described as one of the strongest constitutional examples of neurorights—that is, special legal protection for brain-related information and mental integrity.[1] In 2021, Chile amended its Constitution to require special protection for brain activity and the information derived from it.[2] In a 2023 decision, the Supreme Court ordered Emotiv, a US consumer-neurotechnology company, to delete the brain-activity data of a Chilean user collected through its Emotiv Insight headset. The Court held that the company’s storage of that data violated his rights to mental integrity and privacy. [3] In 2024, however, Chile’s public health authority concluded that the same product did not fall within ordinary medical-device regulation because it was not intended for diagnosis or treatment.[4] Chile has gone unusually far in recognizing that brain-related information deserves special legal attention, yet it still does not clearly resolve how law should treat information inferred from neural activity once it is processed and used outside a traditional medical setting.

Chile’s 2021 constitutional amendment was ambitious because it did more than add another privacy rule. Law No. 21.383 amended article 19, number 1, of the Constitution and stated that scientific and technological development must serve people and respect both physical and psychic integrity—that is, a person’s bodily and mental integrity.[5] It also added that the law must specially safeguard “brain activity” and “the information derived from it.”[6] That wording matters. It clearly reaches beyond the raw electrical signal itself. At the same time, it leaves an obvious follow-up question. How far does protection extend once neural activity is turned into later-stage information, such as a score, a profile, or another output produced by software? The Constitution marks out a protected area, but it does not by itself tell us which institution supervises each kind of downstream information, what remedies apply, or where non-medical consumer neurotechnology fits in the broader legal system.

The Supreme Court’s 2023 Emotiv ruling shows why the constitutional text matters. The case was brought by former senator Guido Girardi Lavín, one of the initiators of the constitutional reform that later became Law No. 21.383.[7] According to the judiciary’s official summary, the Court held that the commercialization and storage of the claimant’s brain-activity data violated not only his physical and psychic integrity but also his privacy rights.[8] It therefore ordered Emotiv to eliminate all stored information linked to the claimant’s use of the device, and to do so without further procedure.[9] The Court also instructed the Instituto de Salud Pública (ISP), Chile’s public health authority, and the customs authority to act within their powers so that the commercialization and use of the device, and the handling of the data it collected, would comply with Chilean law.[10] This was a real remedy. It showed that neurorights language in Chile was not merely symbolic.

But the ruling was only clear at one level—stored information collected through the device—and less clear on other issues. This is important. Emotiv Insight is not just a passive EEG recorder. Emotiv presents the product as a consumer headset that can collect raw EEG data while also providing information or performing actions for users such as performance metrics, facial-expression detections, and “mental command” features. The Court’s decision most clearly addressed the storage of the claimant’s brain-activity data and the legality of the device’s commercialization and use in Chile. It did not, at least on the face of the official materials, fully specify how law should classify and govern later software-generated scores, profiles, or inferences derived from that data—especially once the ISP later concluded that Insight was not being marketed as a medical device.

Acting on that instruction, the ISP issued a 2024 technical report classifying Emotiv Insight under Chilean sanitary-control rules. That report makes the distinction easier to see. The agency explained that the key issue under Chile’s sanitary-control rules—the regulatory regime governing medical products and devices—was not simply whether the device used EEG technology, but whether it was intended for medical purposes.[11] In other words, the question was not simply “does this device interact with the brain?” but “is this device being marketed and used as a medical device?” The ISP noted that Emotiv presented Emotiv Insight as a product for research applications and personal use, not as a tool for diagnosis or treatment.[12] For that reason, the agency concluded that Emotiv Insight was not a medical device and therefore did not fall within the ISP’s ordinary jurisdiction on that basis.[13] The ISP resolutions database separately lists Resolution No. 3147 of May 31, 2024 as determining the sanitary-control regime for Emotiv Insight.[14] That conclusion matters because it reveals a gap that is easy to miss. A consumer neurotechnology product can still interact with brain activity and produce user-facing outputs, yet remain outside a familiar medical-device pathway. Once that is true, the legal problem changes. The question is no longer whether Chile recognizes that brain-related information matters—it clearly does. The harder question is which legal pathway governs non-medical, software-mediated, and potentially inferential uses of information derived from neural activity.

A fair response is that Chile’s constitutional text may already be broad enough. One could argue that “information derived from” brain activity is an intentionally wide phrase, and that the Emotiv ruling proves Chilean courts can act when neurotechnology threatens mental integrity and privacy.[15] Some commentators go further and argue that the neurorights provision may not have done all the work in the Emotiv case, because ordinary privacy and data-protection law could already have supported much of the result.[16] That criticism should be taken seriously. But it does not eliminate the gray zone. Even if existing privacy and data-protection law could have supported the deletion remedy, the neurorights provision does something those rules do not: it gives information “derived from” brain activity a distinct constitutional status. The official materials currently show a strong constitutional principle, a meaningful deletion remedy, and an agency conclusion that the product at issue does not fall neatly within ordinary medical-device regulation.[17] They also leave open the possibility of further judicial intervention, even if the ISP does not treat the product as a medical device. But that is not the same as a settled governance framework. Courts may provide ex post remedies in particular disputes; they do not by themselves identify a clear ex ante regulator for non-medical, software-generated scores, profiles, or inferences.

This is not simply a story about data storage. It is a story about legal translation. Chile has clearly said that brain-related information matters, but it has not yet made equally clear how some forms of derived or inferred mental data should be classified, supervised, and remedied in non-medical consumer contexts.

The pending legislation confirms that this translation is still in progress. Boletín No. 13.828-19, a bill that would implement the 2021 constitutional provision with detailed rules on neurorights and neurotechnology research, has passed the Senate and is now before the Chamber of Deputies.[18] Official Chamber materials also show that, during the week of April 6–8, 2026, the Commission continued considering the bill and heard presentations on it, and that, in the following week, it scheduled a session to hear expert views on the bill, including that of Rafael Yuste, the Columbia neuroscientist who helped shape Chile’s neurorights framework. [19] Chile therefore looks less like a finished model than like a legal system still trying to convert constitutional recognition into operational governance. That does not make Chile less important. It makes Chile more revealing. Chile matters not because it has fully solved neurotechnology law, but because even its strongest rights-based framework still forces us to confront a harder question: what should law do once a system moves beyond collecting neural signals and begins producing information inferred from them?

References

[1] Lorena Guzmán H., Chile: Pioneering the Protection of Neurorights, UNESCO Courier (Mar. 21, 2022) (last updated Oct. 13, 2023), https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/chile-pioneering-protection-neurorights.

[2] Ley No. 21.383, Diario Oficial [D.O.], Oct. 25, 2021, art. único (Chile).

[3] Girardi/Emotiv Inc., Corte Suprema [C.S.], Rol No. 105065-2023, Aug. 9, 2023 (Chile); see also Poder Judicial de Chile, Neuroderechos: Corte Suprema ordena eliminar información recogida por dispositivo de monitoreo de actividad cerebral (Aug. 11, 2023).

[4] Inst. de Salud Pública de Chile, Informe Técnico RCS No. 33-A/24: Informe de Evaluación de Solicitud de Régimen de Control Sanitario, “Emotiv Insight” at 5–6 (Mar. 2024); Inst. de Salud Pública de Chile, Resoluciones, Resolución 3147, Determina Régimen de Control Sanitario del Producto Emotiv Insight (May 31, 2024).

[5] Ley No. 21.383, supra note 2.

[6] Id.

[7] Proyecto de Reforma Constitucional, Boletín No. 13.827-19 (Oct. 7, 2020) (moción of Senators Guido Girardi, Carolina Goic, Francisco Chahuán, Juan Antonio Coloma, and Alfonso De Urresti) (which later became Ley No. 21.383).

[8] Poder Judicial de Chile, supra note 3.

[9] Id.

[10] Id.

[11] Inst. de Salud Pública de Chile, Informe Técnico RCS No. 33-A/24, supra note 4, at 1–3.

[12] Id. at 3.

[13] Id. at 5–6.

[14] Inst. de Salud Pública de Chile, Resoluciones, supra note 4.

[15] Ley No. 21.383, supra note 2; Poder Judicial de Chile, supra note 3.

[16] Alejandra Zúñiga-Fajuri et al., Neurorights in Chile: Between Neuroscience and Legal Science, in REGULATING NEUROSCIENCE: TRANSNATIONAL LEGAL CHALLENGES 165, 165–79 (Martín Hevia ed., 2021).

[17] Poder Judicial de Chile, supra note 3; Inst. de Salud Pública de Chile, Informe Técnico RCS No. 33-A/24, supra note 4, at 5–6.

[18] Proyecto de Ley sobre protección de los neuroderechos y la integridad mental, y el desarrollo de la investigación y las neurotecnologías, Boletín No. 13.828-19, segundo trámite constitucional (Chile).

[19] Cámara de Diputadas y Diputados, Citaciones Semana del 06 al 08 de abril de 2026 (Comisión de Futuro, Ciencias, Tecnología, Conocimiento e Innovación); Cámara de Diputadas y Diputados, Citaciones Semana del 13 al 15 de abril de 2026 (same commission).