The expanding deployment of highly portable MRI (pMRI) technology for brain research outside the hospital to more remote settings is helping to expand research participation with underserved populations and ensure more inclusive research participation. But the rapid development of pMRI technology has outpaced the ethical, legal and societal implication (ELSI) guidelines necessary to ensure research participant safety and community trust during brain research projects. A new symposium of nine articles funded by the NIH BRAIN Initiative – “Emerging Portable Technology for Neuroimaging Research in New Field Settings: Legal & Ethical Challenges” – is the culmination of five years of work and addresses those barriers and provides guidance for the successful implementation of pMRI for brain research in the community. University of Minnesota Professors Francis Shen, JD, PhD, Susan M. Wolf, JD, and Frances Lawrenz, PhD, were guest editors of the symposium, which appears in the Winter 2024 issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. “Portable MRI has the potential to be a game changer for neuroscience research,” Prof. Shen says. “But to achieve that potential we need to address the significant ethical and legal challenges of democratizing access to sophisticated medical technologies in non-clinical settings. The ELSI Checklist in this symposium is a tool we hope all pMRI researchers will utilize.”