Brain Heatsink Could Reduce Epilepsy

SimonNight writes "Attaching a heatsink to the brain can reduce the severity of epileptic seizures, Japanese researchers say. They've developed a surgically implanted heat conduit that connects a brain region to a heatsink on the outside of the skull. Seizures get worse when they abnormal activity of brain cells overheats the brain and causes more abnormal firing patterns."

awesome!

[jollyreaper (513215)]

Now we can start overclocking! Break out the red bull and inject-into-the-heart adrenaline.

Re:

[chord.wav (599850)]

A much better project would be to overclock your liver so you can maximize your alcohol drinking limits. No more designated drivers!

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[j-pimp (177072)]

A much better project would be to overclock your liver so you can maximize your alcohol drinking limits. No more designated drivers!

People drink to get drunk. Over clocking their liver would make them drink more.

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[MrCrassic (994046)]

I will attest that not all of them do.

I drink occassionally to "pep" me up, but definitely not to get drunk. It's no fun being "tipsy" and having little coordination over yourself, so I don't even want to imagine how it would feel to be completely out of it. Many enjoy that, but I personally avoid the troubles that it brings (stupid actions, hangovers, embarrassing situations, etc.)

Re:awesome!

[cHiphead (17854)]

Well then, you need to learn the proper way to PAR-TAY, sir. ;)

Cheers.

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[cHiphead (17854)]

Furthermore, I'm a cyclist, so it's important to keep tabs on my health

This is slashdot, sir, and moreso, the internets, we don't do "health". ;)

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[CastrTroy (595695)]

Yes there are some people who enjoy the taste of alcohol, just for the taste. However, the vast majority of people drink the cheapest stuff they can find. Hence half the beer commercials proclaiming they are cheaper than the other guys, or how you get 4 extra bottles, or how you get a free t-shirt. I'm not one of these people, but the vast majority of them are very much only interested in getting drunk.

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[networkBoy (774728)]

For starters Oban is not what I would suggest. It is good, but will reinforce what most people think about Scotch (that it is bog water in a bottle).
I would highly recommend one of the speyside malts to someone new to Scotch. Perhaps Aberlour 15 double cask, or Dalwhinnie 10. Then you start moving them down the hill till you get to Nam Biest.

My preferences run to Bowmore though.
-nB

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[jimstapleton (999106)]

I'd hold off on the self mods and partying if I were you. Put the RedBull down...

In direct sun, could this boil your brain?
In the winter, could this give your brain frostbite?

Re:awesome!

[infestedsenses (699259)]

I can see it now... a big, fat heatsink sticking out of the side of my head, with a frikkin' laser attached to it!

Oh, glee!

What about fevers?

[SwordsmanLuke (1083699)]

Correct me if I'm wrong (IANAD), but I understood that part of the problem with high fevers was that the heat eventually caused brain damage. I wonder if such a device would have a fever-lowering effect as well. Obviously, we're not going to start installing these in every kid with the flu, but I'm curious if this would work.

Re:Overclocking

[provigilman (1044114)]

Yeah, or he would've OD's at 27 and we wouldn't even have E=MC

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[somersault (912633)]

Nah, we may have E=MC, but he wouldn't have got to the whole squared bit?

I wonder...

[torkus (1133985)]

...if that means we can start overclocking our brains too.

I can't wait to see people walking around with heat sinks sticking out of their skull. Will they have designer ones? :)

Re:I wonder...

[FireFury03 (653718)]

I can't wait to see people walking around with heat sinks sticking out of their skull. Will they have designer ones? :)

Bah, I'm waiting for the transparent-skull with blue cold-cathode brain lighting mod...

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[cayenne8 (626475)]

"I can't wait to see people walking around with heat sinks sticking out of their skull. "

How long before they have a 'water cooled' system for the brain?

Watecooled?

[RedShoeRider (658314)]

Sweet! How much of an overclock can I get versus air cooling?

Liquid cooled

[benhocking (724439)]

The funny thing is the brain already is liquid-cooled. That liquid being the blood, of course. (Perhaps you were already going for this in your joke, but if so, it'll go over so many heads that I thought it worthwhile to explain it in more depth.)

Fan?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn (1126837)]

Nice diagram. Is that a fan sticking out the side of the guy's head? Should newegg add a new category for 80mm and 100mm brain cooling fans? Or maybe go water cooled for complete silence? The worst that could happen is it leaks and you finally get the shower you're long overdue for...

I'd avoid the liquid nitrogen option at this time.

Re:Fan?

[Hoi Polloi (522990)]

Koolance has released an aluminum, water cooled, brain case. It comes with transparent temple windows too.

Too much heat?

[sucker_muts (776572)]

If the problem seems to be too much heat, why do they try to use difficult to install heatsinks?

Underclocking people! Makes the system way more stable.

 

Re:Too much heat?

[torkus (1133985)]

Nonononono. We've already CLEARLY proven that underclocking produces undesirable results. e.g. country music, "war on terror", wardrobe malfunction paranoia, and "for the children!!!11!1one1oneone" movement.

They tried that, it is called tv.

[SmallFurryCreature (593017)]

Apparently there is a fault in the design, you can't underclock it anymore without flatlining when you watch reality tv and still peoples brain heat up. Mostly from its fevered attempts to crawl out your ear hole.

But hey, think of it like this, with proper cooling we can really start poring in the juice and all be geniusses. It will be brilliant, we grow so intelligent cooling our brain and powering it up, we might suddenly realize how stupid that is.

Now that is irony, overclocking your brain to become sm

Water cooling

[Joce640k (829181)]

I thought all brains were liquid cooled....

i'm against this research

[circletimessquare (444983)]

there is nothing more annoying than the whir of a pc fan. now we are going to have epileptics walking around with pc fans whirring on the side of their heads? even those chessy looking "turbo" fans for the processor? uggh, ugly too. how do you accessorize that? earings?

nah, i'd rather they be epileptics. then when they seize, i can just walk away, like any aesthetically responsible citizen. rather that than have to see and hear all of those epileptics walking the street with pc fan assemblies on the side of

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[quantum bit (225091)]

uggh, ugly too. how do you accessorize that? earings?

Nah dude. It's all about the cold cathode lights.

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[Billosaur (927319)]

Actually, take the heatsink, wrap tubes filled with glycol around them, run them through a flask of water, and generate some electricity via the steam. Then use the electricity to run a hard drive brain backup.

Heatsink? More like a ground...

[Sleen (73855)]

I doubt the heatsink is contributing anything to the patients ability to regulate cranial temperature. More likely, its providing an electrical ground that helps alleviate the conditions that lead to a seizure.

Re:Heatsink? More like a ground...

[DigiShaman (671371)]

Maybe. Or, it could be that the higher the temp in your brain, the greater metabolism has effect with neural firing.

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[ajlitt (19055)]

That makes perfect sense, since the salts in blood and cranial fluid are such excellent insulators.

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[chgros (690878)]

I doubt the heatsink is contributing anything to the patients ability to regulate cranial temperature. More likely, its providing an electrical ground that helps alleviate the conditions that lead to a seizure.
I'm sure your years of research conclusively prove that those Japanese researchers are wrong.

Here is what it looks like

[JackMeyhoff (1070484)]

http://img36.picoodle.com/img/img36/9/10/8/f_BalmerFanm_cd5ddbc.jpg [picoodle.com]

Tinfoil Hat

[MadKeithV (102058)]

"No, I swear it's not a tinfoil hat! It's a brain heatsink!"

Re:Tinfoil Hat

[Anonymous Monkey (795756)]

It is only logical that the heatsink would be the visible component. After all, foil keeps the heat in. Therefore the logical setup is aluminum foil hat with a small gap for heatsink connection, and only aluminum components in the heatsink, thus covering the gap in the aluminum foil hat. That way you could have all the benefits of the aluminum foil hat and a heatsink. Also THEY would never know you had shielding under your heatsink.

Joke Ingredients

[ajs318 (655362)]

Didn't Cuddy the dwarf build a "thinking cap" for Detritus the troll, with a clockwork cooling fan to help cool his silicon brain so he could think faster? There's got to be a joke in there somewhere, what with trolls, cooling fans and everything else, but I'm too lazy to put the bits into the right order. Sort of like the maths teacher who, seeing the corridor on fire and an extinguisher on the wall, returned to bed satisfied that a solution existed.

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[somersault (912633)]

In Soviet Russia, troll think faster than you! At least in winter.

aren't heat sinks 2 way?

[netsavior (627338)]

It seems like most (all?) heat sinks can transmit heat back (or remove heat by being too cold).

It seems like haveing a slug on your head that could directly cool/heat your brain accidentally according to weather/environmental factors would be dangerous and scary... or at the least hard to manage.

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[Loke the Dog (1054294)]

Good point. However, mechanical power can be used to transport heat from a colder place to a warmer place. In other words, with batteries, this system could be made more advanced and cool the brain even if the environment is hotter than body temperature.

Science fiction becoming science fact ...

[haluness (219661)]

Interesting developement. An analogous idea was used by Alastair Reynolds in Redemption Ark where one of the characters was genetically modified to have high neural processing speeds and required a 'heatsink' (made of bone and blood vessels) to dissipate the extra heat.

Medical implications

[the_kanzure (1100087)]

In invasive BCIs, a big problem is getting information out of the head, so many researchers have been using wireless transmission of power and data either by RF (popular) and less commonly IR. The reason they do this is because of infections- and you do not want a brain infection. So how does this heat conduit really work? A direct link from inside the skull to outside the skull is not a good idea, and if there's any skin in between the heat sink and the conduit then that skin is going to die. Maybe it's causing more problems than it solves. If it does what it says it does, then we could easily throw in some more BCIs and not have to worry about too much heat dissipation, which has this nasty tendency to kill brain cells. I maintain a small page on neurotech [heybryan.org].

Military use

[Bob-taro (996889)]

This is from Japan, so obviously this is just another step toward a direct brain interface for battle mechs.

PRIOR ART!

[Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286)]

I made one for my brother when I was in High School. He was complaining about the thermostat temperature. My room was always 10 degrees colder, so I didn't want the AC cranked anymore than it was. So I took an old Pentium heat sink fan combo, attached a headband and 9 volt. He used it for a while. I'll ask my parents if they still have it.

Blood-Brain Barrier Breach?

[Zymergy (803632)]

How does this not open the brain cavity up to Serious Infections? Re: Meninges: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meninges [wikipedia.org] Aren't our brains "water cooled" (by blood) in the first place?

My Canine Experience

[Scot Seese (137975)]

Years ago our family had a Brittany Spaniel that started Grand Mal epileptic seizures at around 1 year of age. Phenobarbitol only moderately increase the time period between seizure clusters by a week or so.

  While comforting the dog immediately post-seizure one evening, I noticed that he felt warm - his entire body was overheated, as though he'd just come in from a long walk on a hot summer day. To me, the obvious thing to do was to crush 10-15 ice cubes, dump them in a ziploc bag and apply it to the crown of his head. The effect was immediate, and amazing. His anxiety and discomfort disappeared immediately, and the "brain chiller" icepack seemed to lessen the severity of any subsequent cluster seizures, and reduce the number of seizures in a cluster (to almost petit mal effect.)

  To me, this feels like another forehead smacking "well, DUH" discovery. ;]

Re:My Canine Experience

[Scot Seese (137975)]

    I should add, that if you've never witnessed a Grand Mal seizure in either a human (or animal) - be glad. Short of hollywood's best effort at demonic possession I can't begin to describe how horrible they are to watch. We had to have the dog I mentioned above put down after he cluster-seized for almost a full day (about a year after his seizures began.) It was of great consolation to find out later, talking with people that suffered from epilepsy, that they (usually) are in no pain during the event. They feel an 'aura' (like migraine sufferers) and regain their senses a minute later, exhausted and sweaty on the floor or sofa, or wherever a kind passerby guided them.

  If you ever witness someone experiencing an epileptic seizure,

1. Catch them if they are falling, guide them gently to the floor and step away. If they have already fallen down, ask bystanders to step back, move furniture, tables, lamps away from them so they do not injure themselves or damage property while their limbs (may) flail uncontrollably.

2. Wait. Most seizures "ride out" after less than a minute. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RESTRAIN THEM and do NOT attempt to put ANYTHING in their mouth. They very well may bite your fingers off. The "they will swallow their tongue" bit IS A VERY DANGEROUS MYTH.

  If they do NOT stop seizing after 10-15 seconds, if they have injured themselves, if you have reason to believe there is a problem with their breathing or pulse, CALL 911. Not all seizures are epileptic in nature. They may be suffering a stroke, or have a non-epilepsy genetic disorder.

3. If they "ride out" the seizure, empathize. Help them sit up, hand them their purse, briefcase, smile. Tell them they had a seizure and they're OK, talk as though it happens to everyone every day. GIVE THEM A COLD BOTTLED WATER or buy them a soda, anything COLD. Ask if they feel they need medical assistance.

4. Be glad you don't live in ancient China or Rome, and the person you witnessed seizing was the Emperor. You would be executed. Thankfully we live in more civilized times.

  If you know any (humans) with epilepsy, suggest they look into getting a seizure dog. What?! Yep! Trained dogs that follow you around, and tell you that you're about to have a seizure. Scientists think they can cue in on changes in body odor caused by chemical changes. They are remarkably accurate, many kids with epilepsy can lead fairly normal lives with seizure dogs, even go swimming and ride bicycles. Their furry little pals just start barking a few minutes before the seizure is going to occur, they get somewhere safe and notify friends or family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seizure_response_dog [wikipedia.org]

That's one way

[bperkins (12056)]

You could also try to develop a temperature sensitive neural inhibitor. That seems more feasible since you don't necessarily have to identify the region you want to be affected.

Effect on other brain functions?

[NewsWatcher (450241)]

I have epilepsy and have lived with it all my life. This story interests me as much as what it doesn't say, as for what it does say.

I have undergone brain surgery to alleviate my symptoms and take piles of medicine, but nothing has worked.

What I want to know are what are the side-effects from this type of equipment. The brain is a very sensitive organ. Just a few neurons misfiring out of the billions in the brain can cause seizures or other symptoms.

Stopping the brain from overheating is one thing, but stopping natural heat fluctuations in the brain may have unintended consequences.

We are talking here about the most complex organ in the body. Mess with it at your own risk, as I have discovered.

Since surgery I can barely tell the difference between different house keys, because the surgery to my right temporal lobe affected my visual memory.

Re:Sounds like a gread DIY project!

[QuickFox (311231)]

Just make sure you have health insurance before you sink your electric drill into your temple.

Are you sure opening your brain chassis won't void your warranty?

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[somersault (912633)]

Hi, mom? Yeah, can you find my birth certificate? I want to check up on my warranty. Oh, it's expired? Good. Can I borrow some of dad's powertools this weekend?

Re:Sounds like a gread DIY project!

[jandrese (485)]

The scary thing is that there are people out there who drill holes in their head for fun [bmezine.com]. There are claims that it improves your thinking or wellness or something, but I can't help but to think that the people who actually do this aren't the kind of people I want to ask about improving my thinking.