'Brain Pacemakers' Being Tested 352
meshmar writes "Shades of 'The Terminal Man'? Rob Stein of The Washington Post has reported, via MSNBC, that: 'A handful of scientists around the world have begun cautiously experimenting with devices implanted in patients' bodies to deliver precisely targeted electrical stimulation to the brain in hopes of treating otherwise hopeless behavioral, neurological and psychiatric disorders.' A lot of good can come out of this - potentially. But I can see a the potential for misuse too."
nah, probably not. (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the novel a man with "psychomotor epilepsy" was severely hurting/killing people w/no memories of the events. He was implanted with some sort of device that shocked areas of his brain and stopped the seizures before they happened. The doctors chose an area of the brain that was the pleasure center. The brain began CAUSING seizures to get the shocks.
So, as long as they don't put the shocks into the pleasure centers this should work out! Sci-fi for the masses!
Note: I am only basing this on the book. IANANS (neurosurgeon).
Are we losing something in all of this (Score:3, Insightful)
It's long been know that genius is "in bed" with madness.
Some of these "mad" people probably aren't mad at all.. they're just rather odd but that oddity gives can give them brilliant insight!
Simon.
strangely related... (Score:4, Insightful)
DARPA researchers are also at work on the "Brain Machine Interface" ("neuromics") project, designed as a mind/machine interface, allowing mechanical devices to be controlled via thought-power. Thus far, researchers have taught a monkey to move a computer mouse and a telerobotic arm simply by thinking about it. With arrays of up to 96 electrodes implanted in their brains, the animals are able to reach for food with a robotic arm. Researchers even transmitted the signals over the internet, allowing remote control of an robotic arm 600 miles away. In the future they hope to develop a "non-invasive interface" for human use. Says DARPA, "The long-term Defense implications of finding ways to turn thoughts into acts, if it can be developed, are enormous: imagine U.S. warfighters that only need use the power of their thoughts to do things at great distances." For years, the U.S. military has been improving its ability to reach out and kill someone. What's the mantra of the future? Maybe, if you think it, they will die. Wild weapons of DARPA [politrix.org]
noozflash! (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee. Ya think?
Can we once and for all just declare that ANYTHING can be misued and be done with it? It's not exactly secret Jedi lore.
Heroin, crack, ain't got nuthin' (Score:2, Insightful)
Report to the nearest tripod... (Score:0, Insightful)
Potential for misuse? (Score:3, Insightful)
Misuse? (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, do you really think that? How many deaths from intentional frying of heart pacemakers have there been?
Re:noozflash! (Score:5, Insightful)
A fork can kill a person.
A bomb can kill a person.
Don't you think that such concerns are more warranted when someone builds a new kind of bomb than when they build a new kind of fork?
This is a great little device that obviously has abuse written all over it. Even the good guys look at this and cringe. Such devices might look good on paper (or in a controlled lab) but I sure as hell don't want them anywhere else.
Re:nah, probably not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevertheless, the research arouses fears of reviving the reckless use of brain surgery, about the wisdom of poking around in what some consider the font of a person's humanity, about oversimplifying mental illness as a purely biological problem, and the temptation to move too quickly to try out new technologies.
and then I read this
A lot of good can come out of this - potentially. But I can see a the potential for misuse too.
My question is this: what technology has been created in the past that COULD NOT have potentially been misused? Sure, you invented a pencil... a whole lot of good could come from this--but some dejected office worker could jam it in someone's ear too...
This technology has the potential to be fantastic. Sure, a crazy mad scientist somewhere could definitely mess someone up pretty bad with this stuff--but how many medical procedures are already performed now where the doctor Doesn't have to power to seriously mess the patient up?
I support this technology... Yeah, sure... Doctor's may be able to kill someone with it... but they also may just run someone over on the sidewalk driving home. And before anyone starts ranting about thousands of armies full of pacemaker brain-people... cut me a break. (although it would probably make a pretty cool book) There's too many things that are not directly related to science for that to happen... so the argument isnt' exactly with the science but with the implementation of it... There are more holes... also, but they're not on-topic to this discussion....
Give science a break... this stuff could save lives and help out a lot of people.
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:2, Insightful)
I worry about this stuff. (Score:3, Insightful)
Abuse of these things must be impossible, not just legally but technically, before I could ever bring myself to accept them as anything but a dehumanizing abomination.
Re:All we have to lose is our urban myths (Score:3, Insightful)
Whoa, slow down. You are not making sense. First, IQ *does* correlate with certain mental illnesses -- negatively. For example people with a Down's syndrome have very low IQ.
However that's neither here, nor there. We are talking about *geniuses* -- the far right tail of the IQ curve, nothing to do with averages. We are talking about people whose brains are *abnormal* by most definitions of normality. And some of them do walk a fine line between being a genius and being a crazy psycho.
Note that doesn't imply that all geniuses are crazy. And it most definitely doesn't imply that all crazy people are geniuses. But to state in such strong terms that there is (and can not be) any connection between genius and madness is umm.. misleading, to put it mildly.
Re:Anyone know how far we may be from... (Score:3, Insightful)
simplest case scenario -- you need to trace every axon, find every dendrite it interfaces with, and measure the strength of the synapse, and take down the type of neurotransmitter(s) and receptor(s) used -- there are generally several configurations of receptor for each neurotransmitter, and there are at least a dozen identified neurotransmitters.
As you mentioned, measuring synaptic strength will modify the synapse. And of course there's currently no way to do this in vivo with much precision for even one synapse -- you certainly can't do it for very many synapses. Passive sensing technologies can detect relative activity down to a precision of several hundred (thousand? I'm not up to date) neurons, but that's about it.
Given that there are 100 billion neurons in the brain, it might take a while for this to become feasible. Maybe someday we'll be able to strip off the skull and use ultra-precise PET to start recording whole brains, but I doubt it'll be in your or my lifetime.
Re:All we have to lose is our urban myths (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Clockwork Orange comes to life (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:nah, probably not. (Score:2, Insightful)