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Science

Electronic Implants Stimulate Brain 19

Posted by michael from the Louis-Wu dept.
SquirrelLord sent in this note about pacemaker-like device to stimulate a part of the brain to treat depression. The device sends a minute electrical pulse to the brain every 3 seconds and has no side effects. Well, except for turning the user into a wirehead.
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Electronic Implants Stimulate Brain More

Electronic Implants Stimulate Brain

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  • It says there are no side effects to the use of this.. somehow that seems like a lie.

    Side effect one: A zipper in the side of your skull.

    Side effect two: Your mood is being artificially altered! I know that this is a boom to some people with severe depression, but it's the electro-neural equivilent of a pain killer; it covers up the symptom while leaving the underlying problem unaddressed. People enter states of morbid depression for a reason.

    On as aside, when I first read this blurb, I thought it said "...about a peacemaker-like device...", as in Colt Peacemaker.

    "If Zoloft won't cheer you up, maybe an inch of gunmetal down your throat will."

    .
  • Depression is, in general, not a bad thing. It is a defense and/or coping mechanism, and to develop as an individual, and be able to function properly in society, most people need to overcome depression without assistance.

    I suspect you are thinking of "depression" as it's commonly used, as a synonym for "sadness". Clinical depression is a whole 'nother animal, and rarely can be "overcome without assistance".

    Confusing these two things is way too common, and understandably annoying to people suffering clinical depression. It's sorta like thinking script-kiddies and hackers are the same thing.

  • Depression, ADD, schizophrenia, among other mental disorders (not psychological) are caused by unsynchronized signals in the brain. Physiologists and neurologists have been coming at this issue from a surgery/implant point of view and drug point of view for years. Absurdly, neurofeedback [eegspectrum.com] techiques can cure these problems, though hasn't been well received. This is similar to how for years we (American medical community) cut people open to cure ulcers, when the Europeans were treating the problem with antibiotics, successfully.
  • Then there's always this [google.com]...

    "The page may have changed since that time." - but if it did, then how would we know?
  • The choice between unhealthy environment, where we will need technology to help us, and a pure natural environment is a choice the human race must do. You do it every day!

    Yep. And people choose technology over nature at just about every turn. The reason? Not because they're duped, not because they don't know any better. It's because the pure natural environment is by far the unhealthier.

    If you get injured and your buddy can take you to the medics, would you rather your friend have to walk while carrying you, or would you rather your friend load you in your car and drive you there?

    Would you prefer milk and meat straight from the farm, carried by hand until it spoils (to say nothing of any diseases it may have had to begin with), or would you prefer milk and meat that have been screened for germs and chilled during transport?

    That's just for starters. It is a common misconception that technology is inherently bad for humanity - but it is a misconception. Those who call for the termination of all progress, delaying the introduction of new drugs and treatments that would otherwise prevent all manner of pain and death, have the blood of billions on their hands.

  • And so suicide is just a person reaching their innate potential?

    Your argument is deeply flawed.

    One cannot make proclamations like "Depression is, in general, not a bad thing... to function properly in society, most people need to overcome depression without assistance" without understanding the etiology of depression. Our current macroscopic, integrative understanding of the brain is so lacking that it may be a while before we can conclude what causes depression, whether it is a pathology or not, and where the line betweeen fluctuations in personality and pathological brain function exists.

    In other words, the issue is much too complicated and sensitive to talk out of your ass like that.

    (I find it best to at least familiarize oneself with an issue before claiming someones suffering is somehow a Good Thing)

  • anyone remember the STNG or Deep Space 9 episode where the Cardassian had the anti-torture device implanted in his system. It would activate whenever he was in incredible pain and would keep him 'calm' and he wouldn't even feel the pain. Under normal circumstances, it gave him an incredible high. Eventually he found a device to turn it on and off remotely. So he eventually became dependent on it and left it on all the time. The was then his norm. I can't quite remember, but the power supply was failing or the device was failing and he needed a repair, or the 'pain' of normal-life (what everyone else considered normal) would kill him. Was a cool story and I could definately see this happening here.

    On a side note, this would be cool as a remote, intoxicating device. Just hold this thing against the back of your neck and instand high. Simply incredible that someone created this device.

    one gram and you don't give a damn -- aldous huxley

  • I've got something that might be of help...

  • Harsh words coming from a 40 year old virgin.

  • I recall a similar experiment with mice cause them to repeatedly stimulate themselves until death.
  • one gram and you don't give a damn -- aldous huxley

    Isn't it "a gram is better than a damn"?

  • The usual paranoia (Score:3)

    by Twylite ( 234238 ) <twylite&crypt,co,za> on Monday June 25, 2001 @03:49AM (#131459) Homepage

    Why isn't the usual /. paranoia kicking in yet? Although the article says that the device "is not for everyone", imagine the potential for abuse! 'Sir, your kid is showing signs of depression: he's being bullied and wearing black. We'd like to put him on a NeuroGizmo 5000 before we end up with another Columbine'.

    Depression is, in general, not a bad thing. It is a defense and/or coping mechanism, and to develop as an individual, and be able to function properly in society, most people need to overcome depression without assistance. Psychiatrists are often reluctant to prescribe drugs mostly because of potential side-effects, including dependancy. But when there are no side effects ...

    For all the good they can do, little things like this need to be watched, or we may have it made law that everyone carry one to force us into utopian society...

  • -Is there a point to
    this [google.com]?
    This is Google's
    cache [google.com] of http://www.google.com/ [google.com]. ... Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content.
    Uh... huh.
  • I saw internal electrical stimulation being used for treatment of pain on television. Apparently, this older lady had some sort of very severe face disease that involves extreme pain (very rare), the doctors were stimulating the release of endorphines with electricity.

    Endorphines stop pain and relieve depression? When can we get these in pill form? I don't want to wear a battery pack with wires in the back of my head like that lady.

    I'm so sery vleepy
  • Wasn't Terminal Man by Michael Chrichton about a guy who has a pacemaker thing in his brain to snap him out of bad mental states? And then he learns how to trigger it at will and wigs out and kills people? Gotta love it when scary sci fi starts coming true...
  • Putting aside the potential for misuse, this device could be very valuable for people with treatment resistent depression. One poster above mentions that this device does not fix the underlying problem. But there are alot of people who can't be treated with the usual speech therapy (talking about your problems), cognitive distortions (changing unrealistic beliefs), medication or exercise, which suggests that these people can't be treated successfully in this way. ECT (shock) becomes the only option left.

    If this new device were to have a high success rate, at least patients would have a safer 'last resort'.

    It was explained to me that this basicly does what medications try to do, but by skipping a step. Anti-depressents are meant to create a chemical reaction that in turn cases these pulses. The problem is that no one realy knows which need stimulation. And sometimes they are overstimulated to create the same result: depression. So they create all kinds of drugs that stimulate each section differently- try one till it works.

    I read about this a few months ago. Probably be awhile before this becomes a real option for patients though.
  • Imagine surfing a pron site with a cluster of these.

    I didn't like having fifty karma anyway.
  • No no no no. Those mice had their pleasure centers stimulated. This is a different part of the brain. It doesn't give them an orgasm, it just elevates their mood. Didn't you read the article?
  • Usually the use of electrical brain devices goes beyond the "depression-stimuli" level. This type of device is also used (at least on a research level) to reduce epileptically diseases. I also know research is done into the area of making blind people able to see, by sending stimuli directly to the brain from a camera. The experiments so far only involve approximately a resolution of 100 dots (or whatever you would call it) but it is sufficient to avoid knocking down tables.

    When we are talking about depression, the same considerations that we see with other types of research, should apply. You can miss use it or not. The way we live today is not natural. To much workload and stress! The human body and mind is not set for this, and we do therefore apply technology to help us. I wear glasses, and they defiantly help me to see the screen in front of me. We use chemicals to ease headaches... why not devices. In the future we can be pretty sure to see the technology that helps us, being implemented into our daily lives, and the technology that don't help us will go away. Sometimes it takes time to get used to.

    Just imagine if we used metal boxes on wheels, that made a lot of toxic pollution, and needed a black clay like material to drive on that would be paved all over the country sides... all just for us to get around. Scary right? We probably won't see that in our lifetime. - or?

    The choice between unhealthy environment, where we will need technology to help us, and a pure natural environment is a choice the human race must do. You do it every day!


    Saggi

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