Using Magnets To Turn Off the Brain's Speech Center 269
An editor for the Telegraph, Roger Highfield, recently volunteered to allow a UK researcher to shut off the speech center of his brain with a high-powered magnetic pulse. Regular speech is controlled by a section of the brain called Broca's area. Once the precise location is determined in the subject, a magnetic pulse can temporarily disrupt speech without impairing other cognitive functions. The link contains a video in which you can watch Highfield stutter and twitch while attempting to recite a nursery rhyme. A later test shows that he's able to sing the rhyme without difficulty, since singing is controlled in a different part of the brain (as you may remember from Scott Adams' speech disorder). Researchers believe that the ability to stimulate or quell activity in specific areas of the brain may help in treating conditions like epilepsy and migraine headaches.
Courage... (Score:2, Informative)
"turn-off" vs. disrupt (Score:5, Informative)
I can't imagine that this pulse is very good for neuronal tissue in the short-term or long-term.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (Score:4, Informative)
I guess you still shouldn't try it at home, though.
This is called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"turn-off" vs. disrupt (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Non-ionizing EM (Score:4, Informative)
Keep in mind that a typical TMS coil induces a current in brain neurons by generating a field which goes from 0 to 2 Tesla in about a tenth of a millisecond. Even then, the field is only effective at neural stimulation a centimeter or two away from the coil's focal point. I'm not too familiar with devices which generate non-ionizing EM, but I suspect you'd be hard-pressed to find something with those sorts of characteristics.
Re:This doesn't prove all that much... (Score:5, Informative)
There's actually a few different types of controls which are used experimentally. Here's what I can think of off the top of my head:
* use a sham coil that triggers the same sorts of clicking sound but doesn't actually stimulate anything
* more recently, a different type of sham coil [plosone.org] has been developed which allows you to modify current directions on-the-fly, allowing you to create the sound/sensation of scalp stimulation, but causes minimal stimulation in the brain region (disclaimer: this coil was devised by people from the same lab as me)
* you can switch which side of the brain you're stimulating on, and if the subject isn't familiar with neuroanatomy they'll be none the wiser. About midway down this page [wwnorton.com] there's a video of someone counting upwards, and it shows that even though there's a disruption when you stimulate Broca's area on the left side of the brain, no effect is observed when the symmetric area on the other side of the brain is stimulated.
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Informative)
David
Re:OK, guys. This needs to be explained (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a picture of the device used. . . (Score:3, Informative)
Here's another story [healthyplace.com] on the technology. .
The military has been aware of this stuff for decades. Look up "Dr. Delgado", (but beware the Rense-style garbage; such nonsense exists solely to look silly and make people drop the subject. Works like a charm unless you recognize it for what it is. Like planting a trouble-maker in a crowd to start a riot thus justifying brutality. Tried and true tactics.) In any case, with the long association of the military and telecom companies, (RF and EM technology comes from the same roots, development money and minds), it becomes impossible to assume that those involved with the introduction of cell phones on the world market had no idea of the secondary effects caused by the technology or what it could be used for. Indeed, it seems very likely that their introduction was predicated on these secondary effects. (Which would, from my perspective, make them the primary effects and easy communication the carrot).
But you must come to your own conclusions. Keep in mind, however, that choosing ignorance these days leads to a buzzy kind of bliss.
-FL