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A brain surgeon begins an anterior cingulotomy by drilling a small hole into a patient's skull. The surgeon then inserts a tiny blade, cutting a path through brain tissue, then inserts a probe past sensitive nerves and bundles of blood vessels until it reaches a specific cluster of neural connections, a kind of switchboard linking emotional triggers to cognitive tasks. With the probe in place, the surgeon fires up a laser, burning away tissue until the beam has hollowed out about half a teaspoon of grey matter.
This is the shape of modern psychosurgery: Ablating parts of the brain to treat mental illnesses. Which might remind you of that maligned procedure, the lobotomy. But psychosurgeries are different. And not just because the ethics are better today; because the procedures actually work. Removing parts of a person's brain is always a dicey proposition. But for people who are mentally ill, when pills and psychiatry offer no solace, the laser-tipped probe can be a welcome relief.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Friday June 26 2015, @08:12PM
This might work in some small number of cases. I think in the future there might be other techniques which might involve targeted administration of plasticity enhancement, which might allow for a brain region to rewire
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday June 26 2015, @09:21PM
Yeah, I seriously doubt that a specific symptom of mental illness can be localized to a tiny specific portion of a brain.
When people lose part of a brain, and lose the ability to speak, or walk, for example, they can regain that capability via another portion of the brain. What's to say the mental illness isn't the same way?
Remaining skeptical, because skeptical thinking is my particular form mental illness.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Friday June 26 2015, @10:26PM
Perfectly good to be skeptical. Some disorders do seem to be well localized, but most (especially the spectrum disorders) are not. As to the idea that it would develop the same circuit a second time: perhaps, but perhaps not.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday June 27 2015, @12:50AM
To paraphrase the electroshock guys:
"So if it doesn't work you
shock them againcut out a bit more. Eventually, they stop running around the ward bothering people."If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @10:54PM
Plasticity is a vague buzzword. Synaptic plasticity probably occurs, axonal plasticity maybe, but dendritic plasticity appears less and less likely to exist every year.
After ~50 years of people studying stained tissue and detecting "significant differences" in dendrites from different treatment groups, in vivo two photon microscopy was developed to allow time-lapse observation of single neurons (about 15 years ago). Not one study looking for a growing dendrite has seen the slightest hint under any condition. For axons, if they are damaged, researchers see them grow in random useless directions for awhile until they retract back.