The Smithsonian has an article on breakthroughs in Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).
Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, combines neurology, neurosurgery and electrical engineering, and casual conversations in the operating room between doctors and their wide-awake patients are just one of the surprises. The entire scene is an eerie blend of the fantastic and the everyday, like something from the work of Philip K. Dick, who gave us the stories that became Blade Runner and Total Recall. During surgery, DBS patients are made literally bionic. Tiny electrodes are implanted in their brains (powered by battery packs sewn into their chests) to deliver a weak but constant electric current that reduces or eliminates their symptoms. DBS can improve a shaky putting stroke; it can also help the disabled walk and the psychologically tormented find peace.
(Score: 4, Informative) by nishi.b on Sunday April 27 2014, @11:23PM
As far as articles on DBS go, this article is OK, but calling that a new method is somewhat surprising. As mentionned in the article, it was pioneered by Alim-Louis Benabid in Grenoble, France in the early nineties (I now work there). I began working on this in 2004 and it was already a routine operation for Parkinson disease. The reason why it works is not completely understood yet, and there is both a very good potential for treatment (here, there are current clinical trials for OCD, Tourette, severe depression along with the usual Parkinson's...) and problems with side effects and ethical considerations.
For clinical trials, it is still limited to very severe patients who are not helped by the usual drugs. The results can be quite impressive : an OCD patient that had to perform a 10-minutes ritual to cross every door frame he met was able to walk normally through the hospital building a few days after the procedures. But a number of Parkinson patients who came in for motor problems come back with mood changes, such as compulsive gambling that almost ruined their lives.
So DBS is a great tool, but it is absolutely not a silver bullet. Unfortunately, the military getting an interest in this is not new either, and controlling emotions could be a awfully efficient way of torturing people ("terrorists" or otherwise).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 27 2014, @11:35PM
Sounds like the research was a little shaky.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @01:12AM
Compulsive gambling also occurs with one of the drugs that treats Parkinson's. Actually, not just gambling; often another activity the patient finds pleasurable. My wife, for example ended up playing simple video games; she's never enjoyed gambling, but space invaders is something else agan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @01:46AM
Neither TFS nor TFA say that the technique is new.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nishi.b on Monday April 28 2014, @06:21AM
Title of TFA : Inside the Science of an Amazing New Surgery Called Deep Brain Stimulation
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28 2014, @07:57AM
FTFA:
(Score: 1) by Immerman on Monday April 28 2014, @02:06AM
I think you're being insufficiently imaginative about the military's interest. Sure, suppressing loyalty or inspiring terror could be extremely efficient interrogation techniques. But just imagine what you could accomplish by suppressing compassion in your soldiers, or amplifying loyalty and obedience. Among other things civil war would no longer be a concern.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by ilPapa on Monday April 28 2014, @01:41AM
So getting high and listening to Dark Side of the Moon didn't count?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Monday April 28 2014, @02:42AM
No, it didn't. Ummagumma may make the cut, though (especially the "Careful with that axe, Eugene" and "Several Species of Small Furry Animals and [...]")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday April 28 2014, @02:47AM
Wake me up when they get close to Ubik.
(until then, don't you dare switch off my cold-pac)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Interesting) by anubi on Monday April 28 2014, @05:24AM
There is a well known phenomenon in psychology known as the Hawthorne Effect. [economist.com].
I get an extremely strong "spidey-sense" that this is what we are seeing here.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by nishi.b on Monday April 28 2014, @09:32AM
First, these are small pulses of current (a few mA, 130 Hz usually for Parkinson in the subthalamic nucleus, other frequencies for other diseases and other brain structures) and you can see the effect almost immediately. One of the severe depression patients treated in my lab, who spent years without going out even with proper medication, could lead a normal life again.
A few years later, she came saying everything was wrong again. In fact, the battery was depleted, and changing it brought the effect back. For Parkinson it is very obvious : even with double-blind studies, when the stimulation is off, the patient experiences the usual symptoms, when it is on the patient can move again almost normally.
In the operating room when doing stimulations not in the right location, some very sudden effects can be noticed : tingling sensations in the body, eyes moving, and in some cases mood changes (one patient even laughed and made jokes with the surgeon's name when the stimulation was on as he lay on the operating bed !).
It is really impressive and absolutely not just the hawthorne effect...
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday April 29 2014, @02:24AM
Interesting... I thought it was just DC.
AC signals seem to act as some sort of interrupt or reset signal, not just a bias. Kinda like I won't feel a 20 volt DC signal ( albeit it will cause a rash due to dermal electrolysis - I learned that by accident trying to build my own TENS machine ). However, if I do it right, I can get some rather unusual stimulation out of AC pulses of the right shapes.
I can get a bit pessimistic at times as in an earlier life, I used to work in an oil company... and I saw my share of prospective ( take your choice: inventors - con men ) who tried to sell me on various forms of free energy machines. If there was one thing I learned really well, it was to beware of the well-dressed men with their hand out for a shake and wanting to take me to fine restaurants to discuss business. These guys can be really slick, and they were always on the lookout for any gullibility I had. I found out rather quickly that these guys did not like it at all if I dared ask them to prove what they had and would not let me inspect the apparatus for hidden batteries - I was supposed to believe a film?
My Grandpa used to tell me all sorts of yarns about the "snake oil salesmen" of his day - coming into small farming communities with high-pressure sales spiels and the like... so that's my excuse for being a bit jaded at times. As far as I am concerned, the snake oil, like many other treatments I have seen over the years, was a faith-based affair, where all I could see operating was the Hawthorne effect. I did not know the proper term for it until I hit college. Gramps would always say "Its all in the mind", and that was that.
However, I do know my TENS unit does what I designed it to do. Its not a lot, it just sequences a bunch of pads like a theater marquee so as to cause a massage effect. And 130 Hz sounds about right... I had been experimenting from about 5 Hz to about 500 Hz, where the effects began to die off rapidly. The lower frequencies had the more interesting artifacts... seemed to have something to do with the time constant of neural networks to respond to something... like how we will see colors if a white LED is turned on and off at a certain rate and pulse width. ( remember the psychedelic strobe lights of the 60's? Also there was a spinning wheel toy making its rounds at the time which had a pattern of black and white printed on it in a circular pattern which would appear as a rainbow of colors when it was spun. Apparently that on-off sequence would be perceived as a color. )
So, it looks like I stand corrected.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]