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Brain-Computer Interfaces to Control Feelings

posted by martyb on Friday May 30 2014, @03:33AM   
from the helping-people-feel-better dept.

AnonTechie writes:

Researcher Jose Carmena has worked for years training macaque monkeys to move computer cursors and robotic limbs with their minds. He does so by implanting electrodes into their brains to monitor neural activity. Now, as part of a sweeping $70 million program funded by the U.S. military, Carmena has a new goal: to use brain implants to read, and then control, the emotions of mentally ill people. This week the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, awarded two large contracts to Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco, to create electrical brain implants capable of treating seven psychiatric conditions, including addiction, depression, and borderline personality disorder.

• What could possible go wrong What could possible go wrong (Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Friday May 30 2014, @03:56PM

  by bucc5062 (699) on Friday May 30 2014, @03:56PM (#49191)

  "Imagine if I have an anti-government thought" says Carmena, who is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and involved in the UCSF-led project. “We could detect that feeling and then stimulate inside the brain to stop it from happening."

  ftfy

  That is the deepest fear. People can go all altruistic on something like this; "We can fix addiction, we can fix depression, we can fix happiness, we can remove hate" while others, more in a position of power can say "we can fix behavior, we can change how you feel about us, we can control you". Given the direction government is going, can we really trust anyone with this type of process. One day MLK is walking down the streets of Birmingham protesting segregation, the next week he is standing next to governor Wallace praising his efforts to help keep blacks safe, but separate. A little hyperbolic true, but if you can effect a leader, most sheep will follow.

  The military would love this with just a little adjustment in timing

  Darin Dougherty, a psychiatrist who directs Mass General’s division of neurotherapeutics, says one aim could be to extinguish fear in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Fear is generated in the amygdala—a part of the brain involved in emotional memories. But it can be repressed by signals in another region, the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex. “The idea would be to decode a signal in the amygdala showing overactivity, then stimulate elsewhere to [suppress] that fear,†says Dougherty.

  Instead of waiting for PTSD they just implant as SOP. The beginnings of Universal Soldier.

  I am not warmed by this article.

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  The more things change, the more they look the same

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• Re:What could possible go wrong (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 30 2014, @04:53PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 30 2014, @04:53PM (#49202)

  Think how it could be used to help the economy!

  "I feel like ... going shopping!"

  Parent