'Brain Pacemakers' Being Tested

meshmar writes "Shades of 'The Terminal Man'? Rob Stein of The Washington Post has reported, via MSNBC, that: 'A handful of scientists around the world have begun cautiously experimenting with devices implanted in patients' bodies to deliver precisely targeted electrical stimulation to the brain in hopes of treating otherwise hopeless behavioral, neurological and psychiatric disorders.' A lot of good can come out of this - potentially. But I can see a the potential for misuse too."

Comments

Battle Field Earth

[spribyl]

Didn't the bad dudes in Battle Field Earth have implants that caused them to be extra agressive and bad actors.

V-Chip?

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

Dr. Vosknocker: Now, I want you to say "doggy".
Cartman: Doggy.
Dr. Vosknocker: [to audience] Notice, that nothing happens. [to Cartman] Now, say "montana".
Cartman: Montana.
Dr. Vosknocker: Good. Now, "pillow".
Cartman: Pillow.
Dr. Vosknocker: Alright. Now I want you to say "horse f*cker".
Mrs. Cartman: Go on, honey. It's alright.
Cartman: Horse fu-- [gets shocked by the V-chip] That hurts, god damn it!
[gets shocked again]
Dr. Vosknocker: Now I want you to say "big floppy donkey dick".
Cartman: No!
Dr. Vosknocker: [to audience] Success! The child doesn't want to swear!
Cartman: This isn't fair, you sons of bi--
[gets shocked repeatedly]

Re:nah, probably not.

[Anonymous Coward]

The possiblities are astounding! Buy a Microsoft product, get an orgasm!

ha!

[WormholeFiend]

they can have control over my brain when they pry it out of my cold, dead skull!

*Zap*

[whitelabrat]

I have a brain pacemaker and it sucks...*ZAP*

I mean they're fantastic.

Re:nah, probably not.

[Otter]

So, as long as they don't put the shocks into the pleasure centers this should work out!

I think the concern is that people would do precisely that. After all, it happened on both Futurama *and* the Simpsons, so naturally it's of grave concern to the Slashdot editors.

Re:nah, probably not.

[NewtonsLaw]

Buy a Microsoft product, get an orgasm!

You're under the mistaken assumption that people have an orgasm every time they're screwed :-)

Radical procedures on poorly understood organs

[Featureless]

OK, we have a "computer" here in the lab that's crashing a lot, and losing people's data, and we have this new theory for how to fix it. I don't exactly know how these "computers" work, of course, so we can't be sure... but we have some ideas gleaned we from when we used to just get rid of them when they broke. A lot of times, we'd take a computer out of the garbage pile and see what was inside. They're mostly green plastic in there. Lots of very small, small parts - too small for the eye to see. No one knows how they all work together, yet, but we put one in an X-Ray and gave it an MRI and we notice that certain parts are hotter than others when the computer is doing different tasks. Also, we put a computer in the blender and then studied the little chunks under a microscope. So we're definitely making progress.

Based on all this we figure Jim in maintenance can insert some electrical probes into the "chips" and send in little shocks with just the right voltage to stop Microsoft Word from crashing so much. Plus we think it might really help our Quake 3 framerates.

We think this could be better than the best idea we've had so far, having computer therapists sit with them and press different keys to try to recreate past successes we've had by trial and error. It couldn't be worse than our previous attempts, which involved just putting unruly computers in the closet until they got better on their own, or administering electric shocks to the outside of the case, or (my favorite) just taking the sucker down to the shop and really giving it a good whack on the drill press.

Somebody call Discover Magazine.