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Scientist to Implant Electrode in His Own Brain?
BartlebyScrivener writes to tell us the MIT Technology Review is reporting that even thought scientists know quite a bit about the brain, one researcher is trying to take it a step further towards understanding consciousness by implanting an electrode in his own brain. From the article: "Bill Newsome, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, has spent the last twenty years studying how neurons encode information and how they use it to make decisions about the world. In the 1990s, he and collaborators were able to change the way a monkey responded to its environment by sending electric jolts to certain parts of its brain. The findings gave neuroscientists enormous insight into the inner workings of the brain."
Actually there by definition there is only one nerve in the brain the optic nerve. The optic nerve is a Sensory Nerve because it carries sense information from the eyes to the brain for processing.
What normally would be called a nerve in the brain is called a Tract. So really (optic nerve aside) there are no nerves in the brain.
"The findings gave neuroscientists enormous insight into the inner workings of the brain"
Funny this is the exact way that the functions of the brain where mapped out. When cancer patients went in for surgery local anesthetic was given (the brain has no pain receptors, only the skin, skull, and the membranes around the brain). The doctors after surgery would stimulate different areas of the brain with extremely low voltages and observe the response in the patient. Sometimes the patient would smell a rose, other times muscles would twitch, and sometimes the patient would fall asleep. There is a study from the 50's that linked aggression to a certain region in the brain. When a cat had its lateral hypothalamus stimulated it became ferocious and would attack anything in sight. On the other hand when the Ventral Hypothalamus was stimulated the cat would recoil in fear when it saw even a baby mouse.
Now it is true that we are learning more and more about the brain and its region specific functions everyday. But take it from me this is more of a publicity stunt then someone trying to do real science.
I'm a PhD student in neuroscience, so let me comment. The human brain has around 100,000,000,000 neurons and 1,000,000,000,000,000 individual synapses (rough estimates, no one knows for sure). That makes the brain by far the most complicated structure in the known universe. Furthermore, techniques for studying the brain have only existed for around 80 years. So the apparent lack of real progress in neuroscience is understandable, given the complexity of the problem. Also, we do know more than you might think, but we still have a very incomplete picture of how the brain works, partially due to the lack of robust experimental techniques, as you point out.
I would have thought there would have been far more interest into researching how the brain functions.
Well, I was at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in Washington DC in November, and there were around 28,000 neuroscientists in attendance. Judging by the number of people from my department who did not attend, I'd say that represents 5-10% of the total neuroscience research community in this country. I'd challenge you to find another research field with that much active research.
But, aside from the significant risk of brain infection, this doesn't quite rise to the level of the bacteriologists who drank infectious cultures (of cholera?) to prove a scientific point.