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'Touching' The Brain
Roland Piquepaille writes "Medical professionals have always dreamt of mapping the activities of the human brain in real time -- 'touching' instead of looking. Of course, modern brain scanners, such as MRI, already offer sophisticated and passive views into the human brain. But now, IST Results reports that a young Finnish company, Nexstim, has developed a non-invasive brain scanning and stimulation system called navigated brain stimulation (NBS). This system "guides the precise delivery of targeted transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pulses to discrete brain areas." It is today the only device available for accurate prediction of the TMS stimulus location and dose within the human brain and is already in use in 20 hospitals and brain research centers worldwide. Read more for additional references and pictures about this noninvasive method for mapping and stimulating the brain."
"What do you think you're doing, Pinky?"
Meta will eat itself
Narf!
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Coud this device perhaps be used in *ahem* other parts of the body with high neuron concentration?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
I like this better than the invasive alternatives ... like sticking a fork in your ear, fish hook up the nose, or removing the top of your head (like Hannibal).
"Touching is Good." That said, anything that keeps me from getting my brains scrambled has to be.
'Touching' The Void
can't wait to see it applied as an interface to computer games.
or p0rn.
factor 966971: 966971
Ah, at long last man will finally be able to figure out a woman's brain.
... isn't the deep-brain scan usually fatal?
Only if the scan is taking place when the subject is thinking and farting at the same time. When "I just got an idea!" and "Oh, that was so good!" collide in deep-brain, it's not a pretty picture.
Using this machine on the pleasure areas of the brain could become far more addictive than any drug around. It also wouldn't have the same medical side effects as other drugs. It's major side effect would be making people 100% non-functional. I assume torture is defined in the Geneva Conventions. But I wonder if the definition would cover giving this to prisoners and threatening to take it away if the don't talk.
There's a funny picture on the company's site. It looks like some sort of strange Hannibal Lecter simulator, with the svelte tech trying to find the tastiest part to start nibbling on.
Is anyone else reminded of the scene in the "Animatrix" when the machines have all the humans up on racks and are experimenting on the brain and the one guy starts laughing, and then crying? I wonder if this is foreshadowing something ominous...
http://www.ajnr.org/cgi/content/full/25/1/77
Real world probe grid put on the brain...
Lots of fun, been there, done that...
A little neurosurgery anyone?
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
I think these researchers are a bit touched in the head, if you know what I mean.
Sounds like the Emergents are gearing up to produce a workforce of Focused slaves, to me.
I do believe that the medial forebrain bundle is what people mean when they talk about a "pleasure center." If you stick a stimulating electrode into a rat's MFB and let it lever press to get stimulation, it will do so to its heart's desire, until it dies of dehydration from refusing to eat or drink or do anything except hit that lever. This may be a more informative site than wikipedia (wikipedia is very bad at neuroscience--I really ought to work on that).
So they're now claiming that Olds' and Milner's findings in the 1950's only apply to rat brains?
Cause if your undergraduate psych book is using Kent Berridge's studies in humans (where the electrode implantation was, for obvious ethical reasons, not done methodically the way Olds and Milner's implantations in the rats were), it is really misleading you. Recall that Berridge cites the subjects' self-reports of continued desire for sexual activities as his primary justification for concluding that there is no pleasure center to stimulate whereas the rats in Olds and Milner's studies self-chose not to participate in eating, drinking or sex. Which means that Berridge's own rationale fails to support his conclusion in the case of Olds and Milner's studies with rats.
Psychology's long experience with previously observed differences between humans and rats when trying to use electrode implantation to map the brain leads to the conclusion that the more likely explanation is that the ethical constraints which prevent us from applying methodical, trial-based search for the human-equivalent location is why we have so far failed to duplicate Olds and Milner's results with humans.
It definitely is better than invasive alternatives, which is why both of these technologies have been being used for, oh, decades? This appears to just be a company that combined two common brain-related-things (EEG and TMS) and wants money for doing so (hence all the patents and this advertisement/news story).
Let's see if I can come up with a good patent... I keep food in my freezer, but it is frozen so I can't eat it. I heat frozen food in a microwave. Therefore I shall patent a machine that has a microwave on top and a freezer on the bottom.
"Food storage and preparation in the same machine was previously deemed impossible. However, a young American grad student who is pioneering the supply of food manipulation systems is inspiring a paradigm shift."
A taste/smell interface for your computer!
I have freaks! I did something right...
you mispelled pr0n
factor 966971: 966971
Why bother? Just find the appropriate areas within the brain itself and skip the rest. Far more effective.