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Brain Pacemaker Helps Treat Alzheimer's Disease
First time accepted submitter Press2ToContinue writes "Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is the use of a pacemaker-like device implanted in the brain to treat the symptoms of diseases like Parkinson's, or other maladies such as depression. For the first time in the US, surgeons at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland have used this technique to attempt to slow memory loss in a patient suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. The fornix, a vital part of the brain that brings data to the hippocampus, is being targeted with this device. Essentially, the fornix is the area of the brain that converts electrical activity into chemical activity. Holes are drilled into the skull, and wires are placed on both sides of the brain. Then, the stimulator device pumps in small and unnoticeable electrical impulses upwards of 130 times per second. Half of the patients will begin the electrical treatment two weeks post-surgery, but the other half won't have their pacemakers turned on until a full year after the surgery to provide comparison data for the study."
Louis Gridley Wu, beware!
You don't treat depression (a symptom) with electric shocks, you treat the cause (usually some traumatic stress which is ongoing). Once the cause is dealt with on a permanent basis, the brain will repair itself.
Yes, I speak as someone who tolerates constant and persistent traumatic stress, I have refused all drugs, I have refused all counselling and I am dealing with the shit myself by inflicting righteous retribution on those who wrong me. The stress fuels me.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Now could you use this in a happy healthy brain to become even more happy and healthy?
The only thing that terrifies me more than getting something like Alzheimer's and being robbed of my memories and experiences and personality is the idea of having any form of brain surgery. Thinking about this story is the kind of shit that keeps me up at night. :)
Could this work on politicians? If anybody needs a brain pacemaker, it would be them.
Isn't this the plot of an old Michael Crichton novel? The only difference is that the protagonist was affected by epilepsia rather than parkinson.
which says:
1. put the device in your pant
2. setup wi-fi password
3. open your favorite browser
4. type www.xvideo.com
5. ???
6. more happiness!
"Essentially, the fornix is the area of the brain that converts electrical activity into chemical activity."
That is an egregious description of the fornix. All of the brain's electrical activity is electro-chemical, and the fornix has no special role that relates to converting electrical activity into chemical activity.
The fornix is a bundle of axons (i.e. a white matter tract) that connects the hippocampus with the hypothalamus.
This description is complete balderdash (not Slashdot's fault -- the poppycock is taken verbatim from the original article). I can say so with some authority since I have an earned doctorate in Neural Science, with a specialty in neuroanatomy.
The fornix is a fiber tract from the septal nuclei to the hippocampal formation, a region associated with long term memory storage. Fiber tracts do not particularly convert electrical activity into chemical activity; they are merely active conduits for the electrical activity. The conversion into chemical activity happens at the ends of the fibers, in this case in the hippocampal formation, where the arrival of a nerve impulse triggers the release of neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft. This conversion doesn't happen in any one place, but anywhere there is gray matter.
Somebody somewhere has been taking dictation from a PR flack who knows squat about the brain. Or doesn't have one.
There's not much of a story here, because there are no results. They're just starting to try something, and they've only done it in one patient. Call me back if it works.
We need to get one of these into Terry Pratchett STAT!
I thought Alzheimer's sufferers had serious deterioration in brain mass. I don't understand how brain stimulation can help when so much of the brain is physically destroyed.
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This sounds like the M.O.M. (Mind Over Matter) implants for the "Crazies" OCC from the Palladium "Rifts" dice-and-paper RPG.
Where electrical implants to stimulate the brain to treat mental-illness were found to have the unintentional beneficial side-effect of stimulating latent psychic powers in patients... which naturally (this being an 80's cyberpunk-with-magic hybrid RPG) led to weaponization.
However, the implants used to artificially stimulate psychic super-powers in psycho-normative people, would over time, create mental instability in users, and as delicious irony, would eventually lead to insanity, hence: "crazies".
I read the headline and the old Monty Python "New Brain" sketch came to mind.
Proverbs 21:19