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The Neuroscientist Who Tested a Brain Implant On Himself (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Our understanding of the brain has come a long way in the past thirty years, but most brain-related medical procedures remain incredibly complicated and dangerous. Neurologist Phil Kennedy has been working on brain-computer interfaces since the 1980s. He was most notably involved in letting a patient with "locked in" syndrome interact with the outside world through a brain-controlled computer cursor. But the FDA has gradually ramped up its safety demands, and in the past decade they've shut down Kennedy's research. So he did what any determined inventor would do: he went to a hospital in Belize and had surgeons there implant electrodes on his own brain so he could continue his research.
"After returning home to Duluth, Georgia, Kennedy began to toil largely alone in his speech lab, recording his neurons as he repeated 29 phonemes (such as e, eh, a, o, u, and consonants like ch and j) out loud, and then silently imagined saying them. ... Kennedy says his early findings are 'extremely encouraging.' He says he determined that different combinations of the 65 neurons he was recording from consistently fired every time he spoke certain sounds aloud, and also fired when he imagined speaking them—a relationship that is potentially key to developing a thought decoder for speech." Eventually, Kennedy had to have the implants removed, but he hopes the data he gathered will help push the FDA toward supporting this research once more.
"After returning home to Duluth, Georgia, Kennedy began to toil largely alone in his speech lab, recording his neurons as he repeated 29 phonemes (such as e, eh, a, o, u, and consonants like ch and j) out loud, and then silently imagined saying them. ... Kennedy says his early findings are 'extremely encouraging.' He says he determined that different combinations of the 65 neurons he was recording from consistently fired every time he spoke certain sounds aloud, and also fired when he imagined speaking them—a relationship that is potentially key to developing a thought decoder for speech." Eventually, Kennedy had to have the implants removed, but he hopes the data he gathered will help push the FDA toward supporting this research once more.
Better?
The funny side of this story is, why did he have the implants removed? Side effects caused him to stop working himself as a patient? :) This appear's to be a "no brainer" :)
Unfortunately the electrodes had to be removed due to complications and he can't continue these tests on himself. I wonder if the fda is preventing research on people who would volunteer for such a procedure, and why the fda would stop people from doing it voluntarily if to doesn't harm anyone else?
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If you're willing to put electrodes in your own brain for the sake of science... yea, title earned.
Well one thing in reseahttp://science.slashdot.org/story/15/11/09/1313258/the-neuroscientist-who-tested-a-brain-implant-on-himself#rch is the fact they are trying to find out whether it can harm you or not. So I assume not many people are eager to go and test this out?
The funny side of this story is, why did he have the implants removed? Side effects caused him to stop working himself as a patient? :) This appear's to be a "no brainer" :)
You appear to be a lover of sucking penis :)
Professor Kevin Warwick AKA Captain Cyborg never went as far as putting an implant in his brain, so I think that Phil Kennedy now deserves the nickname, and in a less ironic sense than it was applied to Prof Warwick. Much respect for hacking your own cranium.
Oh no... it's the future.
Experimenting on himself? Well, he may be a neuroscientist, but he sure ain't no brain surgeon.
why did he have the implants removed?
Well they do use the term "complications" which implies unlikely or unexpected results, but brain electrodes are one of those things that basically comes with a built in time limit and the long term plan to remove and replace them over time.
The electrodes touching the brain causes scar tissue over time, so they become less effective until ultimately they stop working.
He certainly knew they would need removed at some point, and perhaps he planned all along to not have any re-implanted for the time being. Perhaps doing so was too expensive.
Also while there are newer and improved electrodes available that last longer, those are even more experimental than the older longer-used ones.
I would imagine as a patient the newer electrodes would be preferred simply to reduce the number of majorly invasive procedures needed.
But as a scientist performing experiments, it seems likely the extra variables introduced from the newer less-used electrodes would want to be ruled out as much as possible as to not skew the data.
Probably infection risk
Unfortunately the electrodes had to be removed due to complications and he can't continue these tests on himself. I wonder if the fda is preventing research on people who would volunteer for such a procedure, and why the fda would stop people from doing it voluntarily if to doesn't harm anyone else?
Ethics.
Lawsuits
Finding people who don't mind a good chance they will end up dead, or worse, paralyzed.
Probably the only people who would volunteer for this sort of thing are prisoners looking at a life sentence reduction and who wouldn't mind being dead if it meant they were getting out of the pokey.
And lawsuits. Signing a piece of paper doesn't protect the doctor from "gross negligence" lawsuits. Some one on a ventilator and immobile in the courtroom maks almost as unbeatable and sympathetic a victim as an aggrieved mother who lost her baby. Which is related to why there aren't many drugs approved for pregnant women - way too dangerous to do the testing.
There has been a rather spotty record on medical ethics in research, so I'm not surprised the FDA clamps down on brain surgery on healthy people for shits and giggles.
Even my prisoner example has extreme oversight issues. Some folks still aren't all that happy about the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, when they decided to see what happened to men when purposely leaving their disease untreated while pretending to treat it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's definitely not a simple "We need to know this stuff" matter. No holds barred experimentation, and it starts to resemble this: https://owlspace-ccm.rice.edu/...
We actually learned a lot of stuff from those high altitude evil experiments, which is a bit disturbing on many levels.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
and why the fda would stop people from doing it voluntarily if to doesn't harm anyone else?
If people are banned from doing brain implants, then they can't do anything that risks an FDA bureaucrat's job.
please mod this up.
The article says his skull never fully closed and that this was a dangerous condition to have. Why that is I am not sure. It also goes on to say that he intended to have the implants for a number of year. Instead he chose to remove the implants since surgery needed to happen and the more surgeries the more chances there are for a life ending event to happen.
The problem with your breezy assertions about lawsuits, ethics, and Nazi experiments is that there are apparently millions of people in the world with some form of crippling paralysis or muscle weakness that prevents them from walking and/or using their arms. Brain implants are probably a core technology to getting them human-level mobility again. Instead, those people are allowed to suffer in miserable conditions indefinitely for the sake of a hypothetical few lives. It also means that people who are willing and have the power to completely ignore those ethical quandaries will have a considerable advantage.
We actually learned a lot of stuff from those high altitude evil experiments, which is a bit disturbing on many levels.
Your system of regulation and ethics has a worse outcome than human experimentation in a Nazi concentration camp. You are doing it wrong.
There is a vast amount of human suffering and death which can be mitigated and/or eliminated. But it requires human experimentation. - a small price for a great gain. A saner approach also reduces the advantages gained from "no holds barred" experimentation, that you seem concerned about.
That's the biggest issue with implants. They seem to cause harm to the adjacent tissue and eventually stop working. We need "softer" implants that last a long time themselves and let the tissue they are connected to last for a long time also. It seems to me that grids of needles are a dead-end for long term viability.
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How did he get past airport security with those things in his head? :)
"This appear's to be a "no brainer" "
So is the usage of the apostrophe. Or so I thought...
I can't get this image out of my head.
Have gnu, will travel.
A surgeon who operates on himself has a fool for a patient.
Well they do use the term "complications"
Err... no they don't.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Am I the only one who read this as "breast implant" ?
That man is a hero. The FDA is the villian.
This comes down to personal liberty, or it should, if our legal system wasn't completely polluted by idiots.
He had to go to Belize to get this done. He couldn't just say "This is what I want, let's do this." What a travesty.
Sometimes I don't know why we let congress and its designated rule-spewers make rules at all. They amount to the very worst kind of helicopter parents -- and they're not even legitimately in the role.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
because he mutilated his brain when he could have taken readings using interferometry instead of implants if he used the invasive type. interferometry allows individual neurons to be read, even individual electrons and atoms. what a dumbass if he used invasive implants - that's brain damaging. causes scar tissue and neuron damages.
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I don't see how we can EVER interfere with the brain's processes in any way and expect the results to be more than marginally useful, in the very-short-term.
Any measurement of data in the synapses that involves sticking electrodes in will mess with the potentials in some way. I would imagine this extends to "any measurement AT ALL" but I'm not one to make such a judgment. It seems caution is advised.
I am certain that you will volunteer today to be a test subject for a risky clinical trial, since all that suffering and death in the world means so much to you.
If you RTFA, you'll see the problem was the FDA wanted safety data he couldn't provide as he did not have the funds to obtain the data.
Probably the only people who would volunteer for this sort of thing are prisoners looking at a life sentence reduction and who wouldn't mind being dead if it meant they were getting out of the pokey.
IIRC, the people that typically volunteer for this are those with degenerative neurological/nerve diseases and those with brain injuries.
I am certain that you will volunteer today to be a test subject for a risky clinical trial, since all that suffering and death in the world means so much to you.
Not today. But there's a good chance I will at some point in the future. I'll die of something and there's a good chance it'll be something which we can develop an experimental treatment for. Might as well do something productive with that death, right?
Come to think of it, brain implants would be interesting to try out. If I don't have to pay for the surgery and animal testing shows they've mostly fixed the side effects (like build up of scar tissue in the brain), I'd be willing to give them a try.
What I find amazing is how much we still DON'T know about the brain.
I had non-invasive brain surgery about a decade ago. About a third of my thalamus had to be destroyed (with a proton beam!) to stop a serious hemorrhage in my brain. I asked the various neurologists and neurosurgeons beforehand if this would cause any issues. They all answered "We don't think so, but we really don't know."
So now I get to pretend to forget about anything I don't want to remember before that time. And did I lose any functions or memories? Who knows?
With a sample of one, I'm sure the FDA and his fellow Neuroscientists will be thrilled by his data. His research lacks any statistical power at all! I think it's cool that people are willing to risk brain damage to contribute to science (not sarcasm), but they should consider what it is they are actually contributing. How do we know that those particular neurons he singled out aren't unique to him? That is, their functional role in him could differ in some ways from those neurons in others. That's just one problem. There's plenty of others.
Judging by the ever-increasing, ever more weird malarkey coming out his mouth, he needs a brain implant asap.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I misread this at first as:
The Neuroscientist Who Tested a Brain Transplant On Himself
The FDA is concerned about coercion. We find this all the time -- someone wants to do something voluntarily. Someone else doesn't, but gets coerced into it through some sort of blackmail and forced to claim to be a volunteer. The only way anyone has found to block the coercion is to block the volunteers.
You see this all the time in work contracts for unions -- the union wants to stop business from demanding ridiculous overtime, so they negotiate limit X. They then include a clause that bans anyone from volunteering to do more than X because if anyone can volunteer to do it, then you can be coerced into doing it through various economic pressures -- as a manager, you'll promote/retain the one who volunteers more of his time, thus making it effectively a requirement of the job to volunteer in order to stay competitive, so you're right back where you started. The only solution is to ban volunteers.
Same with FDA.
I'm still confused as to why the FDA has any say on what this man is allowed to do.... Sounds like another gov org overstepping their boundaries......again.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
The problem with your breezy assertions about lawsuits, ethics, and Nazi experiments is that there are apparently millions of people in the world with some form of crippling paralysis or muscle weakness that prevents them from walking and/or using their arms. Brain implants are probably a core technology to getting them human-level mobility again.
Tell me khallow, do you plan on volunteering for medical research that might just kill you? Or leave you a quadriplegic?
Brezy my ass pal, I know all about debilitating problems. Good to see a man of your principles has shown me up , and is volunteering at great personal risk to make humanity better and more healthy.
What is the brain research program you are signing up for?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I am certain that you will volunteer today to be a test subject for a risky clinical trial, since all that suffering and death in the world means so much to you.
Khallow is channelling Mother Theresa today, and would gladly give his life if just one person could be helped.
Brought tears to my eyes, If I could only be so altruistic.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I am certain that you will volunteer today to be a test subject for a risky clinical trial, since all that suffering and death in the world means so much to you.
Not today. But there's a good chance I will at some point in the future. I'll die of something and there's a good chance it'll be something which we can develop an experimental treatment for. Might as well do something productive with that death, right?
Oh ain't you just the savior of humanity. And you breezily sidestepped the issue. I'm talking about healthy volunteers who risk their lives. Just being ill and desparate is not what is needed, or dead and who gives a damn - we need control subjects, and like the FA, healthy people willing to die for medicine to help others.
After your are dead - hey, that's really being a saint. I think more highly of you with every post you make.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And you breezily sidestepped the issue. I'm talking about healthy volunteers who risk their lives.
I am too. Even a dying patient is a healthier volunteer than a dead one. Just because you are sick, it doesn't mean that you can't do anything to make your situation considerably worse and not just in transitioning from dying to dead.
I think more highly of you with every post you make.
I disagree. If you were actually thinking, you would be saying something else.
Khallow is channelling Mother Theresa today, and would gladly give his life if just one person could be helped.
Nonsense. But one death per several thousand to several million saved is my speed.
Brought tears to my eyes, If I could only be so altruistic.
You're so altruistic, you'd damn millions to save a few. Thus is the price of the morally bankrupt viewpoint.
Probably the only people who would volunteer for this sort of thing are prisoners looking at a life sentence reduction and who wouldn't mind being dead if it meant they were getting out of the pokey.
IIRC, the people that typically volunteer for this are those with degenerative neurological/nerve diseases and those with brain injuries.
They have to have healthy brains to compare with though.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The thing is, if he wants to do this, or you want to do it, what I think about anyone wanting to do this, or whether I would or would not want to do it myself, should be entirely irrelevant to your legitimate choice of "do it" or "don't do it."
The whole idea of me telling you you can't do something of an informed, personal or consensual nature because I don't like it or wouldn't do it is coercive. If it does not do me direct financial, physical or reputation harm, and you do not involve me as a matter of your own choice, it's flat-out none of my business to interfere in any manner. Period.
It's helicopter governance. I do not mean that even slightly kindly, either.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No change in your pain perception?
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What is the brain research program you are signing up for?
I think rather the question is where is it? Buried by short sighted FDA regulations seems to be the answer.
"I am having problems controlling THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE!"
"I have no inner monologue"
He likely had to have them removed to prevent fatal infections. The implants are foreign objects and the connectors to them were through the skin - so it gets infected. Left long enough really bad infections would set in, that may be ultimately fatal.
Anything like that for experimental purposes is temporary