The Data Is In: Brain Implants Can Make You Happy

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:34:03 PDT

For over a decade researchers have been treating many different ailments, including depression, with electrodes lodged deep in the brain. Devices like this Soletra brain implant deliver electrical impulses to a targeted brain region, essentially creating artificial activity in an area that the brain won't activate on its own. While there have been anecdotal reports that brain implants can help people with depression or OCD, now there is solid proof. A long-range study being presented at the upcoming meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons demonstrates how patients, over a 10-year period with brain implants, gained increasing control over their moods and obsessive behaviors.

Medgadget has the news:

All of the studies being presented used the Medtronic DBS system to stimulate a target within the brain called the ventral anterior limb of the internal capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS), which is a central node in the neural circuits that regulate mood and anxiety.
"The data we are presenting on 43 patients is the result of more than 10 years of work across multiple institutions worldwide. These data represent the largest number and the longest evaluation of patients with psychiatric disorders who have undergone DBS implants, including some with long-term follow up," said [Cleveland Clinic neurosurgeon] Dr. Ali Rezai, who represented an international working group of physicians studying DBS therapy for treatment resistant OCD and depression. "While OCD and depression treatment with DBS require additional clinical evaluation research, our early open-label experience to date is encouraging and indicates that DBS may help severely disabled and suffering patients who have exhausted other treatment options."

I know it sounds selfish of me when there are so many people who need these implants to feel better, but I'm still waiting for a brain implant that's designed for enhancement. Kind of like implanted Provigil or something. Or maybe an orgasm implant, instant orgasms to pass the time? I'm just saying.

Deep Brain Stimulation Useful for Severe Depression and OCD [Medgadget]

One Pill Makes You Autistic — And One Pill Changes You Back

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:30:29 PST

Need to finish that work project, and wish you had the mental intensity to do it? Just take a synapse-regulating inhibitor, induce temporary autism, and you'll want to ignore your friends and do nothing but number-crunching for days. Autism-inducers could become as popular as Provigil among the geek set by 2020. Last night, in fact, a group German researchers announced they'd perfected the method for inducing autism. (They can also cure it.)

Over the past year, researchers have demonstrated several times that they can turn mice autistic by messing with brain chemistry — and then "cure" them using the same techniques. The discoveries could lead to a scenario similar to the one in Vernor Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky, where people are given a brain treatment called "focusing" that essentially turns them autistic and makes them obsessive, detail-oriented workers.

It might also lead to recreational autism, where people who want to take a break from having messy emotions about other people decide to unplug and enter a state where human relationships are no more important than inanimate objects.

Read about how scientists can induce autism [PNAS] and how they can cure it [BBC News].

io9: ocd

The Data Is In: Brain Implants Can Make You Happy

One Pill Makes You Autistic — And One Pill Changes You Back