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Depression Cured by Brain Implant; What Are the Implications?
Hexmage-PA
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Sarah, who asked to be identified by her first name, is the only person to ever be treated with electrodes implanted deep in her brain that send quick energy bursts when they detect activity in a brain circuit involved in her depression.
Those 6-second zaps – as many as 300 a day – have transformed her life and provided new insights into the biological nature of depression. The stimulator only goes off when the brain circuit believed to lie at the root of her depression malfunctions. That means the battery will last longer – about 10 years.
The match-box-sized battery is embedded in her cranial bone so she can't feel it. The two minimally-invasive surgeries were less annoying, Sarah said, than the extended MRIs she had to undergo to identify her faulty brain circuit.
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As someone who has dealt with anxiety and depression for much of my life I find this story fascinating. Basically, the researchers found where in the brain a woman's depression was caused and implanted a device to stop it when it acts up. More interesting/concerning, it seems that even with the depression-causing brain circuit being suppressed by the implant it is still as active as before, necessitating hundreds of shocks per day to keep it quiet. I find this particularly interesting because I myself have often had episodes where it seems like I some negative mental sensation first, with the actual negative thoughts arriving afterwards (possibly as a way to try and make sense of why I feel the way I do).
Though I myself would be way too paranoid of the possibility of such a device malfunctioning and frying my brain, I can understand how people with symptoms more severe than mine might opt for such an implant if it really has such an enormous impact on personal well-being. However, the potential for abuse that this technology could create is also concerning. If an implant can be used to change a person's brain so that they no longer feel depression then the technology could conceivably be used to alter a person's mental state in other ways.
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Once you get past the inaccurate parallels, probably the biggest implication is that mental illness is rarely treated as a purely philological thing in medical research. The knowledge that it is is quite old, and this exact treatment was hypothesized in the 60's, but actual research has been sparse, even since the technology has existed.
EST / ECT aren't primarily means of restraint and haven't been for the better part of a century. That's at best an outdated depiction of the treatment and in a lot of cases just straight up fiction.
Electroconvulsive therapy is a widely used and generally effective / reliable treatment that in a lot of cases has less side effects than medication. Bad information from media is a big part of why it has a largely negative stigma and people shy away from what is in many cases the best treatment for their disorder.
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ECT when used properly is very effective. Still, I don't know if I would go so far as to say widely used, and you seem to have a slightly rosier picture than I think makes sense.
As for the topic at hand, well it is interesting. I suppose I will have to try and dig out their research later to get a better idea of what exactly is happening there. My initial reaction is not impressed though, honestly. We have been trying to treat depression as a purely physical thing for decades now. It hasn't gone the way people have hoped. I definitely don't think we are close to nightmare scenarios people might fear from this. The human brain is a lot more complex than we like to give it credit for, and quite possibly more complex than we can ever understand.
This was an extreme case that took extreme action. If ECT wasn't helping this woman then we are kind of out of options. It is the one we know works, but isn't exactly a fun one to go through. When you get to the point of experimental brain surgery to treat depression I think we can safely say it is at an extreme end of the scale. I find it highly unlikely this will ever become a real competitor for medication. I really expect it to be another extreme tool in the tool box for people who desperately need any kind of help.
More or less it is a group of neurons that are wired together from repeated use. Basically when the first one goes off you can expect the rest to follow. Think of it kind of like dominoes I guess. Knock the first one down and eventually you get to the last one. The brain implant, I am guessing, is designed to disrupt the firing with electrical activity that throws off the entire reaction ie knocks over some middle dominoes out of order. It isn't malfunctioning so much as performing a really awful function that the person would prefer not happen.
Although in this instance it isn't creating good signals, but preventing the bad ones
My layman view after reading the article is like it's almost an immune response but for the brain, noticing the thing that will cause sickness and responding before the body feels the effect
Yeah I would say that sounds largely accurate. Physically enforced though stopping seems to be the general idea they were going for from the news article.
I suspect some part of the aversion to this stems from knowing that the ultra conservative nutbars are absolutely going to see if they can find the parts of the brain you need to zap to cure The Gay and The Trans and whatever other things they decide are not allowed. Which admittedly they're trying to do regardless, but functioning tech for doing it gets them closer.
Tl;Dr it's the potential abuses, not the tech itself. There is a vast body of media on the scary shit you can get up to with brain modification.
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That wouldn't work using this tech. It isn't even remotely close to that level of tech. It just isn't something that can be done this way. Like the potential for abuse is there I suppose, but man is it low. I honestly am trying think of a way to use this nefariously and more or less coming up empty. Most of the stuff you are talking about could only really be achieved by cutting bits of the brain out, and we are well down that road.
I wish they'd hurry up, I'd love to get my nerves stapled
If I gotta be a cog might as well be okay with being a cog
Yeah, that fear presumes that depression is the same biological condition as how we feel love or perceive the world, etc
That’s like discovering a medicine for cholesterol and assuming that it can address all heart conditions, including having a “broken heart”
I get why someone would fear that though given the shit state of the world and the evil ballsacks who profit off said shit and want to keep the shit going
My brother, his oldest son, and myself have all been taken to the ER then mandatory inpatient. Depression runs deep in our family and only seems to get worse with age.
I understand other people's hesitation. But for those of us who are expecting to spend decades fighting off suicidal thoughts, even drastic steps become appealing.
DBS itself is fucking revolutionary. Watching a Parkinsons sufferer stop shaking from the flick of a switch blew me away the first time I was in a procedure room for it.
E: They actually shot a documentary about a football player at the hospital I was at and he went through the treatment. I'll try to find a bit about it later.
Keeping in mind the implant has a cost. You lose access to MRI for diagnostic tests for example. It's still incredible.
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Yes, and no. This device doesn't sound like it "cures" depression exactly. I am trying to not be too much of a wet blanket as I don't want to take hope away from people. That said, this is doing something extremely specific to Sarah's brain. I haven't been able to find the article yet, but I think the underlying theory is shockingly simplistic based on the data I have. This is stopping a very specific chain of brain activity associated with one spiral. Basically, it sounds like it stops her from going down a very specific thought process. Where it is placed will vary for each person, and without finding exactly where to place it you couldn't hope to predict the outcome.
Basically it prevents her from a specific chain of thoughts that left her suicidal at the end. She could still end up being depressed. It just wouldn't go to the same extreme place as quickly, or hopefully at all.
Jokes aside treatment is treatment and my only aversion to the idea of fixing brains comes when dipshits get to justifying using similar tech for queer or neurodivergent folk.
The ethics are pretty tricky. What if it could be used to manage ADHD or compulsive behavior associated with OCD or ASD? I dunno if I can be against that. If someone seeks treatment for something, we should try to treat them.
It's a lot better to argue that whatever your situation you should have the choice. Though that might be getting kind of far ahead of the technology.
That’s very helpful, thanks
Well yeah, ultimately the issue is the divide between disorders like that being a notable part of the person and it also being harmful to them.
It’s why I mentioned Red Strings Club because that’s a game that literally just asks you ‘if people had a mental health implants what behaviour should it eradicate from the world?’ In very blunt detail.
After that, both the inherent ontology and tautology remains to the individual; to decide for themselves, freely and openly.
I've often passively wondered about what would happen if some researcher did happen to stumble across the specific medical reason that those mental states exist. Just simply publishing their findings could open all sorts of unpleasant doors.
One of the more interesting fictional bits on this kind of thing is Eclipse Phase. Where like, yeah, they can do trans human brain edits easy.
Yet autism and adhd and other forms of neurodivergency still exist not only as managed conditions for people born with it but also as something people willingly put into themselves.
Being autistic when you're doing a three month shift on a mostly lonely mining barge is pretty useful for example.
But yeah the idea of how tech fixes disability is always a super messy subject.
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Lesion is a comic gently poking fun at neuroscience.
Jenny Lawson talked about her experience with it in her book “Broken (in the best possible way)” and was very positive about it. The magnetic pulse stuff also sounded much less invasive.
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The implications are vague and menacing, but what path toward improved neuroscience can possibly not have menacing implications?
This is really just sorta scratching the surface with what's possible with this.
There's a bunch of scary implications to being able to sorta switch off a behavior, pattern of thinking, but eh... a lack of technology hasn't really ever stopped humanity from being inhuman.
We are the thing that exist across the processes carried out by our brains, which are physical things. The stuff that is around the body and the stuff that is around your mind both have a mental and physiological effect.
The idea that there is a single pathway that is the trigger for this is also amazing, even for that person. The really interesting/terrifying thing will be if when fed this data, something like Deep Mind can start predicting it on seeing a few scans.
The scariest of those impulses have already been followed. The stuff people are posting about in fear is the stuff that was tried with lobotomies. You can't really use it to do anything novel and horrific because people have been pretty cavalier about horrific shit with it in the past already.
While it has helped me a ton, it mostly makes my life manageable instead of fixing the problem. If this becomes a thing that is widely available, I'd absolutely be on board. It would literally be life changing.