The pleasure shock: the rise of deep brain stimulation and its forgotten inventor

2022年09月09日

日本タイトル「闇の脳科学」、すべての精神疾患は脳の炎症によって引き起こされるようです。人格が簡単に変えられるのなら、個人とは何なのでしょうか？今日は脳の不思議を見てみましょう。(English) It seems all mental illness is caused by brain inflammation - after reading the Japanese title: 'Brain Science of Darkness.' If personality can be easily changed, what is an individual? Let's take a look at the wonders of the brain today.

"The pleasure shock: the rise of deep brain stimulation and its forgotten inventor" Robert Heath
by Frank, Lone

The book is about the life of Robert Heath, a brain scientist active in the 1960s.

At the time, he was a world-renowned brain scientist.

However, today he has become an utterly unknown scientist.

That is the dark side of the book's title.

He became famous at the time because he was the first person to implant electrodes in the human brain.

Shocking psychosurgery

The most famous operation in the history of psychosurgery is the 'lobotomy.' In Japanese, it is called 'frontal lobe white matter lobotomy.'

There are also explanations about lobotomies in the book.

Lobotomies are performed by inserting an ice pick-like object into the frontal lobe from around the eye socket.

Patients who undergo this surgery are said to lose their violent tendencies and become crippled.

At the time, the condition was mistakenly thought to be 'mature.'

It seems that many of these surgeries themselves were performed.

The story of this area can be better understood by watching the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

There was a movement at the time to treat the mentally ill with surgical techniques, as typified by lobotomies.

Robert Heath was one of the scientists who tried to help people with mental illness using that method.

Heath's method involved inserting electrodes into the brain and stimulating it with electricity to activate it and make it mentally normal.

As with lobotomies, the brain itself was utterly unknown at the time, and the experiment itself was not denied from an ethical point of view.

Lively psychotherapy

Robert Heath's experiments were considered a more reliable cure than lobotomies, and many patients visited him.

One of the most impressive experiments in the book is that of a gay patient called B-19.

This experiment is introduced at the beginning of the book.

Electrodes are implanted in a man's brain called B-19, and the wires are connected to a device in another room that looks like a 'lie detector.

The electrodes are stimulated while the patient watches the needle.

The patient performs a sexual act with a prostitute in a conscious state.

The electrodes are stimulated to arouse the patient.

The patient had never been aroused by a woman before, but this experiment produced him.

Other experiments include stimulating depressed patients with electrodes to give them a sense of euphoria.

Successful experiments led to the creation of more sophisticated and portable machines.

It was considered a great case at the time.

Scientists in the dark

Heath was able to secure a position in psychosurgery.

However, after the release of the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he was subjected to public criticism of psychosurgery.

Not these criticisms kept him in the dark, but something unexpected.

10)

After researching electrodes, he published that a protein called Talysen caused schizophrenia.

However, the experiments that attempted to demonstrate this turned out to be false due to fraud on the part of his staff.

For this reason, Heath was greatly disappointed by the academic community.

11)

Taliesen's by-products

The Taliesen experiment was a failure.

However, Taliesen's point of view had a significant influence on subsequent psychiatry.

12)

In 1950, a team of researchers at the University of Tulare found that schizophrenic patients showed disorganized activity in the septal cortex.

This was not visually discernible.

It was probably due to an abnormality in the transmission of information in the cells of the septal cortex.

13)

The Taliesen experiment itself is a failure.

However, Heath developed this idea later.

He hypothesizes schizophrenia is due to abnormalities in the patient's immune antibodies.

14)

Reducing brain inflammation

The Dark Brain Science is the story of a scientist named Robert Heath.

However, I thought from this book that the human psyche is very stale and can change its personality and thoughts as much as it wants by electrical stimulation.

15)

Furthermore, what comes to light at the root of the problem is that the brain itself is immunologically abnormal.

This is my image, but the same stimulus in the brain fixes the idea.

The same synaptic flow is created there, and inflammation is created by the repeated flow of the same synapses.

I thought that this inflammation could cause mental abnormality.

16)

And when I thought about how to reduce this inflammation, I thought it was essential to stop the usual flow.

That is like mindfulness or meditation; stop thinking.

If we can stop the normal synaptic flow and reduce the activity in the inflammatory area, it would mean that we will get better.

17)

What exactly is the psyche?

The brain and the body have somehow been considered separate since Descartes.

The brain is considered a separate organ.

But I think that idea is rather strange.

18)

And surgical operations on this exceptional object are seen as a kind of desecration of the sacred.

But you could say that it is an unscientific thing.

In addition, there is now the implantation of electrodes, which Heath does.

19)

As mentioned in his book, yoga and mindfulness are activities that make the brain work more efficiently.

The only difference is whether this idea is surgical or not.

Today, we can say that we are more open to the efficient activation of the brain.

If personality can be easily changed, what is an individual?

What is it to desperately claim individuality and assert oneself? We need to think again.

Ref -1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvpHQI-smvE

Elon Musk's Neuralink development, the potential of a chip implanted in the brain.

Elon Musk's Neuralink is planning human trials.

He is developing technology to implant a chip called 'N1' into the brain and links it to a computer.

This innovative development is the culmination of brain research and can potentially change the treatment of various diseases radically.

Ref -2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DACcV1FQgpY&t=28s

Elon Musk's vision of the future || The idea of a great genius

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