> Scientists observed that the animals preferred to be in areas of their enclosures where a magnetic field activated the stimulator, and provided a small voltage to the reward center of their brains.
reminds me a little bit of the wires in Larry Niven's books (ringworld, et al), where Louis Wu is implanted with a wire into the pleasure center of his brain and becomes highly addicted.
if this is as non-invasive of a surgery as the article suggests, it could be the next avenue of "fun".
Whoa, this is potentially a pretty cool device. I don't have Parkinsons, but I do have Essential Tremor[0].
I'm only in my late 20's now but I've had it since at least my early teens, and it hasn't improved. In some ways it's possibly gotten a bit worse over time as well.
When I last saw a neurologist about it about ten years ago, they could really only recommend prescription medicine with nasty side-effects, so I decided with my parents at the time that improving the tremor at the cost of depression and other issues wouldn't be worth it.
I'm hopeful in the next decade or so there'll be something like this that could resolve it before it gets to the point where I'm unable to feed myself; I believe in the past there were companies that invented eating utensils for people with severe tremors, but that's not ideal.
Tremor sufferers are a wildly underserved community from a technology perspective, if anyone wants to jump in. I hope usability advancements outdo my personal ET decline as I age. And if not for me, for my children which will have the same as my father has before me.
Straight to the point - stimulating reward center you can train any brain to willing perform any task. Human with such implant will do - and enjoy - whatever is the will of unit controlling the implant. The reward center is crutial in creatures self learning process.
As a side note, I’m always super skeptical when I see links with small numbers of votes sitting on the front page (currently sitting at 12 votes and 0 comments). I always just assume it is the result of a voting ring or someone sharing the link with people to upvote directly instead of natural voting behavior.
As the original poster, I only wish I had a cabal to upvote my posts. I saw the link on Google news and I was hoping to get some clarity on the concept from folks here.
That's definitely not true. It's not uncommon for articles, especially on specialized topics, to sit on the front page without comments. That can actually be a good thing, because it can take a while for relevant comments on a lesser-known topic to appear.
I've been holding my tongue lately since Dang had to chide me for a bunch of angry comments and calling out an account I felt was astroturfing. Just so you know, it turns out comments like that are actually against the rules. Just passing on what I learned not long ago.
reminds me a little bit of the wires in Larry Niven's books (ringworld, et al), where Louis Wu is implanted with a wire into the pleasure center of his brain and becomes highly addicted.
if this is as non-invasive of a surgery as the article suggests, it could be the next avenue of "fun".