
Can the Nervous System be Hacked? - dd36
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/can-the-nervous-system-be-hacked.html
======
iandanforth
Quick summary: Rheumatoid arthritis can be put into remission in some patients
by stimulating the vagus nerve for some reason. Eventually it may be possible
to stimulate the nerve more precisely using one of several exciting
technologies.

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TheBiv
This is one of those rare times where a rhetorical question from a link-bait
title is definitely "Yes"!

The author has a great anecdote about the work that is being done to combat
rheumatoid-arthritis, however the story preys on our own hubris to believe
that our bodies are not made up of very simple parts that have little
knowledge of ourselves, rather a fairly strict set of inputs/outputs. So of
course if you can manipulate the inputs, then you can achieve your desired
outputs.

The true beauty of medical hacks is that the basal inputs and outputs of each
individual component is relatively unknown!

~~~
damian2000
Agreed - and I think its called Betteridge's Law of Headlines

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

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cup
Yes it can.

We can already do it. Let me show you how.

Using a soft screwdriver handle, gently tap the top of your knee where your
patellar is located. You're performing the patellar reflex procedure which
will cause your hamstrings to contract and your leg to kick out gently.

Its not high tech ghost in the shell stuff but it is technically a hack!

~~~
baddox
Or feign a punch at someone's face and see if they flinch.

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ZoF
It's interesting how 'we' as a society build up archetypes about the different
sciences(and, well, everything really) and instead of fostering and promoting
innovation in those areas we oftentimes question/demean/discredit people who
bring forth new ideas pertaining to those preconceived notions.(referring
loosely to the scientist's skeptical coworkers)

From my limited anecdotal experience(therefore potentially/likely flawed) I
would say that it's namely a result of aversion to change, desire to
assimilate(fit in), and fear of failure.

It's a shame really; I honestly believe that a LOT of value could be gained
from looking at life sciences from a completely blank/unaltered perspective.
If they were void of preconceived notions as to how these underlying
biological systems function I think that intelligent people would at very
least yield novel concepts in terms of comprehending inputs and representing
results.

To restate in different vernacular, How it is now:

If you want to do research pertaining to something that interests you
personally you've got at _least_ 4 years of college before heading into the
industry.(This precludes university research labs (as if you'd have project
control anyway)). Not only that, but for most active-minded humans, the 17
years before college are boring as fuck(not to say that an active social life
and interesting/engaging childhood makes you, in any way, less-active-minded).
We literally teach children to fore-go logic and reasoning and mindlessly obey
authority. We train children to read/write/copy/repeat, but we NEVER teach
them to discover something novel on their own.

Which is not to say, of course, that every idea is valid(or even worthy of
exploration). I mean, the system does 'work'(in that by forcing you to work up
the ladder before innovating it weeds out the thoughtless/crazy/impractical
ideas and ensures that anyone hoping to do research has a vested interest in
the subject matter), but I think that if we, as a society, encouraged/accepted
failure and were less hostile towards change we could stand to gain a lot.

Eh. This is a bit of a ramble, I guess TL,DR:

I find that the aversion to failure/change which is so inherent in society
today stifles innovation.

What do you guys/gals think? Am I off base here? Would love to hear someone
else's opinion on the matter, I can't enumerate the number of times that I've
fully fleshed out an opinion only to have reality altering conjecture come
into play.

~~~
arethuza
The fact that scientists can be overly conservative has been known for a long
time - Thomas Kuhn's "paradigm shifts" describe this phenomena. Now, of
course, you could argue that the naturally conservative nature of academic
research is a good thing as it arguably filters out clearly daft idea early on
- but a lot of spectacularly good scientific theories looked completely daft
to the mainstream at the time they were first suggested (continental drift
being a great example).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift#Kuhnian_paradigm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift#Kuhnian_paradigm_shifts)

~~~
masklinn
> a lot of spectacularly good scientific theories looked completely daft to
> the mainstream at the time they were first suggested (continental drift
> being a great example).

Academic "conservatism" hasn't prevented them from taking over the field as
collected evidence made their correctness (compared to the old model)
overwhelming, so that does not seem to be much of an argument against the
existing system.

~~~
arethuza
Of course, change does happen but _slowly_ in a lot of cases - as Max Planck
famously said:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die,
and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

~~~
kiba
A quotation by a great scientist is not evidence or proof of your hypothesis.

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sriku
Though I'm unaware of empirical studies, wouldn't attempts in Chinese medicine
be precedents here - particularly could the sending of electrical pulses
through acupuncture needles inserted at various places to "stimulate the
immune system" be some kind of primordial theory connecting the nervous system
and the immune system?

In other words, I'm rather surprised that when we can think about and exploit
the fact that regular exercise can result in good health, it has been
considered a stretch to imagine that the nervous system can be more intimately
connected to the immune system. 1998 is disturbingly close in this case.

~~~
crpatino
The thing is Traditional Chinese Medicine does not fit into the Myth of
Progress (TM), which clearly state that everybody before Francis Bacon were
retarded caveman/peasants/alchemist/inquisitors/whatever-triggers-repulsion-
in-listener.

The idea that non-European (a.k.a. non-White) peoples of thousands of years
ago were making careful observations of natural phenomena, which lead to
relatively accurate predictions and techniques that allowed to increase the
chances of preferred outcomes - even if the explanations they came out with
were off-base and terribly fantastic for our civilization's sensibilities - is
anathema to Modern Science (TM) Dogma.

In the particular case of Acupuncture, they first said that you cannot run a
proper clinical trial because the technique is invasive and you cannot control
against placebo effect. When pointed out that there are invasive techniques,
such as surgery, in modern medicine, they claimed that since the mechanism of
action of surgery are evident, it'd be unethical to run tests with double
blind controls, but since acupuncture mechanism of action is unknown, it's
unethical to run any tests at all.

Now (I mean, 15 years ago) someone comes up with a plausible, non mystic,
mechanism of action, and they claim that since it is impossible to measure the
voltage/amperage of a needle stimulus, only properly designed equipment is
good to use. This movement has the double advantage to create a new fancy
specialty with a fresh occidental name, and allows ignorant GPs to keep
calling acupuncture a quack.

And in the mean time, we force the new field to rediscover literally centuries
of accumulated knowledge from first principles. But it is a small price to
pay, so that traditional medicines practitioners are kept outside of the
"Evidence Based" umbrella.

~~~
xerophtye
I am confused as to why you are down voted. You make a fair point that a lot
of traditional knowledge in a lot of domains is frowned upon by proponents of
modern science. I am not saying that all traditional knowledge is valid (i
have seen my fare share of baseless myths), but some of these deserve respect
for having such advanced knowledge in such ancient times

~~~
crpatino
Yes, I was not going to comment, but now that you mention it...

Downvotes are intended to be cast for people that add nothing to the
conversation in course. But many people weaponize them and use them against
points of view they feel strongly against. Shame of you... you know who you
are!

I have formal training as an Technician Acupuncturist, though I can only
practice legally under the supervision of a MD with specialization in Human
Acupuncture (and being a programmer, that does not make economic sense to me).
Since I was at school, I witnessed several times how some GP got offended by
this or another pieces of ancient lore and dropped out of the program.

The thing is, you could see they were not thinking. They did not question if
the thing worked or not. They just heard some random stuff like "Qi of air and
Qi of rice transform into True Qi" and snapped like a devote Catholic would if
told that "Virgin Mary was not really a virgin". They were also completely
unable to imagine that "Qi of air" could be oxigen, and "Qi of rice" could be
glucose, and that both of them get transported by blood vessels to preserve
life of tissues across the body. Which from our point of view is a remarkable
thing to have been figured out 3 thousand years ago.

~~~
xerophtye
> They were also completely unable to imagine that "Qi of air" could be
> oxigen, and "Qi of rice" could be glucose, and that both of them get
> transported by blood vessels to preserve life of tissues across the body.
> Which from our point of view is a remarkable thing to have been figured out
> 3 thousand years ago.

Wow. I have a new-found respect for acupuncture.

Its interesting that a lot of ancient knowledge is very similar to modern
knowledge, they just have different abstract layers. Herbs are sometimes
frowned upon as medicine, because people fail to appreciate that our ancestors
managed to identify them as a source of some modern organic drug.

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lucaspiller
The most interesting part of this to me is the link between the brain and the
immune system. As the drug in the example had no effect on the body after the
vagus nerve was cut, I wonder if when injected into the body the drug still
has no effect - if it is all caused by the brain.

If that's the case I wonder if it's possible to achieve the same results just
by 'thinking' the right things. It is possible to consciously control your
heart rate which is a similar low level brain function (and I think also
involves the vagus nerve).

I doubt this research will get much funding though as GSK can't sell a $50,000
device from this :)

~~~
streptomycin
There has been some research in this area. This paper
[http://www.innerfire.nl/files/concentration-
pickkers.pdf](http://www.innerfire.nl/files/concentration-pickkers.pdf) has
one of my favorite opening sentences ever:

 _Objective: To investigate whether a special concentration /meditation
technique employed by a Dutch individual known as ‘the iceman’ can influence
anatomic nervous system activity and the innate immune response._

Looking more broadly in the literature, you can find many "biofeedback"
studies related to inflammation and the immune system. For instance
[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10484-010-9139-5](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10484-010-9139-5)
shows some interesting results in normal people (not just "the iceman"), but
unfortunately, followup studies by that group were impeded by the untimely
death of the last author :(

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bosky101
for anyone related in this topic, you should watch Frequencies (2013)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2414766/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2414766/)

it's a future that has quantified "luck", "surprises", life partners, and most
things we still think can't be quantified. also has a surprise ending.

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tokipin
The Ghost in the Shell universe explores these kinds of things.

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d3k
Was I the only one who read Frankenstein instead of Feinstein Institute?

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mmaldacker
Yes, look up research done by Kevin Warwick (a true mad scientist).

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jballanc
Humans thought their strength and agility was superior until John Henry lost
to the steam drill.

Humans thought their intellect and intuition was superior until Gary Kasparov
lost to Deep Blue.

Today, we still hold to the notion that our biology is somehow different,
unique, not-just-another-bucket-of-chemicals, but as with the examples above,
once we get past this hang-up and accept that we are _not_ special, that is
when truly interesting and exciting things can happen.

~~~
wowsodoge
It would be quite a special machine that could feel interest and excitement at
hacking its own neurobiology!

~~~
lloeki
> It would be quite a special machine

It is "special" only because it's the result of millions of years of
evolution, not because some reassuring omnipotent being from another plane
selected it to be so. Dozens of species are using tools, building things,
solving problems, and feeling things (however small and nascent!). Our species
is just early to the party by a fraction of a million years, which is,
geologically and cosmologically, peanuts (Not even talking about the time
we've been actually toying with electricity and transistors).

Carl Sagan sums up how deceitful an anthropocentric point of view is quite
nicely in _Pale Blue Dot_. Although applied to science and cosmologies, it
definitely applies to anything we deem sacred just because it's us.

“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some
privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale
light.”

“Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility
waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.“

“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded,
“This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets
said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My
god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.”

“Once we lose our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a
vast and awesome Universe which dwarfs -- in time, in space, and in potential
-- the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.”

~~~
drdeca
I figured they meant it would be very impressive if [edit: such] a machine was
created by people, like a steam powered drill or a computer is.

Maybe that's not what they meant though.

