Accidental Discovery During Surgery Reverses Memory Loss
A 50 year old man, dangerously obese, goes to the hospital for experimental brain surgery to suppress his appetite. A small piece of his skull is removed, and an electrical probe inserted deep into his brain tissue. It reaches his hypothalamus and current is switched on. Suddenly the patient — awake through the procedure — begins to speak uncontrollably about events in his past, events he had long forgotten. He remembers a day’s walk in the park 30 years ago, complete with what people were wearing, all in vivid color. He sees them speaking to him, every motion they made. The intensity and level of detail of the memories is frightening.
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The results were so successful the same technique is now being trialed on six Alzheimer’s patients. Functioning like a “pacemaker for the brain,” the treatment offers hope for the millions worldwide who suffer from the debilitating memory and cognitive losses caused by Alzheimer’s.
Wow. I sure hope this works. This would be such a blessing for so many …both victims of the disease and the family members.
Thanks for sharing, John.
The possibility of getting a “patient” to “speak uncontrollably about events in his past” would also be a special blessing to those people who ask questions, but don’t always get the sort of voluntary, truthful answer that they seek.
Of course, I say that with no reference to anyone in particular 😉
Ah-HA! Waterboarding is so yesterday…
This technique is just at its beginning. It’s now commonplace in certain forms of parkinson’s disease, it’s being tested for many other disorders, like eating disorders, severe depression, … I know there are experimentations on Alzheimer, but without much success as of now. A close friend who works in a research lab told be he’s seen a patient fall in tears, with an urge to suicide, when his electrode was switched on. And he was instantly in a normal mood when the electrode was switched off. Scary.
ya know I don’t really believe a person remembers every detail from an event from 30 years ago. That’s even assuming 30 years ago the person WAS paying attention to *every detail* during that event.
My guess is this person went into a dream-like state where his imagination just filled in the gaps in a memory, which made it seem rich and detailed. The mind is really good at doing that especially when you’re dreaming. So the result and ended up like he was playing back a memory.
I’d love to see what parts of the brain were activated when this happened, and what brain frequencies were going on. Wonder if his eyes were rapidly moving, as in REM sleep.
Very interesting none the less.
Information retrieval is generically the domain of Information Systems and I just had a horrible thought:
What if Micro$oft obtained a patent on all this?
Hello, I have a Windows Brain v7.0.
Oh no, The Blue Screen of Death!
#6 Cinaedh, that explains a lot. I forgot to activate, and my brain has been stuck in reduced functionality mode 😉
Although it’s still a field of relative uncertainty, human memory can be terrible.
If you haven’t heard of her before, I’d recommend checking out the work of Elizabeth Loftus. Or this, it’s a quick read I just googled:
http://www.unisci.com/stories/20012/0613011.htm
I’d bet my bottom dollar 95% of his story was spontaneously made up, if not all of it.
Seriously, you think the world is becoming overpopulated, wait until there is no more disease.
9,
THAT isnt the problem…
WAIT until we Immune to all the smaller Infections and problems, and we DONT BUILD certain types of immunity, and then the BIG ONES HIT, that we cant control, that kill 98% of those infected.
Insted of a few dieing of minor Things, we are immune to, BIG UGLY things start wondering the world, and killing off Billions, insted of thousands.
As with so many accidental medical issues, I hope this too leads to something. So many neurological problems are now seeing better treatments because of these discoveries. May we be soon get past the treatment stage and into the cure stage.