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I once saw a presentation at a BCI conference about using DBS to treat depression. They basically installed a 'happy button' in someone's brain, and it worked.

I once saw a presentation at a BCI conference about using DBS to treat depression. They basically installed a 'happy button' in someone's brain, and it worked. On the one hand, it's sort of scary. On the other hand, what are you supposed to do when nothing, not art nor work nor drugs nor thought, does anything to ameliorate the pain?

msla 9y ago
> On the one hand, it's sort of scary. I can see both sides of this, at once, like I'm looking at an ambiguous image: duck, or rabbit? On one hand, it's absurd: "Electrochemical system is changed by electricity! Shocker! Be afeared'n'affrighted!" The brain is a physical system, your personality is a result of the behavior of that system, so changing the physical system is going to change the personality. It's a more controlled version of Phineas Gage and the railroad spike. (Plus, dirty little secret: Electroconvulsive therapy works. It has nasty side-effects, but it makes depression go away rather quickly. So the basic idea of chasing away mental problems by shocking brain tissue is not new, despite a decades-long effort on the part of artists to make people think ECT is simply meaningless torture.) On the other hand, I can see how this would be challenging to someone who finds emotional states deeply meaningful, especially if they (as most people who look for "meaningful emotional states" seem to) find sad states more meaningful than happy ones. It's the myth of the happy pill, by which I mean the myth that depression is this wonderful, meaningful Long, Dark Night Of The Soul and that taking something to fight it is "making you feel better" in a coercive sense, and depriving you of that meaning, and, possibly, preventing you from getting to the root of the problem, which must needs be done through talk therapy. My conclusion is this: Emotions in and of themselves aren't meaningful, treating symptoms doesn't mean you can't also look for root causes, and, sometimes, an organic dysfunction is the root cause, as opposed to something you can talk out.
- johnfn 9y ago
  Even if the root of someone's depression were something that could be talked out, what depressed person wouldn't want to work that out while not depressed?
  - amelius 9y ago
    I guess that while the person is not depressed and feels great, it totally makes no sense to talk about anything related to the depression. This could quickly provide the patient with the insight that a depression is purely physical, and that nothing needs to be talked about really.
MDib 9y ago
I think it's scary too, but maybe for different reasons. It's a step towards building an experience machine [1]. Whilst I fully empathise with DBS as a treatment to otherwise incurable atypically negative mental states, much as I am on-board with VR enabling physically or financially limited persons to enjoy the full gamut of human experience, I baulk at the idea of this becoming mainstream. Why? Because the implication of a 'happy button' in the hands of everyone and anyone horrifies me. Sure, you and I might have better things to do than to hold that sucker down and experience unending monotone bliss for the remainder of days, but how sure are you that the majority of humanity won't? How many lives might be wasted because someone's instinct was to go for immediate bliss instead of trying to make things better in the long run? It'd be the final drug. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine

msla 9y ago

> On the one hand, it's sort of scary. I can see both sides of this, at once, like I'm looking at an ambiguous image: duck, or rabbit? On one hand, it's absurd: "Electrochemical system is changed by electricity! Shocker! Be afeared'n'affrighted!" The brain is a physical system, your personality is a result of the behavior of that system, so changing the physical system is going to change the personality. It's a more controlled version of Phineas Gage and the railroad spike. (Plus, dirty little secret: Electroconvulsive therapy works. It has nasty side-effects, but it makes depression go away rather quickly. So the basic idea of chasing away mental problems by shocking brain tissue is not new, despite a decades-long effort on the part of artists to make people think ECT is simply meaningless torture.) On the other hand, I can see how this would be challenging to someone who finds emotional states deeply meaningful, especially if they (as most people who look for "meaningful emotional states" seem to) find sad states more meaningful than happy ones. It's the myth of the happy pill, by which I mean the myth that depression is this wonderful, meaningful Long, Dark Night Of The Soul and that taking something to fight it is "making you feel better" in a coercive sense, and depriving you of that meaning, and, possibly, preventing you from getting to the root of the problem, which must needs be done through talk therapy. My conclusion is this: Emotions in and of themselves aren't meaningful, treating symptoms doesn't mean you can't also look for root causes, and, sometimes, an organic dysfunction is the root cause, as opposed to something you can talk out.

johnfn 9y ago
Even if the root of someone's depression were something that could be talked out, what depressed person wouldn't want to work that out while not depressed?
- amelius 9y ago
  I guess that while the person is not depressed and feels great, it totally makes no sense to talk about anything related to the depression. This could quickly provide the patient with the insight that a depression is purely physical, and that nothing needs to be talked about really.

MDib 9y ago

I think it's scary too, but maybe for different reasons. It's a step towards building an experience machine [1]. Whilst I fully empathise with DBS as a treatment to otherwise incurable atypically negative mental states, much as I am on-board with VR enabling physically or financially limited persons to enjoy the full gamut of human experience, I baulk at the idea of this becoming mainstream. Why? Because the implication of a 'happy button' in the hands of everyone and anyone horrifies me. Sure, you and I might have better things to do than to hold that sucker down and experience unending monotone bliss for the remainder of days, but how sure are you that the majority of humanity won't? How many lives might be wasted because someone's instinct was to go for immediate bliss instead of trying to make things better in the long run? It'd be the final drug. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine