6 ms·

Probably more harm than good- you probably don’t want ultrasonic waves shaking your neurons around without a good reason. This sounds like a “kick a TV and it

Probably more harm than good- you probably don’t want ultrasonic waves shaking your neurons around without a good reason. This sounds like a “kick a TV and it works again” sort of technology.

fromthestart 8y ago
Who knows? Maybe certain modes of damage can result in something akin to hypertrophy in muscle?
JamesBarney 8y ago
I don't think this is a kick the TV type of technology. It's causing the microglia to activate, and I doubt it's causing any neuroinjury. Because the last people you want to injure are people with Alzheimer's.
- emiliobumachar 8y ago
  Many treatments of severe conditions do substantial harm, which is considered acceptable for the benefits. Extreme examples are chemotherapy, i.e. giving poison to cancer patients, and radiotherapy, i.e. irradiating them. The healthy cells can take it, the cancer cells not so much. Statistically.
  - JamesBarney 8y ago
    Yeah but this isn't chemotherapy, and with chemotherapy you are literally trying to kill cells.
    - emiliobumachar 8y ago
      A distinction without a difference. What I meant was: it may be worth it to cause some neural damage to defuse whatever mechanism causes a disease that, when unstopped, causes more neural damage. Hence "kick the TV" technologies are not out of consideration. Obviously, very big ethical issues arise when experimenting on people, but that's nothing new. Someone took radiotherapy first, before anyone was sure it was worth it to the individual.
mirimir 8y ago
My first thought: Great, an ultrasonic brain cleaner. Back in the day, I used an ultrasonic homogenizer for mitochondria preps. But this would be a lot gentler, I guess.
pbhjpbhj 8y ago
You might not need ultrasound though, eg https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02391-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02391-6. I can't find the link now, on mobile, but I found reference to using low frequency sound/light and that (anecdotally) individuals had tried this with their Alzheimer suffering relatives and had great success, like miraculous recovery of memory. I wonder if there is a natural occupational exposure (CRT TV?) that could give evidence here, like if fewer people long-term exposed to low frequency sound/light get Alz? Related: prenatal ultrasound could be significantly damaging, https://www.pnas.org/content/103/34/12903.full https://www.pnas.org/content/103/34/12903.full.
- NickM 8y ago
  There was a great Radiolab episode about the lower-frequency stuff. IIRC, the hypothesis there is that you can stimulate certain types of brainwaves that tend to run on similar frequencies, so that seems like it's probably working via a separate mechanism from the proposed effects of the ultrasound treatment, since ultrasound is way too high-frequency to correspond to any known brainwave frequencies. Perhaps both treatments could be complementary, though, assuming they both pan out.
vorpalhex 8y ago
Mental percussive maintenance?
sdenton4 8y ago
Indeed; the 'open the blood-brain barrier' motivation sounds fscking scary; the barrier is there for a reason, and you'd be opening yourself to totally unknown risks in the process.
enturn 8y ago
The first thing that came to my mind was how some people with kidney stones are treated with shock waves that breaks them up.

Probably more harm than good- you probably don’t want ultrasonic waves shaking your neurons around without a good reason. This sounds like a “kick a TV and it works again” sort of technology.

fromthestart 8y ago

Who knows? Maybe certain modes of damage can result in something akin to hypertrophy in muscle?

JamesBarney 8y ago

I don't think this is a kick the TV type of technology. It's causing the microglia to activate, and I doubt it's causing any neuroinjury. Because the last people you want to injure are people with Alzheimer's.

emiliobumachar 8y ago
Many treatments of severe conditions do substantial harm, which is considered acceptable for the benefits. Extreme examples are chemotherapy, i.e. giving poison to cancer patients, and radiotherapy, i.e. irradiating them. The healthy cells can take it, the cancer cells not so much. Statistically.
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  Yeah but this isn't chemotherapy, and with chemotherapy you are literally trying to kill cells.
  - emiliobumachar 8y ago
    A distinction without a difference. What I meant was: it may be worth it to cause some neural damage to defuse whatever mechanism causes a disease that, when unstopped, causes more neural damage. Hence "kick the TV" technologies are not out of consideration. Obviously, very big ethical issues arise when experimenting on people, but that's nothing new. Someone took radiotherapy first, before anyone was sure it was worth it to the individual.

mirimir 8y ago

My first thought: Great, an ultrasonic brain cleaner. Back in the day, I used an ultrasonic homogenizer for mitochondria preps. But this would be a lot gentler, I guess.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago

You might not need ultrasound though, eg https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02391-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02391-6. I can't find the link now, on mobile, but I found reference to using low frequency sound/light and that (anecdotally) individuals had tried this with their Alzheimer suffering relatives and had great success, like miraculous recovery of memory. I wonder if there is a natural occupational exposure (CRT TV?) that could give evidence here, like if fewer people long-term exposed to low frequency sound/light get Alz? Related: prenatal ultrasound could be significantly damaging, https://www.pnas.org/content/103/34/12903.full https://www.pnas.org/content/103/34/12903.full.

NickM 8y ago
There was a great Radiolab episode about the lower-frequency stuff. IIRC, the hypothesis there is that you can stimulate certain types of brainwaves that tend to run on similar frequencies, so that seems like it's probably working via a separate mechanism from the proposed effects of the ultrasound treatment, since ultrasound is way too high-frequency to correspond to any known brainwave frequencies. Perhaps both treatments could be complementary, though, assuming they both pan out.

vorpalhex 8y ago

Mental percussive maintenance?

sdenton4 8y ago

Indeed; the 'open the blood-brain barrier' motivation sounds fscking scary; the barrier is there for a reason, and you'd be opening yourself to totally unknown risks in the process.

enturn 8y ago

The first thing that came to my mind was how some people with kidney stones are treated with shock waves that breaks them up.