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Deep-brain stimulation works by shoving electrodes into your brain and moving them around while asking, "do you feel better now?" (Or having the patient perform

Deep-brain stimulation works by shoving electrodes into your brain and moving them around while asking, "do you feel better now?" (Or having the patient perform a task like writing which demonstrates symptoms of the condition being treated). The human brain is not exactly well-understood. Who knows what other functionality could end up being near the neurons being treated? This article talks about Parkinson's patients, so maybe the common places that they treat for that disease are close to nerve centers used for balance or proprioception or whatever. Or maybe some things that we learn only apply when certain areas of the brain are working in a certain way, and "fixing" malfunctions ends up throwing a wrench in the neural pathways that those behaviors have adapted to. It'd be fascinating to see if the patients could re-learn these skills with the stimulators on.

weaksauce 7y ago
> Deep-brain stimulation works by shoving electrodes into your brain and moving them around while asking, "do you feel better now?" (Or having the patient perform a task like writing which demonstrates symptoms of the condition being treated). That's somewhat similar to how I've heard(perhaps apocryphally) lobotomies were done. They'd have the patient read from a book or sing a song and would cut until their diction was impacted.
missosoup 7y ago
This is not how DBS is done. The patient is conscious (and possibly performing some task) during the procedure of inserting the electrodes to ensure that they're not positioned in a way that damages any critical functionality. The 'do you feel better now?' part comes when the signal generator hooked up to those electrodes is being tuned post-op. The article makes clear that it's the generated signal (maybe in combination with electrode placement, they're unsure) that's interfering with the ability to swim. Turning off the generator allows the individual to swim again. More fine-grained implants like neuralink can't come soon enough.
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weaksauce 7y ago

> Deep-brain stimulation works by shoving electrodes into your brain and moving them around while asking, "do you feel better now?" (Or having the patient perform a task like writing which demonstrates symptoms of the condition being treated). That's somewhat similar to how I've heard(perhaps apocryphally) lobotomies were done. They'd have the patient read from a book or sing a song and would cut until their diction was impacted.

missosoup 7y ago

This is not how DBS is done. The patient is conscious (and possibly performing some task) during the procedure of inserting the electrodes to ensure that they're not positioned in a way that damages any critical functionality. The 'do you feel better now?' part comes when the signal generator hooked up to those electrodes is being tuned post-op. The article makes clear that it's the generated signal (maybe in combination with electrode placement, they're unsure) that's interfering with the ability to swim. Turning off the generator allows the individual to swim again. More fine-grained implants like neuralink can't come soon enough.

deleted 7y ago
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