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I saw this on 60 Minutes I'm amazed this isn't worldwide front page news. Especially just for treating addiction alone. Basically sit in a machine get your head

I saw this on 60 Minutes I'm amazed this isn't worldwide front page news. Especially just for treating addiction alone. Basically sit in a machine get your head buzzed by ultrasound. All better.

amelius 3y ago
I didn't watch the video, but I assume it is not just ultrasound, but a very focused beam / beams of ultrasound in combination with MRI to hit just the right spot.
- grouchomarx 3y ago
  ultrasound is used to temporarily open the blood brain barrier so that drugs can target plaque buildups
  - amelius 3y ago
    That's quite a different mechanism.
roody15 3y ago
More of a dystopian nightmare. Rather than seeing an individual having agency to make decisions and face consequences … we may be moving to a model of a human as nothing more than a fancy automaton. Ohh so Mr Jim is showing addictive traits and not performing task X well. No problem let’s sap his brain and get him fixed up. Super excited for any breakthroughs with Dementia … but fixing addiction, obesity… or even paranoid wrong think with ultrasounds is scary and perhaps harks back to the era of lobotomies.
- numinoid 3y ago
  It seems you could do this with any technological/medical advancement - how is this any different from semaglutide for obesity or wellbutrin for addiction? It's just a different lever to pull. Harkening back to lobotomies is a false dichotomy, the environment in which research is done today wouldn't even allow for an outcome like that.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    I disagree. It's a fair concern. They are literally shaking small parts of the brain until they act differently. It's not as extreme as a lobotomy but its lobotomy adjacent and a little scary. Sure, unlike a lobotomy it probably just jostling areas of the brain and not damaging entire sections with an icepick, but it's still fair to accept that some people (like myself) feel automatic body horror and fear at the idea of parts of my brain being damaged.
    - basisword 3y ago
      If my life were ruined and I was dying from alcoholism or drug addiction I get the feeling I probably wouldn't be thinking about this in a philosophical way. Societal impacts or potential abuses would be the least of my concerns.
      - BizarroLand 3y ago
        No, that's fair, my stance very much was from the viewpoint of a generically healthy mind and not from the viewpoint of a damaged mind. If I were in that position I might seriously consider the value of having 99% of me make it to the other side of this misery in exchange for the 1% of my brain that is ruining my life.
      - touisteur 3y ago
        Especially if the alternative is cold turkey, or a good old DT... All my heartfelt deep thanks to everyone who keeps digging for solutions, workarounds... anything that might help there.
      - mateo1 3y ago
        How about this scenario: In 20 years, this treatment is standard, but there's a catch: it's bundled with a wider behavioral modification treatment protocol, whereby they first reduce the cravings for drugs and alcohol, then they start showing you anti-establishment imagery, and zap the parts of your brain that respond to it. In fact the second treatment is also standard issue for all those who are diagnosed with oppositionism, a growing mental health disorder characterized by symptoms such as distrusting government authorities and forbes 500 companies. Treatments show a 90% reduction of symptoms and improving quality of life, for example they no longer clash with authorities or make hate statements as defined by the patriot act II of 2028. Obviously an exaggeration, but there is a real concern. The line is blurry and will be crossed if we let it happen. Taking intravenous drugs for 20 years does some serious damage. It's nice if we develop a treatment for it, but it also shifts the focus away from prevention. People shouldn't be reaching that point, and wouldn't if we were acting on it.
- confoundcofound 3y ago
  Something tells me you are wholly unaware of the damage that addiction and obesity can inflict not just on the person afflicted, but on their family, community, and society as a whole. The benefits/costs equation is so massively lopsided here that you'd be cruel to advocate that people endure years of avoidable torment to satisfy your faulty notion of free will / agency. I can't think of anything more agency-promoting than ridding someone of their addictions.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    What line would you draw between the technology existing and being useful to society and people's fundamental and inalienable right to refuse ever having it used on them? Following their original thread, how would you feel if the government decided that this could be used for criminal correction, or if a company made going through a quick brain cleanse a part of the hiring process, or a college part of it's onboarding, or the military a part of boot camp? Do we clean every spot to flawless similarity or just clean the bad thoughts? If the latter, who gets to decide what the bad thoughts are?
    - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      Your argument is akin to being against needles because the government might use them to perform lethal injections. I don't know if you've ever known any addicts, but they aren't exactly happy about being addicted. Give them a treatment that works and is affordable and most of them will be just happy to get some targeted head buzzing to treat their symptoms.
      - BizarroLand 3y ago
        There is a similarity but I don't think it's quite 1:1. Both of your reference points are an order of magnitude weaker or stronger than mine. As I've said in other responses, my viewpoint is coming from the viewpoint of a generally healthy mind and not wanting that to be taken from me. If I become someone with an unhealthy mind my viewpoint could change.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Have you ever considered that nothing is wrong with you because nothing is wrong with you, and not that nothing is wrong with you because you are some stoic or heroic figure who managed to simply resist temptation? I've been drunk plenty of times. I've also not consumed enough alcohol to be in a drunken state in almost 8 years despite having a collection of bourbon worth thousands. A good friend of mine, who drank no more than I did for a long while, could not stop. He kept going until he wrecked his liver and died from organ failure. I didn't have the strength to overcome alcoholism. I was simply never an alcoholic. He was.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    Indeed, I am not better than chain smokers, I just happen to be wired differently that it does not have a grip on me. It’s not like something I deserve. Chocolate on the other hand…
astockwell 3y ago
Careful, that was literally the exact same selling point of Electroconvulsive therapy 80 years ago.
- vkou 3y ago
  If you've got a better treatment for a case of severe depression that's resisted all other attempts at therapy and medication, we're all ears. If not, I suggest we leave it up to the patients and their doctors to determine whether or not ECT is improving their lives, or not.
  - pedalpete 3y ago
    SAINT protocol tCMS from Magnus Medical https://www.magnusmed.com/ https://www.magnusmed.com/ Not available to everyone yet.
- caycep 3y ago
  So...there's a distinction: Electroshock therapy for behavioral modification in schools: bad Modern Electroconvulsive therapy under anesthesia: actually effective and arguably lifesaving for severe clinical depression.
  - dartos 3y ago
    Lack of human experiments and anesthesia
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > Electroshock therapy for behavioral modification in schools: bad Is that just violent punishment / torture by another name?
    - caycep 3y ago
      Yes, that's why it was banned in Massachusetts, if I recall, there were state schools/institutions that were using it way back when.
SimbaOnSteroids 3y ago
Low citation on the original paper, none of the paper that cite Rezai's paper have citations.
- caycep 3y ago
  Also I think the big originators of FUS thalamotomy/pallidotomy were Bob Gross from Emory and Jeff something something at UVA
caycep 3y ago
it happens to diplomats in Cuba all the time!
- qiine 3y ago
  ok you made me laugh

I saw this on 60 Minutes I'm amazed this isn't worldwide front page news. Especially just for treating addiction alone. Basically sit in a machine get your head buzzed by ultrasound. All better.

amelius 3y ago

I didn't watch the video, but I assume it is not just ultrasound, but a very focused beam / beams of ultrasound in combination with MRI to hit just the right spot.

grouchomarx 3y ago
ultrasound is used to temporarily open the blood brain barrier so that drugs can target plaque buildups
- amelius 3y ago
  That's quite a different mechanism.

roody15 3y ago

More of a dystopian nightmare. Rather than seeing an individual having agency to make decisions and face consequences … we may be moving to a model of a human as nothing more than a fancy automaton. Ohh so Mr Jim is showing addictive traits and not performing task X well. No problem let’s sap his brain and get him fixed up. Super excited for any breakthroughs with Dementia … but fixing addiction, obesity… or even paranoid wrong think with ultrasounds is scary and perhaps harks back to the era of lobotomies.

numinoid 3y ago
It seems you could do this with any technological/medical advancement - how is this any different from semaglutide for obesity or wellbutrin for addiction? It's just a different lever to pull. Harkening back to lobotomies is a false dichotomy, the environment in which research is done today wouldn't even allow for an outcome like that.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  I disagree. It's a fair concern. They are literally shaking small parts of the brain until they act differently. It's not as extreme as a lobotomy but its lobotomy adjacent and a little scary. Sure, unlike a lobotomy it probably just jostling areas of the brain and not damaging entire sections with an icepick, but it's still fair to accept that some people (like myself) feel automatic body horror and fear at the idea of parts of my brain being damaged.
  - basisword 3y ago
    If my life were ruined and I was dying from alcoholism or drug addiction I get the feeling I probably wouldn't be thinking about this in a philosophical way. Societal impacts or potential abuses would be the least of my concerns.
    - BizarroLand 3y ago
      No, that's fair, my stance very much was from the viewpoint of a generically healthy mind and not from the viewpoint of a damaged mind. If I were in that position I might seriously consider the value of having 99% of me make it to the other side of this misery in exchange for the 1% of my brain that is ruining my life.
    - touisteur 3y ago
      Especially if the alternative is cold turkey, or a good old DT... All my heartfelt deep thanks to everyone who keeps digging for solutions, workarounds... anything that might help there.
    - mateo1 3y ago
      How about this scenario: In 20 years, this treatment is standard, but there's a catch: it's bundled with a wider behavioral modification treatment protocol, whereby they first reduce the cravings for drugs and alcohol, then they start showing you anti-establishment imagery, and zap the parts of your brain that respond to it. In fact the second treatment is also standard issue for all those who are diagnosed with oppositionism, a growing mental health disorder characterized by symptoms such as distrusting government authorities and forbes 500 companies. Treatments show a 90% reduction of symptoms and improving quality of life, for example they no longer clash with authorities or make hate statements as defined by the patriot act II of 2028. Obviously an exaggeration, but there is a real concern. The line is blurry and will be crossed if we let it happen. Taking intravenous drugs for 20 years does some serious damage. It's nice if we develop a treatment for it, but it also shifts the focus away from prevention. People shouldn't be reaching that point, and wouldn't if we were acting on it.
confoundcofound 3y ago
Something tells me you are wholly unaware of the damage that addiction and obesity can inflict not just on the person afflicted, but on their family, community, and society as a whole. The benefits/costs equation is so massively lopsided here that you'd be cruel to advocate that people endure years of avoidable torment to satisfy your faulty notion of free will / agency. I can't think of anything more agency-promoting than ridding someone of their addictions.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  What line would you draw between the technology existing and being useful to society and people's fundamental and inalienable right to refuse ever having it used on them? Following their original thread, how would you feel if the government decided that this could be used for criminal correction, or if a company made going through a quick brain cleanse a part of the hiring process, or a college part of it's onboarding, or the military a part of boot camp? Do we clean every spot to flawless similarity or just clean the bad thoughts? If the latter, who gets to decide what the bad thoughts are?
  - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    Your argument is akin to being against needles because the government might use them to perform lethal injections. I don't know if you've ever known any addicts, but they aren't exactly happy about being addicted. Give them a treatment that works and is affordable and most of them will be just happy to get some targeted head buzzing to treat their symptoms.
    - BizarroLand 3y ago
      There is a similarity but I don't think it's quite 1:1. Both of your reference points are an order of magnitude weaker or stronger than mine. As I've said in other responses, my viewpoint is coming from the viewpoint of a generally healthy mind and not wanting that to be taken from me. If I become someone with an unhealthy mind my viewpoint could change.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
Have you ever considered that nothing is wrong with you because nothing is wrong with you, and not that nothing is wrong with you because you are some stoic or heroic figure who managed to simply resist temptation? I've been drunk plenty of times. I've also not consumed enough alcohol to be in a drunken state in almost 8 years despite having a collection of bourbon worth thousands. A good friend of mine, who drank no more than I did for a long while, could not stop. He kept going until he wrecked his liver and died from organ failure. I didn't have the strength to overcome alcoholism. I was simply never an alcoholic. He was.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  Indeed, I am not better than chain smokers, I just happen to be wired differently that it does not have a grip on me. It’s not like something I deserve. Chocolate on the other hand…

astockwell 3y ago

Careful, that was literally the exact same selling point of Electroconvulsive therapy 80 years ago.

vkou 3y ago
If you've got a better treatment for a case of severe depression that's resisted all other attempts at therapy and medication, we're all ears. If not, I suggest we leave it up to the patients and their doctors to determine whether or not ECT is improving their lives, or not.
- pedalpete 3y ago
  SAINT protocol tCMS from Magnus Medical https://www.magnusmed.com/ https://www.magnusmed.com/ Not available to everyone yet.
caycep 3y ago
So...there's a distinction: Electroshock therapy for behavioral modification in schools: bad Modern Electroconvulsive therapy under anesthesia: actually effective and arguably lifesaving for severe clinical depression.
- dartos 3y ago
  Lack of human experiments and anesthesia
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > Electroshock therapy for behavioral modification in schools: bad Is that just violent punishment / torture by another name?
  - caycep 3y ago
    Yes, that's why it was banned in Massachusetts, if I recall, there were state schools/institutions that were using it way back when.

SimbaOnSteroids 3y ago

Low citation on the original paper, none of the paper that cite Rezai's paper have citations.

caycep 3y ago
Also I think the big originators of FUS thalamotomy/pallidotomy were Bob Gross from Emory and Jeff something something at UVA

caycep 3y ago

it happens to diplomats in Cuba all the time!

qiine 3y ago
ok you made me laugh