The Alzheimer's bit - well, it's an interesting story. It's always a brave cowboy surgeon that even thinks about operating on an Alzheimer's brain for a number

The Alzheimer's bit - well, it's an interesting story. It's always a brave cowboy surgeon that even thinks about operating on an Alzheimer's brain for a number of reasons - safety, brain-wide neurodegeneration (thus not immediately obvious how something focused like surgery can help), poor cognitive baseline, etc. The group that's probably the furthest along is the Toronto group - they tend to be pretty liberal about where to implant electrodes, and are always looking for new indications to implant stimulators (i.e. generate new IP, etc). They were initially looking to stick the thing into the hypothalamus to control weight gain, since everyone in north america is overweight and there's a huge market. Well, turns out when they turn the thing on, the guy suddenly remembers every sexual encounter he's had since puberty in vivid detail. Hence the pivot to Alzheimer's, with at least 2 pilot studies done w/ ~40 subjects using the currently available Medtronic Inc devices, and a new biotech startup. The effects so far are modest - essentially the subjects deteriorated but more slowly than expected. No one suddenly started remembering things like they could when they were younger...