Remote Mind Control

What if Brains of the Future Run With Computer Circuitry?

Sept. 5 2004

We appear to be edging towards an era of "mind control" — a time when human brains might be manipulated routinely by highly sophisticated technology.

On the bright side, the powers of this science could be used to mend broken and diseased brains. On the dark side, there would be plenty of opportunity to tinker with consciousness and control human behavior in menacing fashion.

Stranger Than Fiction?

These days, science fiction writers need a triple dose of smart pills each morning to stay ahead of the scientists — especially the brain scientists, who are beginning to put on quite a show.

At Reading University in the U.K., cybernetics whiz Kevin Warwick may soon take matters into his own brain — and his wife, Irena's.

The couple has planned to have two-inch-long silicon chips (with power source, tuner and radio transceiver) surgically implanted in their arms above the elbow and connected to nerve fibers.

When Warwick moves his fingers, it is expected that signals from the chip will be transformed into radio waves and sent to a computer, which will then move the signal along to his wife's silicon chip. Her fingers should also move.

The idea here is that this type of technology could potentially be developed to help people who have been paralyzed. Someone, for example, who has nerves functioning in a leg could use a Warwick-like system to enable the signal transmission from those nerves to by-pass spinal cord damage and get to the brain, thus allowing for movement.

Implants are also being used to enhance sensory functions or recover a specific sense. Retinal implants are in the early test stage, but an implant that stimulates nerve endings in the middle ear is already being used in deaf children. Sounds are picked up by a microphone and computer outside the body and then relayed to the implant.

And in numerous labs in the U.S. and elsewhere, scientists are focusing attention on how brain cells compute and relay information and form, change and maintain connections (networks).

Robo-brains?

At Caltech, for example, scientists have been studying a "neurochip," living brain cells from rat embryos wired up to electrodes that sit in a silicon chip. The system, involving computers that record the data from the neurochip, allows for extensive study of how these brain cells interact and how their network functions.

This is slow, painstaking work, involving the analysis of huge amounts of data, but it is this type of knowledge that may enable surgeons to one day implant more refined implants to help heal an impaired brain.

On the dark side, of course, is the possibility that greater understanding of how the brain works and the emergence of far more precise technology may one day translate into more potential for not-so-nice manipulation of human behavior.

The current flurry of recently well-publicized activity in brain pacemaker research offers another example of how things could get out of control.

This research involves implanting an electrode in the brain to stimulate any one of its regions. The electrical pulses are provided by a small power unit in the patient's chest.

On the bright side, researchers at several centers in the U.S., Canada and Europe are hoping that the use of these devices will benefit patients with neurological problems such as tremors, epilepsy and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Plans are also well underway to use this technology to treat depression, obesity, anorexia, and addiction.

The implantation of electrodes in the brain is typically compared to heart pacemakers which employ electrical stimulation to maintain a certain heart rhythm. Heart pacemakers have been highly successful and therefore the brain pacemakers will also be successful, or so the mantra goes.

Risks High With Brains

This is not a smart comparison. In fact, the history of brain science strongly suggests we need to be extremely wary of grand promises and cavalier forays into neurological treatments.

For instance, back in the 1960s, a team of brain scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital, including Frank Ervin and Vernon Mark, focusing on temporal-lobe epilepsy, experimented with implanted electrodes that produced mild electric currents. The goal was to determine the areas of the brain that produced reactions approximating a seizure. The next step was to send heat down the electrodes to burn the appropriate tissue.

The results were promising, and in the course of these procedures, the scientific team learned that patients with temporal-lobe epilepsy also had histories of impulse-control loss and violent behavior.

This discovery led to highly controversial brain surgery to treat carefully selected people who had violent episodes.

In 1968, Life magazine, taking note of the riots that had occurred in the Roxbury section of Boston and Newark, N.J., heralded their work as a young science that offered "insight and a potential remedy for a worried society." But not everyone was pleased about this "potential" because it was felt that it set the stage for violence to be defined very narrowly as being mainly brain induced, and not a reactive product of racism and poverty.

Furthermore, critics argued that the surgery was primitive. Far too little was understood about brain function. But just how much more do we really understand nowadays?

Where will the new brain science lead us? The financial incentives and fierce competition in medicine could eventually lead to all sorts of attempts at neural behavior modification.

This is a red flag worthy of our attention.

Nicholas Regush produces medical features for ABCNEWS. In his regularly featured column, he investigates medical trouble spots, heralds innovative achievements and analyzes health trends.His latest book is The Virus Within.

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