Non-Invasive Electromagnetic Brain Stim On the Way

Neuroscientists at the University of New Mexico asked volunteers to play a video game called “DARWARS Ambush!”, developed to help train American military personnel. Half of the players received 2 milliamps of electricity to the scalp, using a device powered by a simple 9-volt battery, and they played twice as well as those receiving a much tinier jolt. The DARPA-funded study suggests direct current applied to the brain could improve learning.

This type of brain stimulation, called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), is controversial but could show promise for treatment of various neurological disorders and cognitive impairments _PopSci

ImpactLab
The wide field of electromagnetic brain stimulation is likely to prove to be a fertile area of research. Because the brain itself runs on electrical currents -- with it corresponding magnetic fields -- anything that might influence or interfere with these electrical and magnetic fields are likely to influence brain activity. But many of these researchers are discovering ways to selectively augment or inhibit particular parts of the brain, reversibly. Being able to do that safely provides an incredibly powerful research tool.

The technique, which has roots in research done more than two centuries ago, is experiencing something of a revival. Clark and others see tDCS as a way to tease apart the mechanisms of learning and cognition. As the technique is refined, researchers could, with the flick of a switch, amplify or mute activity in many areas of the brain and watch what happens behaviourally. The field is "going to explode very soon and give us all sorts of new information and new questions", says Clark. And as with some other interventions for stimulating brain activity, such as high-powered magnets or surgically implanted electrodes, researchers are attempting to use tDCS to treat neurological conditions, including depression and stroke. But given the simplicity of building tDCS devices, one of the most important questions will be whether it is ethical to tinker with healthy minds — to improve learning and cognition, for example. The effects seen in experimental settings "are big enough that they would definitely have real-world consequences", says Martha Farah, a neuroethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. _Nature

And certainly, the cognition-boosting techniques will not be used only in research and therapeutic situations. They will also be used by students, bankers, lawyers, salesmen, recreational mind trippers, sex fiends, and a wide range of individuals wanting to make more or less of themselves, depending upon their particular inclinations and needs.

Here is a look at what Eric Wasserman's lab at the National Institutes of Neural Disorders and Strokes is looking at:

We study the brain systems underlying learning, executive function, and behavioral regulation, using noninvasive stimulation and imaging techniques an innovative behavioral tools. Our main clinical interest is in the physiological and neuroanatomical basis of excess mental and physicial fatigue after brain injury...Using noninvasive brain stimulation techniques and structural and functional MRI, and MR spectroscopy, we are investigating the mechanisms of rewarded behaviors, for example, learning and sustained effort, in the human brain. _NINDS

Dr. Cohen Kadosh at the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, is using brain stimulation which he feels will improve mathematical ability, among other brain functions:

By stimulating the parietal lobes, Dr Cohen Kadosh has shown that he can actually boost mathematical skills in people who are normally less good at sums. The electric current triggers the area to produce chemicals that cause brain cells to develop or change. This process — ‘neural plasticity’ — is essential to learning (our brains change structure when we take on new information).

When Dr Cohen Kadosh’s subjects had their parietal lobes stimulated for 30 minutes every day for a week, they were able to pick up maths skills through conventional lessons far more quickly and effectively than they could before.

‘It’s completely safe. The electric current is one thousand times lower than anything that could cause damage,’ he says.

Tests have shown that the subjects’ maths abilities remain boosted six months after the treatment. To someone as numerically illiterate as me, the prospect of growing a ‘maths brain’ is exciting. But Dr Cohen Kadosh’s work is at the vanguard of a medical revolution.

It heralds a high-tech world of brain medicine where electronics will be used to repair deep faults, such as depression and Parkinson’s, modify problem personalities and boost everyone’s ability to learn, remember and think creatively. _DailyMail

Neurologists have grand hopes for clinical applications of these -- and other -- electromagnetic technologies.

...brain stimulation techniques tailored to modulate individual plastic changes associated with neurological diseases might enhance clinical benefits and minimize adverse effects. In this Review, we discuss the use of two noninvasive brain stimulation techniques—repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation—to modulate activity in the targeted cortex or in a dysfunctional network, to restore an adaptive equilibrium in a disrupted network for best behavioral outcome, and to suppress plastic changes for functional advantage. We review randomized controlled studies, in focal epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, recovery from stroke, and chronic pain, to illustrate these principles, and we present evidence for the clinical effects of these two techniques. _Nature (abstract)

Here are some specific uses for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS):

Magnetic stimulation is being used, or evaluated, in many applications. These include areas as diverse as creating 'virtual lesions' in psychology in order to investigate information processing within the human brain; treatment of depression and schizophrenia in psychiatry using stimuli at either convulsive or sub-convulsive levels; aiding the diagnosis and charting the progress of disease or mechanical damage in central and peripheral nerve pathways; stimulating cortical plasticity; and functional stimulation applications such as the treatment of incontinence, artificial respiration and the induction of speech arrest. Particularly active areas at present are investigating whether magnetic stimulation can be used as an alternative to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to treat severe depression, and stimulation of the motor cortex using novel pulse paradigms to encourage plasticity as an adjunct to post-stroke rehabilitation. _Scholarpedia

TMS (like tDCS) can be used to either stimulate or inhibit specific parts of the brain. When used in conjunction with behavioural therapy or sophisticated forms of feedback, these technologies can accomplish amazing therapeutic results in a rather short period of time. Keep in mind that they are still in the research and developmental stage, and may present serious hazards (seizures etc) to certain individuals.

We are surrounded by an often foolish and dysfunctional world. But there is no reason why parts of the world cannot wake up and discover how to make themselves more rational, prosperous, and fulfilled.

Adapted from an article at Al Fin, The Next Level

Micro-Electronic Brain Implant Supervises Brain Re-Wiring

When the human brain is damaged from trauma, stroke, infection, or tumour etc., the damaged tissue does not re-grow itself spontaneously. Instead, the person must learn to compensate for the loss of function. Some brain plasticity may occur, as undamaged parts of the brain take responsibility for some of the functions which the destroyed parts previously carried out. But damaged brain does not heal.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University intend to change that, by using implanted electronics devices which can help teach the brain how to re-wire itself to allow disconnected parts of the brain to become connected -- and functional -- again.

Pedram Mohseni, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Case Western Reserve University, and Randolph J. Nudo, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology at Kansas University Medical Center, believe repeated communications between distant neurons in the weeks after injury may spark long-reaching axons to form and connect.

Their work is inspired by the traumatic brain injuries suffered by ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

...Mohseni has been building a multichannel microelectronic device to bypass the gap left by injury. The device, which he calls a brain-machine-brain interface, includes a microchip on a circuit board smaller than a quarter. The microchip amplifies signals, called neural action potentials, produced by the neurons in one part of the brain and uses an algorithm to separate these signals – brain spike activity - from noise and other artifacts. Upon spike discrimination, the microchip sends a current pulse to stimulate neurons in another part of the brain, artificially connecting the two brain regions.

...During the next four years, they expect to understand the ability to rewire the brain in a rat model and to determine whether the technology is safe enough to test in non-human primates. If tests show the treatment is successful in helping recovery from traumatic brain injury, the researchers foresee the possibility of using the approach in patients 10 years from now. _Eurekalert

Here is an abstract of a paper published by Mohseni in an IEEE publication from 2008:

This paper reports on the design, implementation, and performance characterization of a high-output-impedance current microstimulator fabricated using the TSMC 0.35 mum 2P/4M n-well CMOS process as part of a fully integrated neural implant for reshaping long-range intracortical connectivity patterns in an injured brain. It can deliver a maximum current of 94.5 muA to the target cortical tissue with current efficiency of 86% and voltage compliance of 4.7 V with a 5-V power supply. The stimulus current can be programmed via a 6-bit DAC with an accuracy better than 0.47 LSB. Stimulator functionality is also verified with in vitro experiments in saline using a silicon microelectrode with iridium oxide (IrO) stimulation sites. _IEEEXplore

The technology for such interventions is in the early stages. The researchers are also working on devices which can be used for a broad range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, and in conjunction with neurosurgery and standard post-surgical rehabilitation.

Eventually such devices will probably be implanted into a damaged area of brain, along with an artificial matrix seeded with a person's own stem cells and growth factors. The devices will be wired to "bridge" from healthy brain on one side of the lesion to healthy brain on other sides of the lesion (corresponding to interrupted pathways). The electronic signals will not only help guide a re-wiring of the brain, but they should also guide the re-growth of new replacement brain tissue of specific replacement types.

Anyone who has read the science fiction novel "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, should recognise some of the intent behind the early stage, rudimentary devices being developed at Case Western -- and to see where the technology may be heading.

More on a related topic from Brian Wang

Being Dustin Hoffman, as Rain Man

Update 14Aug10: Brian Wang discusses other modalities of brain stimulation which have analogous effects on various brain functions as TMS. For now, we are limited to such crude tools as described, but we are actually not that far away from genuine targeted brain augmentation. Needless to say, we are also not far from targeted brain disruption.

DailyMail
According to scientist Alan Snyder, autistic savant skills are latent inside everyone's brain. But the way to bring out these skills is by suppressing -- or damping down -- normal activity in certain parts of the brain, using magnetic pulses.

... the extraordinary skills of savants are latent in us all and that they can be induced artificially owing to the inhibiting influence of low-frequency rTMS, that is, by turning off part of the brain, not by exciting it. _RoyalSociety

DailyMail
In a recent publication in Royal Society Transactions, Biological Sciences, Snyder elaborated on techniques of artificial production of savant skills using transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Low-frequency rTMS temporarily inhibits neural activity in a localized area of the cerebral cortex, thereby creating ‘virtual lesions’ (Hilgetag et al. 1999; Walsh & Cowey 2000; Hoffman & Cavus 2002; Steven & Pascual-Leone 2006). As discussed below in §4, the LATL is implicated in the savant syndrome for both autistic savants as well as savants who emerge late in life as a result of frontotemporal lobe dementia (Miller et al. 1998, 2000; Hou et al. 2000). _RoyalSociety

Snyder was able to use localised low frequency TMS to induce a number of savant skills, including induced drawing skills, induced proofreading skills, induced numerosity (see graph below), and reduced false memories.

Snyder_RoyalSociety
TMS is applied from outside the brain, unlike deep brain stimulation (DBS). The effect of TMS on the brain depends upon several factors, including the frequency and amplitude of the pulses, and the proximity to particular parts of the brain. High frequency TMS over the frontal lobes, for example, has been beneficial in improving the language memories of Alzheimer's patients. So you see that TMS can be used to temporarily block neural activity, or to temporarily augment neural activity -- in chosen locations of the brain.

There are many approaches to using electromagnetic stimulation for brain research and therapy, which are quite promising "top-down" research approaches. Combined with the many "bottom-up" (example) approaches to the study of brain development and function, the future of brain research is very bright.

Infographic by Smarter.org
You may someday be wearing an electromagnetic cap which can be switched to different settings, depending upon the task you want to accomplish. Such brain augmentation devices will have the ability to simultaneously dampen some parts of the brain while boosting the activity of other parts -- depending upon which mental skills, attitudes, or emotions you wish to emphasise or minimise at the moment. But whatever you do, do not allow anyone else access to the remote control!

H/T Singularity Hub via Impact Lab