2022-02-16 13:16:05
This week we are going to address a subject that is current, and that was also current twenty years ago and even forty years ago, as we will see. It is about the electrical stimulation of the nervous system to alleviate certain conditions, but also as a tool to control the behavior of some animals and who knows if also the ideas of people. This issue, the control of ideas, is probably less and less science fiction and closer to reality. However, the funny thing is that, in my humble opinion, it is not us who control our ideas, but our ideas that control us. Perhaps that is why controlling ideas is, in reality, controlling everything in society.
Fortunately, it seems that we are still far from achieving non-invasive technologies for the control of ideas different from those that are already used every day, such as the media and confusion, social networks, and conversations with neighbors. It will not be tomorrow when, despite what some anti-vaxxers already think, a chip will be implanted in our necks or in the bottom of our noses, near our brains, so that we can seamlessly love a leader, or a football team in a jersey monocolor. However, in light of what is being achieved, it will be necessary to be vigilant for the next ten or twenty decades, lest this materialize.
In May 2002 he talked about the issue of controlling the will of animals by implanting electrodes in certain parts of their brains. Let’s see what counted in that early era of electroneuroscience, or electronic neuroscience, as I call it, and what significant advances have occurred since then.
Read the article here
These were the considerations that he made two decades ago on the subject of manipulation of the nervous system through the implantation of electrodes and the administration of electrical currents in certain brain areas. On February 7, 2022, an important article published in Nature Medicine appeared that describes a new technology which, in a much more advanced way than what has been achieved so far, is capable of restoring mobility in patients who have damaged spinal cords.
This advance, which we will discuss in more detail later, draws on the research carried out in the last three decades in the areas of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, computing and artificial intelligence. All these advances, combined in a truly spectacular way, have enabled the development of a new device whose personalized implantation in each patient allows them to recover, at least in part, the loss of mobility caused by damage to their spinal cord.
The sixty-nine authors who sign the article begin by indicating that it has been known for more than thirty years that epidural stimulation of the spinal cord is capable of restoring mobility to the extremities in people who have lost it due to an accident that caused it. has damaged. However, this stimulation is not enough to restore the ability to walk. The scientists therefore entertain the idea that not only the nerve connections connecting the severed cord to the extremities should be stimulated, but also the abdominal muscles involved in walking.
Researchers and technologists develop a set of electrodes that can be implanted over all the nerve connections scientists believe need to be stimulated. In addition, they are developing software based on artificial intelligence, so that the device in charge of generating the electrical stimuli does so with the stimulation pattern and frequency as similar as possible to the natural one, thus allowing the periodic movement of the limbs necessary to sustain over time. walk. The results obtained with this new technique are very promising, and three people with a severed spinal cord have been able to relive the experience of walking, or even pedaling on a bicycle specially designed for the occasion.
From my point of view, the progress made indicates that technological intervention based on computer-controlled electrical manipulation seems to be more advanced than the purely biological treatment of paraplegia, through, for example, the manipulation of stem cells that could be induced to become neurons capable of reestablishing lost nerve connections. However, research on this avenue is also intense and it is hoped that it will bear good fruit in the not too distant future.
To finish, I would like to make some considerations, not scientific, but purely philosophical. There is no doubt that the manipulation of the nervous system with electrodes, or even by applying intense electromagnetic fields to the skull, can affect the behavior of animals, and also ours. The questions that this fact raises about the nature of the freedom of the human being continue to be on the table. For my part, I hope they remain so for a long time. And it is that we can only imagine what it would mean for any society to accept and live in accordance with the idea that human beings are not free and, therefore, we are not responsible for our actions. The entire social order with which Humanity has progressed throughout its history would disappear, and today we have nothing better to replace it. So long live freedom, even if it doesn’t exist, and above all, may responsibility never die.
Works by Jorge Laborda.
Your defenses against coronavirus
Your defenses against coronavirus
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Kilo of Science Volume XII eBook
Kilo of Science Volume XII Paper
Kilo of Science Volume I. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume II. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume III. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume IV. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume V. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VI. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VII. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VIII. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume IX. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume X. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume XI. Jorge Laborda
Matrix of homeopathy
Chained circumstances. Ed.Lulu
Chained circumstances. Amazon
One moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One Moon one civilization why the Moon tells us we are alone in the universe
The thousand and one bases of ADN and other science stories
Adenius Fidelius
The intelligence funnel and other essays
The gods have been cloned
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