BRAIN WAVES

Despite all the physical poking and question &  answer probing, we really don't know how the human brain functions. We think it is like a hard drive, but we cannot download its information. We can test stimulation to see where electro-neurons fire in a brain CAT scan, but don't know how information is stored in a biochemical, electromagnetic or other way. It may be the most important and confusing organ in our bodies; it plays a central role in both our intellectual and emotional states. In fact, the overlap between intellectual and emotional is razor thin.

WIRED published a recent article on how science is trying to probe further into mental illness.

A brain surgeon begins an anterior cingulotomy by drilling a small hole into a patient’s skull. The surgeon then inserts a tiny blade, cutting a path through brain tissue, then inserts a probe past sensitive nerves and bundles of blood vessels until it reaches a specific cluster of neural connections, a kind of switchboard linking emotional triggers to cognitive tasks. With the probe in place, the surgeon fires up a laser, burning away tissue until the beam has hollowed out about half a teaspoon of grey matter. 

This is modern psychosurgery: ablating parts of the brain to treat mental illnesses. 

Instead of a big scalpel, it is a narrow focus beam of light that cuts away gray matter. This is the new lobotomy, which was once in favor in the 1930s to treat aggressive, demented, or otherwise affected people.

Removing parts of a person’s brain is always a dicey proposition. But for people who are mentally ill, when pills and psychiatry offer no solace, the laser-tipped probe can be a welcome relief. Physicians perform these procedures as a last resort only on people who’ve failed to respond to at least three types of medications, and for whom months on a counselor’s couch have had no effect. 

In the 1990s that physicians  brought them back to treat a mental illness: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Without any visible biomarkers, obsessive-compulsive disorder is difficult to treat with drugs. But neuroscientists have narrowed down the faulty wiring involved in the disorder to fewer than a half dozen places in the brain—some of which psychosurgery can target. Probably the best target is a region called the anterior cingulate cortex. Put your finger on your temple, then move it about an inch back. If you were to triangulate a point between your fingertip, the top of your head, and the center of your forehead, you’d land roughly on the right spot.

This may seem strange, but drilling a hole and inserting a fiber optic tube to fire a laser into your brain sounds science fiction like Ghost in the Shell. But since medical science is not at the Star Trek stage of being able to diagnose at the molecular level, physicians are still fishing with hand grenades.

One can easily see the road being built in this field of study. And the pit falls. If one can insert an optic thread into the brain to destroy, alter or control a person's mental state, why can't at some point pull out the brain's information to be placed in another vessel (like a computer core). That's very Max Headroom. And considering the whole field of cryogenics is to keep people alive forever, keeping their brain, consciousness or information stored on a hard drive seems to fall in a solid second place.

We don't know how a patient reacts when parts of his brain are being probed by psychosurgery. Does he hallucinate? Does he dream? Does he travel to a dangerous tropical island to fight smoke monsters (the subconscious representation of a laser burning brain cells to ash)? Science gives a plausible sci-fi foundation for many LOST mental illness premise theories.