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September 16, 2007
Happiness is a Warm Electrode
This is pretty wild. They're inserting electrodes into people's brains while they're not only alive, but awake. Then, shocking them with low voltage to cure clinical depression.
In Hire's case, though, the existing technology seems to be working just fine. When I meet with her six months after the surgery, she doesn't look like a person who spent 20 years trapped in a dark mental cave. She's energetic. She shakes my hand firmly and looks me straight in the eye—something she says she simply wouldn't have been able to do before. She laughs often (and my jokes aren't even really funny). She now walks 50 miles a week, talks to her family constantly, chats with strangers at the post office. And her smile is a regular, everyday thing, not a freakish, fleeting appearance in a crowded operating room.
Posted by Rob Kiser on September 16, 2007 at 7:45 PM
Comments
fascinating!
Posted by: sl on September 16, 2007 at 9:56 PM