Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

The holy grail of brain manipulation is being able to selectively excite or inhibit any area of the brain. A new technology called deep transcranial magnetic therapy is being developed by a company called Brainsway that may finally allow scientists to do just that. Conventional transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been around since 1985 and has shown a lot of promise in treating various mental illnesses. TMS has been used by researchers to activate or deactivate specific areas of the brain by sending a magnetic pulse through the skull. This magnetic pulse generates an electric current in a targeted brain area and this can cause either excitation or inhibition of neuron firing depending on the frequency of the pulse that is used. High frequency pulses excite neurons while low frequency pulses inhibit neuronal firing. So specific brain areas can be either activated or deactivated. The main problem with existing transcranial magnetic devices is that they can only reach 1 to 2 centimeters into the brain. This has meant that researchers have only been able to target the outer layer of the brain (the neocortex) that is located in close proximity to the skull. The new deep TMS allows targeted electrical stimulation of brain areas that are not within reach of conventional TMS devices.

A documentary about this technology is in production and you can some trailers from it here, here and here. The documentary appears to be entitled "Invisible Mind Fields" and looks like it will follow a clinical trial of depressed patients undergoing a course of treatment with this new technology. According to the write-up from the filmaker's website it looks as if a transhumanist element will be added to the film. Here's a quote about the film, link here (pdf file).

"The prospect of manipulating our minds with machines has for decades been considered a cybernetic fantasy belonging to the realm of literature and cinema, now, after "softening up" by advances in science and science fiction, far fewer people find the notion of neuro-enhancement troublesome. Its potential clients are not just the radicals who long for a post-human future, but ordinary people who grew up in the information age."

The company making this device has already tested it on healthy volunteers and claimed that it improved their mood. So the transhumanist label may be warranted considering it has the capacity to make "normal" people's lives more worthwhile. Brainsway's strategy to get FDA approval appears to be using the deep TMS device to target deeper brain areas related to the brain's reward system. Direct electrical stimulation of the nucleus accumbens has been shown to be rewarding. In animal and human subjects, electrodes have been implanted directly within the nucleus accumbens by scientists. However, doing this requires risky brain surgery. With this new technology, psychiatrists may eventually be able to electrically stimulate the nucleus accumbens non-invasively without unecessarily stimulating other cortical brain areas.

Other areas of the brain can also be targeted selectively. This device has the potential to ameliorate several conditions like depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obesity, addiction and autism. It seems like this technology could potentially allow scientists to activate or deactivate multiple brain regions at once. Application of this technology in the future may lead to an unprecedented ability to create new modes of brain functionality. Scientists still have plenty of research to do with conventional TMS, but this new technology could open up a whole new era in brain manipulation. Targeting specific areas of the brain may allow researchers to improve a person's memory or concentration. Conventional TMS has already been used to bring out savant like creative abilities in normal subjects and reduce the detrimental affect of sleep deprivation. So in the future, TMS may be able to enhance aspects of human intelligence or creativity. In sum, this new deep TMS technology has a number of potentional uses and could significantly improve our ability to manipulate the brain.