Archive for January 2012
The Scientist Who Controlled People with Brain Implants
by Keith Veronese
Brain implantation and manipulation is a mainstay of science fiction. Often, characters can gain extra memory or get smarter, by having chips placed within the brain. (Or you can wind up mind-controlled by a psychopath. It’s a mixed bag.)
But in real life, one scientist made huge strides towards creating workable brain implants. In the 1950s and 1960s. Here’s his story.
Jose Delgado performed experiments using permanent brain implants in bulls, primates, and humans beginning in the 1950s, with extremely successful results. Neuroscience often ignores this chapter of its history, but it’s worth taking a look at Delgado’s successes, and his long term goals for manipulation of humans and society.
Controlling the Movements of Primates
The bulk of Delgado’s stimoceiver research took place at Yale University in the 1950s and 1960s. Delgado manually positioned electrode assembles within the brain, assemblies that stimulate a desired area of the brain when a particular FM frequency is present.
After implantation, the monkeys lived well for several years after surgery, with no behavioral deficits. The implants appear quite grotesque, projecting inches above the scalp of the primates, but they provided a “plug and play” method of interacting with the animals without inflicting harm through multiple surgeries. Delgado’s stimulation research allowed for manipulation of complex, chained limb movements in primates.
A Scientist plays Matador
Delgado became a matador to demonstrate the abilities of stimoceiver manipulation, as he stepped into a closed ring with an implanted bull armed only with a radio frequency controllerin 1963. When the bull charged, Delgado stimulated the bull’s motor cortex with the remote control, causing the bull to come to a full stop only feet away.
In a 1965 New York Times interview about the matador experiment, Delgado foreshadowed the future of human experimentation:
The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.
Human implantation
At least 25 humans (mostly women) received stimoceiver implants of a similar manner from Delgado – each patient received the implant willingly, and as a last resort in a course of psychiatric treatment. Delgado viewed the implants as a humane alternative to lobotomy.
Humans responded in a fashion similar to Delgado’s early animal research – limbs could be moved independently of the will of the patient, but not to the extent seen in primates. In one dramatic experiment, temporal lobe stimulation caused a calm epileptic woman playing a guitar to slam her instrument against a wall. Delgado noted in his human research that a specific behavior could not be directed, with only an increase or decrease in aggression possible.
Toward a Psychocivilized Society?
Delgado illustrated some of his hopes for mind control in 1969′s Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society. The
book makes for a phenomenal read, with Delgado going into the intimate details of his research with images, along with a treatise on ethical implications of the technology.
In his writings, Delgado truly appears to want the best for humanity. He exhibits a very Spock-like “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” belief system. He sums up his beliefs in this quote from the Ethical Considerations chapter of Physical Control of the Mind:
There is one aspect of human research which is usually overlooked: the existence of a moral and social duty to advance scientific knowledge and to improve the welfare of man. When important medical information can be obtained with negligible risk and without infringing on individual rights, the investigator has the duty to use his intelligence and skills for this purpose. Failure to do so represents the neglect of professional duties in some way similar to the negligence of a medical doctor who does not apply his full effort to the care of a patient.
An Opportune return to Spain
Controversy shrouded Delgado in the early 1970s, due to lawsuits from individuals who believed they received stimoceiver implants against their will. Delgado left the United States in 1975, taking an opportunity to return to his birthplace of Spain and start a medical school at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
In Spain, Delgado continued his stimoceiver research, experimenting on himself and members of his family. Delgado retired in the 1990s, but actively spoke about the field until his death in late 2011, making an ominous statement about the power of science in light of human ethics:
Can you avoid knowledge? You cannot! Can you avoid technology? You cannot! Things are going to go ahead in spite of ethics, in spite of your personal beliefs, in spite of everything.
Sci-fi predictions for 2012
We’ve all seen the predictions — both fictional and pseudoarcheological — that the world will end in 2012. But while some of science fiction’s predictions for the year 2012 are apocalyptic, some are merely disastrous — and a few are downright upbeat. Let’s see what triumphs and tribulations science fiction says we can look forward to in the coming year.
An evangelical preacher will be elected President of the United States:
Right now, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry are battling to become the supreme conservative Christian on the Republican Ticket, and Robert Heinlein’s “If This Goes On—” (one of the short stories from his Future History series) sees an evangelical preacher elected to the US’s highest office. President Nehemiah Scudder wastes no time turning America into a theocratic dictatorship, after which our leaders are referred to as “Prophets” instead of Presidents. So cast those primary votes wisely, kids.The US economy will collapse:
If this happens, Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race remake wouldn’t win many points for clairvoyance, given that it was released in 2008, when the US economy wasn’t exactly taking names. But if an economic collapse leads to pay-per-view prison driving death matches, that will be an impressive feat of prognostication.
The zombie apocalypse will begin:
Where better to launch a pandemic than at the 2012 Olympics? I Spit on Your Rave plants the seeds of human extinction at the Summer Games in London, and it takes just six years for every human on earth to be converted or eaten. Fortunately, zombie life is a lot like human life, just with more decomposition.
The zombie apocalypse will end:
In the most recent film adaptation of I Am Legend, the zombie/vampire/CG goober apocalypse starts way back in 2009. Personally, I don’t see hordes of undead out my window every night, but maybe I’m just not looking hard enough. Anyhow, we won’t have to fear those pesky cannibals for much longer; Will Smith’s super-smart Omega Man develops a cure for such antisocial behavior this year.
The Doctor will light the Olympic Flame:
The coordinators of the 2012 Olympics should keep their eyes peeled for more than just zombies; aliens have their designs on the Summer Games as well. Fortunately, in the Doctor Who episode “Fear Her,” the Doctor predictably saves the day, and runs the Olympic Torch to its final destination. Take that, zombie Olympics!
Conan O’Brien will lose his freakishly long legs:
We never do find out what causes Futurama‘s War of 2012. Maybe it has to do with exploding pizza parlors, or the fact that gas costs $100 a gallon. But in the episode, “Xmas Story,” we learn that the war was responsible for at least one pop culture casualty: Conan’s blindingly white gams. No word on whether he ever gets to host the Tonight Show again.
The maximum height of all humans will be legally reduced to four feet:
Corporate greed starts taking its toll on our very genetic codes in the Genesis song “Get ‘Em Out by Friday.” A real estate developer lobbies for a limit on human height so it can squeeze twice as many tenants in its buildings. Incidentally, basketball becomes a lot less interesting.
A proto-Martian biosphere will be completed in Indiana:
Before humans in the Star Trek universe colonize Mars, they build the Millennium Gate, a prototype self-sustaining habitat in Portage Creek, Indiana, to serve as a model. The Millennium Gate is also indirectly responsible for the existence of Voyager Captain Katherine Janeway, whose ancestors meet as a result of the project (Voyager, “11:59″).
Terrorists will attack the burgeoning transhumanist movement:
In his novel Breakpoint, former counterterroism czar Richard A. Clarke sets 2012 as a year when a self-regulating, error-correcting AI hops around the Internet, parents have lab-grown babies spiced up with extra chromosomes, and scientists are working to integrate human and computer intelligences. It’s also the year a group of bioluddites start blowing up anything and anyone associated with these shifts.
Disabled revolutionaries will rise up against the beautiful people:
A very different terrorist group populates the Spanish-language black comedy Accion Mutante. In a post-apolyptic future ruled by the beautiful people, the ugly and disabled are considered mutants. In 2012, the tragically unhip make their move, kidnapping a lovely heiress on her wedding day and doing a rather poor job of collecting the ransom.
Mainland Europe will be at war with England and the US: In the 2012 of Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra’s comic Bloody Mary, mainland Europe has long been a fascist dictatorship at war with the Anglo-American alliance. Fortunately, the US and England have Mary Malone, an ultraviolent, alcoholic mercenary with a strange predilection for nuns’ habits, on their side.
Atlantis will be rediscovered:
In Stel Pavlou Deception, a 2012 oil drilling venture in Antarctica leads to the discovery of manmade diamonds inscribed with unfamiliar hieroglyphics. It turns out the lost city of Atlantis has been lurking in the Southern continent all this time, waiting beneath the ice.
Aliens will start to colonize the Earth:
While some fictional futures set December 21, 2012 as the month the world ends, The X-Files suggests that, while our world won’t end, our way of life will radically change. After all, that’s the date set for the first wave of alien colonization, unless a pair of plucky FBI agents can halt the invasion.
The world will end:
Yes, this is the big one, the most common fictional outcome for the coming year. Maybe it will end in a blockbuster-worthy series of disasters straight out of Roland Emmerich’s 2012 or The Asylum’s 2012 trilogy. But maybe, just maybe, the end of our world will look more like Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, where humanity moves on to the next phase of our existence. Then the world would end not with a bang, but with a transcendence.
