Argumentative Essay: The Dangers Of Brain Surgery

With today’s world more inclined towards war than peace, many people encounter injuries and damages. Thousands of soldiers, in US military, develop deficits to their long-term memory owing to head trauma, brain injury or memory loss, even if they don’t bear any kind of physical damage. This is not only limited to US military but military all over the world. This can even extend to a common man who might have come across a similar problem of brain injury. In response to this, the US military is funding research that is strategically designed to improve memory by brain stimulation via implanted electrodes. It is believed that this can also help people who have suffered strokes or those who have lost their capability to recall due to ageing. The

US military hopes that electrical devices embedded into the brain might help these people regain the memory power that they have once lost. Aspects like the planning and working of the solution, technical problems and obstacles that hinder the way of the research and other alternatives that intend to produce a similar result will be the essence of this report.

The electrode devices will be developed with the help of US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA, with a four-year grant, has given a sum of US$37.5 million to two research teams. The teams are expected to carry out a study on how memories are created and retrieved, and design devices to stimulate these processes in the brain. Due to the risks that come along with planting devices in the brain, both groups are examining people with epilepsy with already implanted electrodes. These already implanted electrodes will be used to monitor brain activity, like electrical patterns that arise when the brain is storing/fetching a memory.

Both the teams plan to work on different aspects. One of the teams will outline the electrical patterns that match with the process of memory formation. They plan to carry this out by recruiting about 100 people with epilepsy with light memory problems and file their brain activity while they play a computerised memory game. The differences in scores among these people will be used to implement an algorithm for a stimulation pattern to make the brain perform at an optimum level. Whereas the second team plans to go deeper by creating a small device to be implanted into the brain, capable of not only record-keeping and studying brain activity, but also stimulating it in real-time. For this, they plan to use a computer game which is simulated for the person to drive around in a taxi and drop passengers off. After a couple of years of analysing those with epilepsy, they will move on to people with brain injuries.

The perils of these brain simulation projects are a bit unclear. So far, no evidence of the side-effects of this technique has been found out or presented. However, it is feasible that constructing a new brain activity pattern can disrupt work or even hijack other parts of the brain. After all, modifying a part of the brain is something that is already very complex. In order to make the risks minimal, researchers, perhaps, are required to determine the exact part of the brain to deal with. They also intend to keep the amount of simulation used very low and hence don’t expect the stimulation to affect other parts of the brain.

One can expect brain surgery to have many obstacles in its way.

Any attempts to deal with brain and human memory brings up ethical questions. Brain surgery and high-risk come hand-in-hand. Even the smallest of mistakes in brain surgery can often lead to casualties with people encountering disabilities like problems with speech, vision, coordination, coma and perhaps even death. With this in mind, a person is forced to rethink the idea of getting a brain surgery a hundred times. There is also the aspect this technology being misused. This system in the hand of an ill-minded person can lead to a huge disaster that can lead to chips being implanted into a person’s mind that can perhaps control the person partly or

fully.

The success in the ability to improve the memory power varies from one case to another. The researchers plan to treat various types of memory loss inclusive of those from brain injury, from Alzheimer’s disease and perhaps even due to the ageing process. However, it is stated that the stimulation devices can only heighten the memory power to create and fetch new memories and not restore memories that have been lost. In fact, in some cases the device may not benefit at all. Since it is in the analytical phase and hasn’t reached implementation phase, the overall success of this research cannot be mapped yet.

As far as alternative treatments are concerned, not many approaches are available at present.

Although brain or memory enhancing drugs, also known as ‘smart drugs’, are said to improve memory, however, no pharmaceutical compounds have been verified to be very effective over the long-term as a permanent solution. One of the potential alternative solutions to this is Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). TMS guides a magnetic field at a particular part outside the skull to create feeble electric currents in the brain which help with some learning tasks. However, TMS has a limited reach which makes the hippocampus too deeply placed into the brain to be affected by TMS, making it efficient enough for areas just near the surface of the

brain.

With the research, an initiative of the US military, progressing steadily, much can be expected from it. Both the teams assigned for research are moving ahead at a good pace in their respective methods. If successful, it can help regain memory power that they once lost and help them lead the life in an even complete manner.