A New Brain Implant Automatically Detects and Kills Pain in Real Time

upstart writes:

A New Brain Implant Automatically Detects and Kills Pain in Real Time:

Chronic pain is like a horror movie monster that sneaks up on you. It's unpredictable, lingers silently, and when it strikes it's often too late to tame. More diabolically, our best weapon against it-pain medication-can increase pain intensity over time. And as the opioid epidemic sadly shows, even pain medication is a double-edged sword.

It's time for something new. This week, a group from the New York University School of Medicine said no thank you" to medication altogether. Instead, they engineered a neural bridge" that connects two brain regions: one critical for detecting pain, the other that dampens pain when activated.

For a brain implant, this one's particularly special. It's basically a tag-team of spy and sleeper agent. The spy" listens to electrical chatter in a brain region that processes pain-along with dozens of other tasks-and decodes it in real time. Once it detects an electrical signal that suggests pain found," it sends the information to the sleeper agent," a computer chip implanted in the front part of the brain. The chip then automatically triggers a light beam to stimulate the region, activating neurons that can override pain signals.

[...] The beauty of this particular brain-machine interface (BMI) is it only activates when there is pain, instead of zapping the brain all the time. That is, it's specific and efficient.

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