Future shock

Case study: Electric shock therapy in China for internet 'addiction'

"I admit the internet can be quite alluring and sometimes I would use it all day, but if I had other things to do – like playing basketball – I wouldn't use it at all," he said.

"Then my mum saw the adverts on television. They demonised the internet and after watching them she believed I was sick and it was very serious."

He was given ECT for the first time when he resisted admission to the clinic.

"I can't remember how many times [they gave me shocks], but it must have been dozens. They would let me rest for a while then give me another. The session lasted about half an hour," he said.

This reads like a scene from "Brazil," had the world of Brazil had the Net.

[Follow me on Twitter.]

Biological printing

Watching this video, I felt a small but perceptible sense of wonder.

(Tip of the hat to Beyond the Beyond.)

[Follow me on Twitter.]

Some tinfoil might be required.

ViRob, a Cavities Crawler

At the upcoming ILSI-Biomed Israel 2009 conference (June 15-17 in Tel Aviv), researchers from the Medical Robotics Laboratory at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) will be showing off a microrobot called ViRob, that has only a 1millimeter diameter and can crawl through vessels and cavities, when controlled by an external magnetic field.

"Cavities." Uh-huh. We know what they're talking about.

[Follow me on Twitter.]

Hey, isn't this the set-up for "I Am Legend"?

'Tamed' virus wipes out cancer cells safely

The research team modified a common virus - called an adenovirus - so that it could deliver genetic therapy to destroy tumours without poisoning the liver. The changes enabled the virus to keeps its natural 'infectious' characteristics to replicate in, and kill, cancer cells in mice. But for the first time the virus is also recognised and destroyed by healthy mouse liver cells, so it is no longer toxic.

(Via Futurismic.)

Follow me on Twitter.

I won't be satisfied until my spleen begins using Twitter.

Body 2.0 - Continuous Monitoring Of The Human Body

In the future your doctor might call you before you have a heart attack, responding to an alarm sent out by monitoring systems in your body that have detected the precursors to a heart attack hours or days ahead of time. With body 2.0, medicine dosages could be tailored precisely to your body chemistry and metabolism. Real-time monitoring of chemical concentrations in your blood could allow for increasing or decreasing dosages accordingly.

The huge amounts of data that would be accumulated from hundreds of thousands of continuously monitored people would be nothing short of a revolution for medical research and analysis. This data could be harvested to understand the minute by minute changes in body chemistry that occur in response to medication, stress, infection, and so on.

(Via Futurismic.)

Reprogramming cells

We can't regenerate organs yet, but it seems we're on the right track.

"We have the technology."

Bionic eye gives blind man sight

Ron, who has not revealed his surname, told the BBC: "For 30 years I've seen absolutely nothing at all, it's all been black, but now light is coming through. Suddenly to be able to see light again is truly wonderful.

"I can actually sort out white socks, grey socks and black socks."

"My one ambition at the moment is to be able to go out on a nice, clear evening and be able to pick up the moon."

(Via Futurismic.)

Even better than the real thing?

The Immaculate designer prosthesis

Immaculate is a neurological prosthetic that will be connected to a user's central nervous system. The exterior of the prosthetic is textile clad in Corian plates which, in principle, will allow embedded technology to be seamlessly integrated. This material will also give the prosthetic a clear graphical identity. In addition, each joint is a globe joint, allowing a larger freedom of movement than a normal human arm.

Imagine a future where prosthetics are so advanced -- so immanently fashionable -- that consumers voluntarily dispense with their natural limbs to take advantage of the latest model.

I'm not entirely sure I like that image; it implies a society driven by commercially mandated obsessions not unlike our own current infatuation with iPhones and ever-smaller laptop computers.

And just what happens to all those severed arms, anyway?

The Onion mocks the neuropharmaceutical industry.

Brilliant!

Stranger than fiction

Ghostly faces and visions of 'little people': The eye disorder that leaves thousands of Britons fearing they've lost their senses

'The unpleasant feeling was of not being in control,' she says. 'Once they are identified, they are not a problem.'

Hallucinations can last from only a few seconds to several hours. In a minority of unlucky cases, they are continuous throughout the day. Patients usually have several daily before they taper off to once a week, then once a month.

For 60 per cent of patients, they will stop entirely after 18 months. There has not yet been a long-term study, but some patients report having them for at least three years.

Part of Dr ffytche's research involves looking into ways patients can stop the hallucinations. 'There won't be a single recipe for everyone,' he says. 'But hallucinations tend to occur when you are in a state of drowsy wakefulness, so you want to rouse yourself.'

Do it for J.G. Ballard.

Cardiopulmonary Spatialization

In the project's accompanying documentation, Nicollier writes that we must learn "to create spaces that provide, through their experience and material substance, enough variability in environmental effects that individual differences in reception and response can be studied and used as a part of curative regimes."

Coffee-induced hallucinations? Caffeinated co-eds hear voices, study says

Java is known to give some people the jitters if they drink too much of it. But can it also trigger hallucinations?

It may if you consume enough of it, say British psychologists, who report in the journal Personality and Individual Differences this week that college students they studied said they sometimes heard faux voices after chugging at least seven cups of coffee daily.

Oh, this explains a lot.

Blind, Yet Seeing: The Brain's Subconscious Visual Sense

Scientists have previously reported cases of blindsight in people with partial damage to their visual lobes. The new report is the first to show it in a person whose visual lobes -- one in each hemisphere, under the skull at the back of the head -- were completely destroyed. The finding suggests that people with similar injuries may be able to recover some crude visual sense with practice.

I rather suspect Peter Watts will weigh in on this shortly.

Scientists back brain drugs for healthy people

College students are already illegally taking prescription stimulants like Ritalin to help them study, and demand for such drugs is likely to grow elsewhere, they say.

"We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function," and doing it with pills is no more morally objectionable than eating right or getting a good night's sleep, these experts wrote in an opinion piece published online Sunday by the journal Nature.

The commentary calls for more research and a variety of steps for managing the risks.

By now you've probably read how Google can help pinpoint flu outbreaks based on search terms submitted by users. Could a similar technique be used to track "paranormal" activity?

Scientists stop the ageing process

The researchers, led by Associate Professor Ana Maria Cuervo, blocked the ageing process in mice livers by stopping the build-up of harmful proteins inside the organ's cells.

As people age their cells become less efficient at getting rid of damaged protein resulting in a build-up of toxic material that is especially pronounced in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative disorders.

The researchers say the findings suggest that therapies for boosting protein clearance might help stave off some of the declines in function that accompanies old age.

Deadly New Virus Thought to Be Contained

A new virus that causes fatal hemorrhagic fevers has been discovered in southern Africa. It killed four people in South Africa and sickened a fifth, but health authorities believe the outbreak has been contained.

Ultrasound shown to exert remote control of brain circuits

When asked about the potential of using his groups' methods to remotely control brain activity, Tyler says: "One might be able to envision potential applications ranging from medical interventions to use in video gaming or the creation of artificial memories along the lines of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in 'Total Recall.' Imagine taking a vacation without actually going anywhere?"

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

I can't help but wonder if a similar effect is to blame for the "screen memories" and "missing time" that plague UFO abductees. Many UFO sightings are accompanied by strange, low-frequency noises that could, in theory, alter consciousness -- perhaps merely as a side-effect.

Of certain interest to aspiring transhuman historians:

Transplanted cornea still sees after 123 years

"This is the oldest eye in Norway -- I don’t know if it's the oldest in the world," Aune, an 80-year-old Norwegian and former ambulance driver, told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. “But my vision’s not great any longer."

He had a cornea transplanted into his right eye in 1958 from the body of an elderly man who was born in June 1885. The operation was carried out at Namsos Hospital, mid-Norway.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this is the oldest living organ in the world," eye doctor Hasan Hasanain at Namsos hospital told the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang.

(Thanks again to Elan.)

Experts ponder link between creativity, mood disorders

There have been more than 20 studies that suggest an increased rate of bipolar and depressive illnesses in highly creative people, says Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and author of the "An Unquiet Mind," a memoir of living with bipolar disorder.

Experts say mental illness does not necessarily cause creativity, nor does creativity necessarily contribute to mental illness, but a certain ruminating personality type may contribute to both mental health issues and art.

"Unquestionably, I think a major link is to the underlying temperaments of both bipolar illness and depression, of reflectiveness and so forth," Jamison said.