A pioneer brain-boosting implant might never have us asking again: “What’s that thing called??”
Like a pacemaker for your memory — and the implications for degenerative brain diseases may be massive
It’s high on the list of irksome brain fails. You’re chatting with someone, well on your way to making a salient point, your mouth opens and then… zilch, nada, nothing. The flow is lost, or at least sufficiently stalled, ruining your cred as a sharp conversationalist. Rifling through the storage bins in your brain, you can’t quite summon the word you’re sure you had on the tip of your tongue. The thing is, your tongue isn’t at fault. Your brain, on the other lobe, has left you hanging hard. Well, fret not, once eloquent orator, science is on it. Or, rather, in it. A brain implant providing a measurably significant boost to memory has just been successfully tested by researchers — and it works as quick as an electric pulse. The human animal, and arguably the art of debating, is officially poised for an upgrade.
In a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania, the brains of 25 severely epileptic patients were implanted with hundreds of electrodes while being evaluated for corrective neurosurgery. Because accessing the brain is tricky business, it’s not uncommon for researchers to go for a medical twofer, conducting consensual research in one area of the brain while invasive procedures are being performed elsewhere.
In this instance, the lateral temporal cortex (which manages sensory input and recent memory) was stimulated via implant with electrical bursts while patients were awake and their recall was tested. Researchers asked participants to memorize a list of words and then distracted them, before asking them to summon as many of the words as they could. The same exercise was then also conducted with the memory aid switched off. The results were clear: those who got full cybernetic support had their brains bolstered with an added ability to both retain and retrieve information. They consistently enjoyed a 15 percent boost in word recall.
The implanted device in question, though very much a prototype, is novel in that it’s completely autonomous (in other words, no button to press). It works very much like a pacemaker, sending useful pulses only when it notices the brain is wrestling with storing or retrieving information, while staying completely dormant when the brain seems to have recall under control. And if you’re imagining body-rattling brain zaps, consider that one participant told media that the process wasn’t just painless — he didn’t know it was happening. “I could not honestly tell how the stimulation was affecting my memory,” he said. “You don’t feel anything; you don’t know whether it’s on or off.” Seamless cybernetic fusion.
Naturally, the science of biohacking our brains isn’t currently focused on bettering our anecdotes. This research could be applied in future treatment strategies for those suffering from dementia, neurological disorders, devastating brain injuries, strokes or even congenital cognitive limitations — any illnesses where memory is bound to take a significant hit. And that future, thankfully, could be closer than we think.
Dr. Michael Kahana, who lead the study, told CBC’s The Current that tech with this kind of potential comes by funding easily and moves fast. With proper clinical trials expected within “a small number of years”, patients in deep need of support, like those with Alzheimer’s, could eventually be housed with helpful cranial or chest implants about the size of a wristwatch, explains Kahana. Researchers confirm that talks to commercialize this emerging technology are already well underway, and the scope of relief would be considerable, as one estimate puts the number of Canadians suffering from neurodegenerative diseases at 747,000.
This isn’t the first time science has explored inserting tech into our bodies to better them. Recall that the pacemaker qualifies as a cybernetic upgrade and the tech that got us there is already 80 years old. For years, sufferers of Parkinson’s who experienced no reprieve with medication have found some relief with Deep Brain Stimulation (or DBS), which serves to aggressively interrupt faulty upsurges in brain activity. More extreme cases of treatment resistant depression and OCD have also been treated in similar ways.
This type of biotech will only evolve more rapidly from now on, and some aren’t even waiting for it to go mainstream. Grinders, or those with a penchant for DIY biohacking, already go it alone. One fellow in Sydney Australia is having legal trouble with transit authorities after implanting a subway pass chip into his hand. He may have the right idea. Reality’s version of Tony Stark, Elon Musk, has been adamant that humanity will only survive the advent of AI by refurbishing our increasingly obsolete biology cybernetically. His Neuralink project hopes to deliver a “neuroprosthetic” that will gives us unlimited memory and access to the full riches of the internet without ever looking at a screen. Becoming what Musk calls “transhuman” won’t just let us compete with robots — it could grant us immortality. So on the way to infinite existence, do prepare yourself for a pop up message on the back of your eyeball when a new version of your brain is available for download. Do you want to install it now?
That we can leverage debilitating illnesses robbing us of cognitive prowess before our time is welcome news to anyone who has seen something like Alzheimer’s up close. It now seems likely that this recall-enhancing tech could end up mitigating the mental decline common to some of our most perniciousness brain diseases. Mind bending in every sense. But the applications for an ageing public struggling with more run-of-the-mill memory limitations are also clear and, if the futurists are right, inevitable. Rapid recall has been shown to decline steadily towards the tail end of our 70s. Still, research from the expansive Whitehall II study found that searching synapses start firing harder to drag words from the murky depths of our memory banks when we’re as young as 45. So, for all of us saddled with the more standard ills of ageing, a cybernetic implant should at least improve the flow of our dinner conversations.
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