In recent years, brain stimulation technologies are receiving increasing attention. As the most important organ of the human body, the brain shoulders the important responsibility of regulating the body's functions, and is also the material basis for higher neural activities such as consciousness, spirit, language, learning, memory and intelligence. In the process of exploring the mysteries of the brain, scientists are not only stopping at the level of understanding the structure and function of the brain, but also going one step further, hoping to change the neural activity of the brain with the help of related technologies.

Relevant historical records show that in Mesopotamia around 47 AD, people used the bioelectricity of electric eels to regulate pain and treat arthritis and headaches. The first recorded case of electrical stimulation of the brain for a patient was the electrical stimulation of the patient's cerebral cortex and induced epilepsy during a craniotomy in 1874 by United States physician Roberts Bartholow.

After more than 100 years of development, brain stimulation technology is no longer a new thing, and at the same time, with the development of technology, some new possibilities are also being stimulated. At a recent scientific conference in London, United Kingdom, neuroscientists, brain surgeons, psychiatrists and ethicists were discussing the latest techniques to change the way the brain works using magnetic or electrical impulses.

One type of tool in this technology works by placing a device on a person's head, and another involves cutting a person's skull and inserting needle-like electrodes deep into the brain. There are many more ways to go between these two extremes, and scientists are still learning how they work, and how to use them better. At the same time, some are generating vast amounts of data about individuals' brains that could potentially be used to "deal with" them in court.

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We already know that brain stimulation can help some people with Parkinson's disease and depression who don't respond to medications. But the scientists at the conference are pushing the boundaries, and some of them are exploring brain stimulation for obsessive-compulsive disorder, alcohol and substance use disorders, stroke recovery, and even long COVID. While others are looking at how to enhance the way healthy brains work, whether by improving our memory or helping us become more alert or better at math.

Brain stimulation technology is rapidly evolving, and we are well positioned to see at least some forms become mainstream in medicine in the coming years. Some recent technology review articles describe advances in related technologies, one of which is the ability to record and analyze large amounts of data in people's brains. Once upon a time, the realization of this technology was almost unimaginable, and now, implanting electrodes in their brains for a week or more is a very routine procedure for patients with severe or incurable epilepsy. This allows doctors to find out where their seizures started in the brain, so surgeons can remove that part of the brain tissue and stop the seizures.

Today, neuroscientists can also use AI-based tools to help make sense of other data collected. For example, this may help us figure out what the brain is doing when we rest, chat, or eat. Data from a team of studies shows that the brain seems to cycle between periods of relative stability and chaos.

Implanting electrodes in the brain can also help us understand other diseases. In the case of depression, multiple research teams are investigating whether deep brain stimulation can help people with severe symptoms that cannot be treated with typical antidepressants or even as a last resort such as electroconvulsive therapy. The most cutting-edge methods involve so-called "closed-loop" devices. These devices are designed to record what's going on in the brain and then emit a burst of electricity only when people look like they might get worse.

There is also a trend towards remote brain stimulation therapy, which can give treatment to people at home while sending their brain records to the doctor's office. Both approaches, though, involve collecting, storing, and sharing brain data that may reveal the state of the brain at any given time and give a hint at what people are doing or feeling at the time.

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"Is this going to be a problem?" Jennifer · Chandler, who studies neuroscience on legal, ethical and policy issues at the University of Ottawa in Canada, said, "It depends on how the technology is used." ”

Chandler highlighted the case of Ross · Compton, who used his own heart data when he was charged with burning down his home in Ohio in 2016. Compton claimed that he woke up in the middle of the night to find his house on fire, hurriedly grabbed a few items, broke a window, and fled.

But after authorities found traces of gasoline on his clothes and shoes, they issued a search warrant allowing law enforcement to seize the data collected by his pacemaker. A cardiologist testified that given Compton's heart health, it was unlikely that he would be able to move items out of the house quickly.

Chandler warns that recordings extracted from a person's brain can be used in a similar way. Last summer, she recalled, someone from a company that makes brain devices told her that law enforcement had asked for recordings from implants inside the brains of people with epilepsy. The man was accused of assaulting a police officer, but brain data proved that he was only having a seizure at the time.

While the data clears the charge for that person, similar data records can easily be used to "deal with" someone else. For example, neural recordings can even indicate whether a driver in a car accident is alert or focused on the road.

It's unclear how the criminal justice system will use this recorded data in the future. But given the explosion of research and technological advancements we're seeing in this area, it's important to start thinking about what it's used for now and how to protect brain data.

Brain stimulation techniques range from ultra-invasive (where a brain surgeon inserts electrodes into the brain) to non-invasive (where a magnet passes through the skull). But even the non-invasive form can cause some kind of change in the brain and in our thinking and feeling. So they may be more aggressive than we think.

A "memory prosthesis" implant appears to improve memory in people with brain injury. The device is designed to mimic the way our brains normally form memories in hippocampal-like structures. As one report last year, a non-invasive form of brain stimulation that sends gentle electrical impulses through the electrodes of a swimming cap appears to improve memory in older adults.

Electrodes implanted in the brains of people with depression help us better understand and treat depression. A team used a set of electrodes to develop a "mood decoder" that was designed to tell when a person has entered a depressive state and help reverse it.

Of course, with the rapid development of technology, we should also be vigilant, because if this brain data falls into the wrong hands, it will also bring immeasurable dangers. Either way, the development of these technologies is always exciting for the brain science community.

Over the past century or so, several Nobel Prizes have been awarded in brain and neuroscience-related technologies. At present, many major countries around the world have also launched brain research programs. There is no doubt that brain science will be one of the most cutting-edge scientific fields in the 21st and even 22nd centuries. In the three major directions of understanding the brain, maintaining brain health, and developing brain-like intelligence, many scientific achievements have also emerged, which can be seen from the "MIT Technology Review" "Top 10 Breakthrough Technologies in the World" selection over the years.

In 2006, Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), which was selected as one of the "Top 10 Breakthrough Technologies in the World", has deepened our understanding of how the brain works by tracking the direction of the diffusion of water molecules in the brain to map the distribution and direction of their axons.

In 2008, Neural Connectomics, which was selected as one of the "Top 10 Breakthrough Technologies in the World", uses fluorescent proteins and other technologies to stain the brain's neural networks, thus attempting to create a physical map of the intricate neural circuits in the nervous system that collect, process, and store information, so that it can be directly observed. This technology greatly improves the "image resolution" of scientists observing the brain, so that they can observe at a glance how information is transmitted between different regions of the brain, different neurons and different synapses in the "brain circuit map", and then study various mechanisms of occurrence, as well as which circuits of psychiatric diseases and nervous system diseases are caused by defects.

The "Brain Atlas" selected in 2014 is a neuroscience breakthrough that has benefited from the development of polarized light imaging technology. Also funded by the Human Brain Project (HBP) in Europe, a team of researchers led by scientists from Germany and Canada spent a decade creating a three-dimensional atlas of the brain, building a high-precision "digital brain" that allows scientists to see the arrangement of cells and nerve fibers in complete brain tissue and the spatial structure of neurons and neural circuits very clearly, with a resolution 50 times that of previous atlases.

Over the past 20 years, MIT Technology Review's "Top 10 Global Breakthrough Technologies" list has included a number of cutting-edge science and technology, including brain science, and now the list has accompanied us through 22 years, with more than 200 breakthrough technologies just like a history of cutting-edge technology development, recording those glittering technological inspirations and technological breakthroughs in the long river of time.

Original author: Jessica · Hamzeru

Original title: How your brain data could be used against you

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