A new brain implant automatically detects and kills pain in real time
singularityhub.com
singularityhub.com
The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture - a motivational system based on heritable gradients of bliss. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. It is predicted that the world's last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event.
Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and surgical anesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd. Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as psychological pain, too, could ever be banished is equally counter-intuitive. The feasibility of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice.
It might be a fairly rough road to get there, but I'm certain our understanding of how our brains perceive pain and pleasure will be dramatically different in a 100 years, and it'll be for the better.
But opium sure as hell wasn't! And it seems to check most of your suggested boxes too, however I don't think it makes for a good society, perhaps you should consider why, because it's pretty much what you're suggesting.
Why enjoy social interaction? Why enjoy arts? Why learn things? You'd be perfectly happy with more magic hedonism pills. Unpleasantness, and yes, pain is as important a part of being as any other part.
That's not really an argument; that's just "pain is an important part of being because pain has always been a part of our being". It's not hard to imagine a world where we can live without pain but still live meaningful lives.
The one thing I'd worry about is losing pain where it's useful. If I touch something hot, I want to know immediately (through pain) so I can quickly pull my hand away. But perhaps there's a different mechanism that could replace that.
Actually it's pretty hard to imagine it.
Tons of people conditions without adversity dwindle and end up shooting heroin, killing themselves, or worse, living long lives as accountants.
Also, homeostasis should dampen any long-term pleasure-inducing machinery (even if it comes from within).
While I agree in principle, reality is a lot more nuanced. For example, there is a very real difference between spraining your ankle (pain is a signal to rest it), and chronic nerve pain (which only serves to make the sufferer miserable).
I don't think we have to worry too much about ALL of sentient life, since all that's gonna be left of it soon is humans and pets and cattle.
> most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted
The absence of pain is not the absence of issues. Unless you can "solve" all (physical, psychological, societal) issues (and what would "solving" most of them even mean?), you're advocating for literally the cliche "treating the symptom and not the cause", Brave-New-World-soma-style.
One step further. If the universe has a purpose and we somehow solve the universe (maximize entropy or whatever), wouldn't humans cease to exist?
The truth is that we are beings of constant motion. We can't sit still.
How is it meaningful to say that a goal or project is instrumentally rational? It may be instrumentally rational to pursue a goal or project without regard to the means and only focusing on the ends...In other words the people executing it are instrumentally rational. But surely the thing itself cannot be said to "instrumentally rational" - what would that even mean? The goal is the goal. That is a value judgement that can be pursued in an instrumentally rational manner, but cannot itself be anything other than a goal valued by someone.
LOL, that's absurd. I'm working from bed (again) because of constant back pain that spikes to unbearable if I stay upright for too long.
(On a side note this guy owns some really interesting web domains)
Touch a hot stove => feel pain and recoil
People without a pain response have all sorts of problems with incidental injuries that rise in mortality since they are unaware of them. I’m guessing that the site has answers for that, because it’s such a basic objection, but it wasn’t apparent from reading the table of contents.
"Abolition" of all physical pain is an asinine desire that will only lead to our detriment.
And so people would seek it out. We already seek out every other form of pleasure- both positive (intimacy) and maladaptive (drugs).
If anything, this sounds like attempting to over-fit for fitness.
(I understand why a standard human might do that, but how would stranding oneself in a desert be adaptive? And if it isn’t adaptive, why would a hypothetical “harmonized human” do it?)
Out of all the things known to nature, humans find the most incredible ways to entertain and please themselves to death.
If you remove the element of pain and replace it with pleasure, people will find new and exciting ways to chase that pleasure too.
Run into unsafe neighborhoods at night and feel the joy of running back home. Roll around in broken glass and let the euphoria of stitching yourself back together set in.
> And if it isn’t adaptive, why would a hypothetical “harmonized human” do it?)
They'll do whatever you want them to do, because they are neither real nor human.
I hope your dad is managing ok and avoids this sort of mishap.
"In 2016, an estimated 20.4% of U.S. adults had chronic pain and 8.0% of U.S. adults had high-impact chronic pain." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6736a2.htm
I guess this depends on how you define "most".
Aside from the suffering of a boring life without suffering, like a pampered baby in a glass bowl...
It says: "The chip then automatically triggers a light beam to stimulate the region, activating neurons that can override pain signals."
Isn't that potentially stimulating millions or even hundreds of millions of neurons? We don't know what each individual neuron is doing. How is it possible to do this without causing bizarre malfunctions of the brain at best, or completely lobotomizing someone at worst?
> Life follows a simple set of heuristics with an extensive set of exceptions.
And that's OK: heuristics allow a person to intuit some high-level behavior without having to derive it from the lower-level rules (laws). It's readily admitted that the heuristic isn't 100% accurate, and when it's inaccurate you fall back to that explicit derivation process.
From the outsider view of biology, there appear to be many heuristics for which we don't know how to derive from the underlying laws. Chemistry, at various points in time, has had similar issues, but over time we've expanded the amount of things we can derive from underlying physics. Biology, I hope, will follow in time.
This requires genetically engineered mice, which is why they only have this working for mice?
These kinds of implants have serious risks including infections etc, but for people with long term chronic pain there are few options.
"I can't go to work and feed my family because everything hurts so bad" can become a common statement for these people. In addition, addiction to painkillers, spending a huge percentage of your income at compounding pharmacies, and turning to illegal and possibly dangerous drugs to save a buck or to fill the gap between your needs and the insurance companies' coverage are all issues that a non-chemical pain management system like this could solve.
I'm sure it's dangerous and weird to toy with your brain but for many people in America alone the risk would be more than worth the reward.
The DEA tried to ban it a few years ago but too many cancer patients testified before Congress how well it worked compared to the prescription opioids. The DEA was forced to bow out.
The cool thing about Mitragyna speciosa is that it's a tree, a pretty hardy one. In my experience, the older trees have more potent leaves, but ideally, one could plant this tree in their backyard and never have to worry about being dependent on outside help for their pain ever again. You just dry the leaves and make tea from them.
It also fucks your kidneys, in a pretty short time of chronic use.
Mitragyna is affordable, shelf safe, and sustainable. It's a silver bullet compared to the unsustainable lifestyle that chronic pain doctors are pumping out with their prescription pads. What other questions do you have?
I've been taking Mitragyna for years and have no kidney issues. My kidney function is checked regularly and my GFR and BUN ratios are fine.
Secondly, any drug, even antidepressants, have some form of dependency. The withdrawal from Mitragyna isn't bad. With a simple taper, one can easily get off of it. I've done so myself a couple times. Google oxycodone withdrawal, Xanax withdrawal, Lexapro withdrawal..ad infinitum. Most controlled prescription drugs have far worse withdrawals.
Here's one bit of truth I'll agree with: buying Mitragyna from gas stations or head shops is a terrible way to acquire it. And these sources may be impure or tainted and cause health issues. Perhaps that's where your kidney damage statements come from.
Always buy Mitragyna from a reputable and GMP certified vendor. The American Kratom Association lists some vendors: https://www.americankratom.org/
I know a guy who had horrid back pain. He was ok with opoids. He even admitted they reduced his pain, but he just felt better about life being on them.
His doctor just decided to not prescribe opoids for any reason.
My friend is miserable now, and takes too much Ibuprofen.
From my unerstanding, you can only take them for about a week before they become addictive, and that in itself is fine, but they become less and less effective as time goes on as well. You've got to take more and more to get the same effect.
Opioids are really only good for short-term pain. Also, doctors are really under the gun right now because they have been overprescribing opioids for years and a non-trivial segment of the population (at least in the US) is addicted to them.
Most of the terpenes in cannabis strains are also found in other plants to varying degrees. Pure extracts are available and legal without question.
I can’t say much about their efficacy though, because I haven’t done a deep dive. Id love to hear from anyone who has done the research or has personal experience, especially without THC or CBD along for the ride.
As far as terpenes specifically, I've been hearing some recent positive buzz about linalool.
Why the pharmaceutical companies haven't done to paracetamol what they did to acetanilide, I don't understand. Providing AM404 directly would avoid the production of NAPQI in the body.
>Example ChR2 expression in the prelimbic PFC. Highmagnification (100x) view of the expression of YFP-ChR2 in the prelimbic PFC demonstrated the co-staining of pyramidal neuron markers (CaMKII) with YFP. Arrows point to examples of co-stained neurons.
(from abstract and supplementary info, scihub is kind of down)
On their own (generally speaking!), very few neurons "respond" to low intensity light. "Optogenetics" stuff like this inserts a gene encoding a light sensitive ion channel in order to make cells responsive to a specific wavelength of light.
So there's two types of targeting here: Targeting gene expression to a certain population of cells, and then spatially targeting a group of those cells with the light - Blue light doesn't travel very far in tissue. (Also targeting multiple cell populations within a region using multiple colors of light + differently sensitive proteins).
Of course your comment still stands - Presumably not all the CamKII-positive PFC neurons are involved in nociception, and rats can't talk about their conscious experience so the answers there are limited to what questions researchers chose to ask using the limited tools available.
We think you can do much better for many applications with targeted stimulation, and that’s the direction that many of these implant technologies are heading. I’m a Neuroscientist working on BCI
Many psychiatric drugs affect large parts of the brain despite the drugs' efficacies being determined by their effects on much smaller parts of the brain.
For example, some anxiolytic and antidepressant effects are mediated by changes at certain serotonin-1A receptors in certain parts of the brain, yet common drugs like SSRIs change serotonin levels all over the brain and body.
You could categorize SSRI-induced activation of 5HT2C receptors as a 'bizarre malfunction', as it causes increased anxiety and dysphoria, which is the opposite of what you'd want if you're trying to treat anxiety or depression.
Alcohol works like this in the body, as well.
I'm skeptical of most brain implants for other reasons[1], though.
try:
perform_task()
except:
pass> An inability to feel pain and temperature often leads to repeated severe injuries. Unintentional self-injury is common in people with CIPA, typically by biting the tongue, lips, or fingers, which may lead to spontaneous amputation of the affected area. In addition, people with CIPA heal slowly from skin and bone injuries. Repeated trauma can lead to chronic bone infections (osteomyelitis) or a condition called Charcot joints, in which the bones and tissue surrounding joints are destroyed.
1: https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/congenital-insens...
But the ability to actively shut off pain once you've acknowledged the problem, or at least numb it down to it not being completely debilitating, could be useful.
However, I can also see how it could be abused to say "ah, it's not that bad" and not have the problem resolved. In my case, it could lead to permanent kidney damage.
It'd be one thing if I had a pre-existing chronic pain condition for which I'd already had such an implant installed, but even in that case I'd have to have enough access to ongoing care to have someone I could call and say "this hurts in a way that's new." The implant itself would need the same kind of management as does a pacemaker or ICD, I imagine. So it seems not tremendously likely that the scenario you describe would play out in practice.
(In any case, I'm good enough at withstanding pain that I waited two full days before deciding it was time to go to the ER, and even at that raised the mild suspicion of the doctor who attended me on the basis of how I wasn't screaming, vomiting, swearing, or otherwise showing much of anything beyond being pale and dehydrated. If it hadn't been for CT results unquestionably showing the calculus, I might've had some trouble with being misidentified as a drug seeker. So I'm not super sure the implant poses much more of a risk for inadvertent self-harm, you know? If I'd been in a worse way than I was, I could well have lost a kidney entirely through sheer stubbornness, no brain implant required.)
That's not what this implant does though. It's all automatic within a few seconds which implies that you'd never be able to discern life threatening pain from stubbing your toe. It seems you'd receive an extremely short lived pain signal (if any) and then it'd be gone.
You'd have to give manual control to the individual for your suggestion to work and that comes with its own issues of "abuse"
>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.
It's a controversial topic, many believe that some of the pain your brain generates is for a problem it thinks you have, but don't. Usually this comes up in the context of back pain.
When you start reading up on certain types of chronic pain, there are quite a few "Doctors cannot find any physical problem causing the pain." Usually no treatment works for these people, as there is no problem to solve, except perhaps a brain anomaly.
Of course, disabling all pain would be a bad idea.
I have also been hopeful of CRISPR targeting of pain, mimicking those with a genetic congenital inability to feel pain. https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/04/01/could-crispr-gene-e... I am watching the progress, but when you suffer from pain and the anxiety from it, nothing comes soon enough. I'm also just a layman - if anyone here knows more and can comment on it, that would be cool.
Last, be weary of snake oil when it comes to any medical condition. Many are unscrupulous.
They seem kind of promising for pain that's alleviated well with opioids versus non-opioids.
(As an aside, this was one of the first ever uses of a microwave.)
<spoilers> During a fight, she starts hitting her mom and, because of the involved stress, she's unable to see the physical damage she's causing, ultimately murdering her. </spoilers>
If this was implemented broadly, it'd very quickly lead to reckless/dangerous behavior.
Though more broadly your point is likely correct that it will change some people's behaviour to do dangerous/stupid things because there's no negative feedback.
Seriously, if I wasn't in as much pain as I am in then I would be out hugging people. Not hiding in my house, sitting on my hands to numb them and so I avoid touching a mouse for fear of searing pain for several days.
I promise I won't lead a (further) reckless life just because my idiopathic pain of 20 years is gone.
Addiction is a phenomenon that predominantly happens in the brain, due to it constantly adapting to find homeostasis. And being unable to perceive pain when you should be is not homeostasis.
Wouldn't be very different to opioids or painkillers; just different mechanisms if action for similar phenomenon
> What’s especially neat is that the stimulated brain region normally doesn’t generate any sense of euphoria, the downfall of opioids. This means it’s likely to decrease the chance of addiction. And because the system only stimulates the brain when it detects pain signals, it lowers the chance the brain adapts to the stimulation.
source: Am heavy opioid user
But the point is, whether you're addicted or not, you cannot stop taking the drug. If you stop alcohol or smoking you might experience light to severe withdrawal symptoms depending on your level of use, even hospitalization. With opioids you will experiences months of crippling pain and inability to eat normally with the only remedy being more opioids. And you might not even know it's the opioids doing it because the doctors give that garbage out like candy and don't warn you about these side effects.
Wireheads are aka Krokodil users.
I'm not anti-drug, but some mechanisms are outside the human's capacity for self control, and pain remediation is one of those.
Put it under someone else's control and you just put that person under someone else's control.
Also being able to turn off pain to a specific problematic area would be nice too, I have a permanent headache from a neurological issue and it'd save me a lot on the quantities of CBD that goes into keeping that at bay!
https://uk.singingdragon.com/products/pain-is-really-strange
This isn't as significant of a concern with a patient who has chronic untreatable major depression. But there is a legitimate fear that these implants could be used to disastrous effects on healthy individuals.
I have some personal experience with this in an ex-friend who takes a lot of pain killers and has done a lot of terrible things to me and others apparently in part because he feels no pain over anything he does and hence no guilt. Possibly there is more going on there, but his successful avoidance of pain seems to be a significant contributor to his alienation from society.
Life is suffering. No suffering, no life. Putting bounds on that might make some sense, but eliminating it could erase much more.
Out of curiosity, what is this conclusion based on? Going off of only what you've said here, insofar as there is a relationship between the painkillers and his antisocial behavior, I would be more inclined to believe any of the following before the idea that a lack of pain somehow directly harmed his morality:
* The condition at the root of his pain also has negative neurological/mental effects
* The fact that he suffers from serious chronic pain (as opposed a lack thereof) impairs his mental state
* Side effects of the painkillers (as opposed to pain relief in and of itself) contribute to his ailing physiological/neurological/mental health
If nothing else this is a point worth at least brief consideration. This is not about whether or not I rigorously tracked my ex friend's descent into evil, it is about whether or not being relieved of pain is the consequence free or limited consequence option that it is being portrayed to be. We used to think polluting wasn't a big deal and we used to think that toxic fire retardants in clothes and furniture wasn't a big deal. As it is if you offer me no more pain ever again medical treatments then I will refuse that.
Right, I'll be sure to check back in 10-15 years.
> This week, a group from the New York University School of Medicine said “no thank you” to medication altogether.
> 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.
> Yeah, it’s pretty wild.
> But it’s a “blueprint” for tuning the brain to ease pain in the future, the authors wrote.
If such implants will be able to eradicate physical pain in humans (so far it's only been tested on rats), will it also eradicate emotional pain?
Ethical questions immediately crop up, since it's possible that experience of pain in oneself is necessary to develop empathy for others, and without empathy you could get sociopathy or at least less compunction against hurting or killing others. The military would probably love this.
cf. Larry Niven, Ring World, Louis Wu
There's very little to be gained from an implant that continuously supresses pain in an otherwise healthy person. It dramatically increases the risk of dying from preventable infections or permanently damaging tissue, bones and ligaments due to overburdening, untreated lesions or fractures.
It'd basically decrease combat readiness in the long run.
I’m sure that the location of pain processing in the brain has been known for a long time. Opto-genetics has been around a long time too. I’m sure that this has already been done. Just like neuralink and neural pixels.
Every time you mess with the brain you are messing with a tuned system of interdependencies. There will be counter-intuitive consequences from doing something like this. It might interfere with your ability to go into shock after injury. It might perturb fundamental bits of your brain resulting in psychiatric injury. The only way to find out is to try it. Sign me up. There will be winners in the basket of simple electrode interventions.
That's a silly assertion. Pain isn't a hallmark of life--physical, mental, or otherwise. There's no 'merit' to it.
There are plenty of organisms without pain receptors that are definitely alive.
Pain doesn't correlate with how alive we are or the worth of our lives. Chronic pain sufferers would certainly rather not have pain.
Ok, this is such a nonsense. Addiction is not caused by euphoria - it's caused because people can't stop taking it because of nasty withdrawals. Now, when you are using it for chronic pain, you don't usually feel any euphoria, but pain relief. I've been using prescribed opioids for years and I am really anxious about doctors falling for this kind of messaging. If I had my prescription stopped, that would be the end of life for me.