No more painkillers A side-effect free, and drug-free method to relieve pain | Hacker News Reader

No more painkillers A side-effect free, and drug-free method to relieve pain

universal-sci.com

24 pointsgurjeet14 comments

In rats. "According to Forni, it is possible to up-scale the electrode designs to be applicable to humans. "

I'm curious to know how they came to the conclusion there were no side effects, even in rats. Everything has side effects.

Changes in behavior, changes in body chemistry, appetite, lethargy, aggression and many more observable things I wouldn't know.

My mom has implanted electrodes for pain relief, so this technique isn’t new, although it sounds like it might be much more targeted here (and implanted in the brain rather than the pain site)

> this technique isn’t new, although it sounds like it might be much more targeted here and implanted in the brain rather than the pain site @josephpmay

Uh... That's the 'new' bit. These are extremely thin electrodes that are implanted into the brain tissue.

That is an entirely new procedure and process.

All other pain management attempts to block the pain signaling down-stream. These down-stream signal blockers have very limited effect as the machinery in the brain still sends the signals.

This process prevents those signals from being generated.

THAT is entirely new.

Implanting electrodes directly into the pain management area of the brain...

THAT is entirely new.

Don't denigrate someone's work. That's childish.

You had a fairly helpful and insightful comment until you ruined it with:

> Don't denigrate someone's work. That's childish.

"Uh..." is pretty off-putting as well. Might as well just come out and call people stupid. I'm glad most people don't talk like that on HN (although there was a flood of it when Reddit went down for half a day.)

The rest of the comment was perfectly fine, and would have been effective without the downspeak bits.

Original paper/article: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj2847

It’s highly unlikely that anything that has an effect will have zero side effects.

Perhaps, we just don’t yet know what those side effects will be.

Rats, people, just rats for now.

I somehow missed a comma and read that as "rat people, just rats now" and my mind raced to interpret that in sooo many different ways.

I’ve seen several brain-electrode stories on HN in the last couple of weeks. Has there been a breakthrough in the underlying technology or theory of this medical technology?

Isn't the disfigurement usually associated with leprosy due to the sufferer's lack of pain feedback?

tl;dr stimulate pain relief nerves in the brain with electrodes

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