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Comment by superchroma | Hacker News Reader

"It’s noninvasive and safe"

I've read one detailed account of how someone who had this treatment to relieve depression received brain damage as a result, and had difficulty getting acknowledgement it happened afterwards as people continued to cite this phrase, so I am extremely skeptical. This isn't a thing where you want side effects..

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You don't know if you're comparing the same things beyond the part where both involve electric stimulation to the brain. If I'm right in guessing that you're referring to electroshock therapy then these two treatments are about as similar as drinking one glass of water or drinking four liters.

It was noted elsewhere that this is like trying to fix a hard drive with a magnet, and I think that analogy works. The size of the magnet isn't really the issue if you don't know what you're doing.

Not really, the brain is not like a hard drive. It is a tangled mesh of wired up neurons that constantly actively fire and stimulate each other to stay functional. They do not function in a remotely similar way.

But if you insist on an analogy to putting a magnet next to a hard drive, then you're basically talking about erasing neuronal connections and destroying cells. Mild electric stimulation does not do this.

And again, don't confuse something like transcranial direct-current stimulation for something like electroconvulsive therapy. One uses up to 4 mA, the other 800 mA.

Seriously, this whole discussion feels like my in-laws complaining about the "scary WiFi" radiation because they don't see the difference between that and radioactivity.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct-current_st...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy

I was not referring to electroconvulsive therapy, and my point was that we're interfacing with a very custom, very complex system with an imprecise tool.

you're making up your own analogy by taking the magnet thing and running with it.

let me rephrase the earlier commenter's magnet analogy.

a scalpel can end a human life, it can also be used as the tool of salvation : the difference being the methods used and the skill behind the hands holding that blade.

let's apply the analogy practically with regard to what we're talking about.

The brain, fundamentally, uses small and precisely metered bursts of electricity as one means to network components together to create a functional whole. By zapping whole sub-sections of neuronal material we're apply a similar concept as to what is already used by the brain in a severely imprecise and brute manner.

a harddrive writes with small bursts of precisely confined and aimed magnetism. It can also be err'd and cleared with large amounts of strong magnetism.

no one ever claimed that a hard drive is anything similar to a brain; the analogy was towards the methodology behind trying to manipulate very-small and complicated structures with very large and powerful tools incapable of finite and small manipulation.

"this isnt a thing where you want side effects"

ok, name me 1 medical procedure or medication that has no chance of side effects in all people.

For instance with regards to medical procedure a colonoscopy is a pretty routine procedure. However if you've ever had one then will make you sign a form that you accept the possible risks and one of those is that there is a small chance that something tears and you bleed out. the pros of getting one far outweigh the cons however

I find the all or nothing argument quite moronic in just about everything i can think of.

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