Eric Tomsky
Information Systems
Treatment of
Depression
At
Stanford University, researchers are working hard to develop an implantable
chip that will help treat depression through the utilization of electrical
stimulus. This chip has thus far only been tested on mice but it is the size of
a grain of rice and will be placed in the infralimbic cortex which is the
center of the brain that deals with “models of depression and anxiety”.[1]
This device, if successful, could revolutionize the way society as a whole
views mental disorders as well as give physicians a better understanding of how
to treat these diseases. Additionally, this development could improve the way
in which society consumes electricity in that electrical engineers have
utilized a new form of energy transference in lieu of the fact that batteries
and other forms of powering the chip would be too bulky and or ineffective.
Engineers have utilized the actual body of the mouse itself in order to power
the implant- the bodies of the mice will be able to, “interact with
surrounding magnetic fields, helping focus energy like a lens from the
transmitter to the receiver in the implant.”[2]
Although
this device holds much promise in the multiple fields it can affect, there are
some questionable points that will have one remaining skeptical. Firstly, this
device has only been tested on mice and though these trials have yielded some
success, it does not seem this product will be available for the treatment of
humans any time soon. Second, the Mice had to travel in an area that was lined
with a magnetic lattice and could not roam too far from it in order for the
implant to work. Would this change the infrastructure of society if these
become more streamlined in treatment? What would entail installing magnetic
lattice so these chips could be effective in a social setting? Lastly, even though
the device’s intended purpose is to ease the comprehension of mental disorders,
not a single article spoke of how the implant could collect data and present it
in a usable format for neuroscientists to interpret. Overall, I feel this
device has a lot of promise but a long way to go in order to be practical and
to be used in the way in which it was intended.
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