https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotrophic_electrode
> In Neural Signals' implantations of six people, only one had a short lived episode of focal motor seizures and brain swelling leading to temporary weakness on the contralateral side of the body.
> That person was me, Phil Kennedy. And here I am writing this addition to the Wikipedia
(the IP has more edits like that to that article)
Someone already fixed it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neurotrophic_elec...
https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-c...
Futurists and the general populace can hand-wave about humanity's glorious digital future all they want - it will not come to pass without heroes like this paving the way.
> For human subjects he would replace the sciatic nerve with a chemical cocktail known to stimulate neural growth.
Anyone know what this "chemical cocktail" is they're referring to?
edit: haters will downvote me but look it up for yourself and upvote if you agree
I would avoid commenting on the people down-voting you, that typically just makes it worse.
[1] - https://www.neomed-clinic.com/the-best-nerve-growth-factor-s...
See science: https://nootritious.com/nootropics/lions-mane/
Anyone who things an abled person wants a cell phone in their head probably already lost their mind in the colloquial sense long ago.
It seems like he's doing amazing work that will really help a lot of people though. But being a cyborg doesn't sound all that great.
Imagine what would the repercussions for the field be if the surgery went a little worse since it seems so badly planned from the outset? More restrictive regulation against the practice? All major funding either pulled outright or forever tainted with the stigma arising from this endeavor ?
I don't know what it is about HN that this forum praises seemingly stupid pursuits such as a neurosurgeon choosing to operate on himself without (a) Validating the approach better and (b) Having a backup plan in case things went bad (No person in the US to come and care for him etc) and (c) Using antiquated electronics in the eyes of the very experts he was entrusting with the operation.
To Kennedy, he had no other options.
Interesting to ponder where that dividing line resides.
this guy will go down in history as one of the few that paved the way for humanity to evolve beyond the horribly fragile flesh-and-meat sacks that we are today.
Here is something for the impatient.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/11/09/247535/to-study-...
I think authors rely on this too much as a crutch. It can work if the hook makes the reader actually wildly curious as to how that situation came about. But otherwise it comes across as like a turgid interruption.
I also dislike it in television. It's one of JJ Abrams' favorite techniques. Open with some crazy scenario, and then "two weeks previous" comes up on the title screen. He did it all the time in Alias. Although I think it worked in Mission Impossible III.
Or could anyone here just post a tldr summary perchance?
Thanks.
[1]: https://www.wired.com./2016/01/phil-kennedy-mind-control-com...
He had some brain swelling shortly after the surgery. Thats it.
Still great to have posted it, amazing guy
If you like this sort of thing check out the 'savedyouaclick' subreddit for more!
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues.”
Gell-Mann Amnesia
"""
At first the procedure that Kennedy hired Cervantes to
perform—the implantation of a set of glass-and-gold-wire
electrodes beneath the surface of his own brain—seemed to go
quite well. There wasn’t much bleeding during the surgery. But
his recovery was fraught with problems. Two days in, Kennedy was
sitting on his bed when, all of a sudden, his jaw began to grind
and chatter, and one of his hands began to shake. Powton worried
that the seizure would break Kennedy’s teeth.
His language problems persisted as well. “He wasn’t making
sense anymore,” Powton says. “He kept apologizing, ‘Sorry,
sorry,’ because he couldn’t say anything else.” Kennedy
could still utter syllables and a few scattered words, but he
seemed to have lost the glue that bound them into phrases and
sentences. When Kennedy grabbed a pen and tried to write a
message, it came out as random letters scrawled on a page.
At first Powton had been impressed by what he called Kennedy’s
Indiana Jones approach to science: tromping off to Belize,
breaking the standard rules of research, gambling with his own
mind. Yet now here he was, apparently locked in. “I thought we
had damaged him for life,” Powton says. “I was like, what have
we done?”
"""
"""
Kennedy’s recovery had continued to go poorly: The more effort
he put into talking, the more he seemed to get locked up. And no
one from the US, it became clear, was coming to take the doctor
off Powton and Cervantes’ hands.
"""
- Motor control impairment
- Extreme language impairment to the point that subject is unable to write coherently
- Literal fucking seizures
- Possible prefrontal damage
"""
When I meet Kennedy there one day in May 2015, [...] Kennedy says
with a slight Irish accent [...] “The retractor pulled on a
branch of the nerve that went to my temporalis muscle. I can’t
lift this eyebrow.” Indeed, I notice that the operation has left
his handsome face with an asymmetric droop.
"""
"""
Kennedy said when we first started watching the video. But now he
deviates from our discussion about evolution to bark orders at the
screen, like a sports fan in front of a TV. “No, don’t do
that, don’t lift it up,” Kennedy says to the pair of hands
operating on his brain. “It shouldn’t go in at that angle,”
he explains to me before turning back to the computer. “Push it
in more than that!” he says. “OK, that’s plenty, that’s
plenty. Don’t push anymore!”
"""
Another thing to take note of is that Kennedy mentioned the permanent damage had occurred "when he was putting the electronics in", which implies it happened during the second operation (the first operation with the seemingly severe symptoms were for the electrodes).
No where in the article does it indicate his mind was ever close to being lost besides the headline. It even took note to say he stayed in a villa during recovery which the surgeon made daily visits to (with the implication being a hospital would have been best for around-the-clock monitoring if his well-being was truly in danger).
Also, it's against Hacker News guidelines to ask whether someone read the article or not:
'Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."'
As i said, brain swelling from the surgery. The article first gave me the impression it was because of what was implanted, ie his implant not working. Which wasnt the case, it worked and he collected his dataset with his ancient hardware till it had to be removed again.
I indeed read over the part of the sentence with the facial nerve though. His wording seemed fine though, i have met quite a few people who talk like this. People who go to Belize for brainsurgery are expected to be a bit eccentric.
While I am glad that there was minimal harm done here, I am perplexed as to why a Neurosurgeon would risk their decades of training and career for such a high-risk low reward surgery. This could have been a terrible ending.
We should be weary about tampering with things we do not completely comprehend.
There's an interesting history of it in a book called Who Goes First?
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Goes-First-Lawrence-Altman/dp/052...
He was fully prepared for a terrible ending. He weighed the risks and rewards, and thought it would be worth it.
And it was.