Tiny DARPA implants in the nervous system get rid of depression without medication Bashny.Net

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Within the American BRAIN program of the U.S. Defense Agency advanced development DARPA has begun production of tiny electronic implants, which will interact with the nervous system directly and can directly control and regulate various diseases and chronic conditions, such as arthritis, PTSD, Crohn's disease, and depression.

The program ElectRx ("electrics") eventually will have to replace medicine neural implants "closed loop" that will continually assess your condition and then provide the necessary nerve stimulation, to support the work of some organs and biological systems properly. Work is carried out mainly over the American soldiers and veterans, but there is no doubt that someday the technology will reach the civilians, as once — Internet.

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If you become uncomfortable, relax: such an implant already familiar pacemaker supports the lives of thousands, if not millions of people.

The program ElectRx focus on the relatively new field of medical treatment called neuromodulation. As the name implies, neuromodulation is associated with modulation of the nervous system, improvement or repair certain issues. A striking example of neuromodulation can be called cochlear implants that restore hearing by direct modulation of the auditory nervous system of your brain, and deep brain stimulation (DBS), which shows good results in the treatment or management of different conditions (depression or Parkinson's disease) with override erroneous nervous bursts with adjustable healthy stimulation.

So far, these implants have been fairly big things — about the size of a deck of cards — that have made their implantation fairly invasive, and therefore risky. The most advanced implants also lack precision — the stimulating electrodes are usually placed in the right area, but not exactly, and it is also difficult to target a specific nerve fiber (a bundle of nerves). With ElectRx DARPA wants to reduce the size of these neyromoduliruyuschim implants to the size of the nerve fibers. Thus, they can be implanted with a minimally invasive procedure (through a needle) and attached to specific nerve fibers, for very precise stimulation.

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While these implants can't regulate all state or replace all of the drugs — at least not yet — they can be very effective in preventing quite a large number of States. Mostly these conditions are caused by the fact that your nervous system is triggered incorrectly in the first place due to inflammatory diseases, but also disorders of the brain and mind. Currently a variety of medications trying to appease these violent neurons and to push back the nerves get up to mischief by manipulating various neurotransmitters — but the same effect can be cause by means of an electronic implant, which catches the flash, purifies the signal and forwards it.

"In the framework of the DARPA ElectRx program plans to develop a technology that can fundamentally change the way the diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of injuries and diseases," says Doug Weber from DARPA. — Instead of relying only on medication we envision a closed loop system, which on paper will work like a tiny, intelligent pacemaker. It will constantly assess the condition and provide incentives in order to maintain healthy organ function and help patients to stay healthy and great to use their own bodies."

Despite the need for mass technological breakthroughs DAPRA plans to hold trials of ElectRx on humans within five years. The initial goal will be improving the quality of lives of us soldiers and veterans — though there's no word on which States will focus DARPA. Most likely something "simple" like arthritis, but may be post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Earlier this year, DARPA has announced a similar program to develop brain implants that can restore lost memories and experiences.

While the announcement about the DARPA ElectRx focused purely on the medical use of miniature neural implants, there are of course many other uses that may arise in the process of planned implantation — both for soldiers and for civilians. With a few well-placed implants on your spine, you can just snap your fingers and off pain, force the body to move faster and stronger. With implants placed accurately around the right nerve fibers, you can literally get manual control of your organs slow down or speed up your heart, have liver or customize almost any other function of the body. Transhumanism is approaching.

Source: hi-news.ru