Deep Brain Stimulation

Speechlessness at the push of a button

Is an electrode in the brain qualitatively the same as an artificial hip joint? How does it feel to live with implanted electrodes in the brain, which influence one’s own motor skills, but also emotions? How would it be to be able to put yourself in any mood at the push of a button? Who is it that then feels: the machine or me?

The group around “Deep Brain Stimulation” spent several months working on deep brain stimulation, a procedure used to treat severe Parkinson’s disease, but also increasingly incurable depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders and other diseases originating in the brain. We conducted interviews with doctors from the internationally renowned neurosurgery department of the University Hospital in Freiburg, with patients before and after surgery, with brain specialists, and were present at one operation.

Here, electrodes are implanted into the brain and stimulate individual areas. This improves movement disorders in Parkinson’s patients. In animal experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, however, the technique was also used to manipulate social behaviour, emotions and movements in animals and to some extent in humans – with ambivalent but nevertheless impressive results. (After increasing criticism this research was discontinued). Emotion at the push of a button? Memory enhancement by battery? As a “positive” side effect in stimulated Parkinson’s patients, an improved memory occasionally occurs. Could this point the way to a new technique for improving the human being?

All the doctors we spoke with refuse to be used for optimization. But where is the line between reducing suffering and improving “natural” properties? We found a report by a researcher at Oxford University in which a woman was given deep brain stimulation to help her sexual problems. The woman had the device removed. Why? The subsequent high level of sexual activity was disturbing to her.

Nevertheless, from our point of view, it is quite conceivable that deep brain stimulation will be used in the future for targeted optimization. “What can be done, will be done” is a sentence that we encountered several times in our research. Is there a limit where we should accept our weaknesses, our mortality, our pain, in favor of preserving the “human”, or could it make sense to try to improve learning disabilities by deep brain stimulation in order to create a greater equality of opportunity, and to equip fighter pilots with technology that sharpens their concentration? Has the romantic ideal of the human being become obsolete as a deficiency? Why should we not want to improve the brain by machine, when we also use pacemakers?

In our workshop performance we use edited interview material from deep brain stimulated, apologists and skeptics. We describe side effects, simulate happiness at the push of a button. What would 17-year-old students improve with deep brain stimulation?

Theatre for the brain!

Developed during the theatrical-scientific youth congress “PIMP YOUR BRAIN” at Theater Freiburg in April 2009

Resumption on the occasion of the Science Days in October 2009 at Europapark Rust