by Chuck Ruby, Ph.D.

MIT Technology Review published a recent article entitled, "Military Funds Brain-Computer Interfaces to Control Feelings" describing research funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that uses brain electrode implants to detect and prevent certain feelings and behaviors. The article says the goal is "to use brain implants to read, and then control, the emotions of mentally ill people". This is nothing less than Orwellian dystopia and brings to mind images of the 1970's novel and movie, The Stepford Wives. I have several questions.

One question to ask is how are we going to define “mentally ill people”? Just a quick look back over the changing, vague, and over-inclusive definitions of “mental illness”, to include the voting in and out of certain pet diagnoses, such as homosexuality, self-defeating personality disorder, asperger’s disorder, and attenuated psychosis syndrome, tells us that any unwanted behavior or experience can be dubbed “mental illness” depending on the desires of those in power. This usually means those on the diagnoses committees, heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies, and now with this line of research underway, the medical devices companies will soon chip in.

There have even been attempts to claim certain personal convictions such as liberalism, conservatism, and religiosity are signs of “mental illnesses”. Are we going to allow some authority to prevent us from having those convictions by identifying the brain circuits involved and zapping them?

Further complicating this is the dimensional rather than categorical reality of those things called “mental illness”. The problems addressed are human problems that everyone shares to varying degrees of severity. They aren't brain diseases. At what level of severity must one get to before being considered a candidate for this procedure? According to the article, these brain implants would only be considered for people who are truly debilitated and can’t be helped any other way. One psychiatrist involved in this research said, “This is never going to be a first-line option: ‘Oh, you have PTSD, let’s do surgery,’...It’s going to be for people who don’t respond to the other treatments.” Yeah right. We've heard that before.

Another question is whether these forms of "treatment" will be mandatory or voluntary. Given the poor track record our mental health industry has regarding the protection of human dignity and autonomy, I think I know the answer.

Well-intentioned as it may be, this research is a threat to us all. It conflates brain activation with lived experiences. The amygdala doesn't generate fear, people generate fear. The neurons in the amygdala just sit there and react as they are built to react when an adjoining neuron activates. They don't know what fear is. Fear is a meaningful human experience that tells us something may be a threat. Fear, as well as all other human emotions, are what make us human.

Considering the fact that there are nearly 100 billion neurons in the human brain and that feelings and behaviors involve several diverse areas of the brain in very complex ways, it is unlikely we are ever going to be able to achieve more than a crude approach to controlling people’s lived experiences and behaviors this way.

To save time and money, why don’t we just fit everyone with a shock collar at birth?