A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#101

Post by fao_ » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

cf141q5325 wrote: post #99

fao_ wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried reading the article? Because he literally gave himself severe brain damage / trauma from the operation: """ 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…

>While it was just "postoperative brain swelling" and the brain "can heal". 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.…

> As i said, brain swelling from the surgery.

Which constitutes brain trauma!

> Which wasnt the case, it worked and he collected his dataset with his ancient hardware till it had to be removed again.

Unfortunately as others have pointed out, his dataset is pretty worthless and the claims around it have been largely unsubstantiated. From your earlier post,

> And the frame of the article is aimed at clicks and keeping the reader hooked by creating the impression he had made some monumental mistake.

IMHO he had, and if you ask literally any neurosurgeon or anyone working in neuroscience I'm willing to bet that they would say the same.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#102

Post by derangedHorse » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

fao_ wrote: post #95

cf141q5325 wrote: post #67

The headline is quite a bit of clickbait. And the frame of the article is aimed at clicks and keeping the reader hooked by creating the impression he had made some monumental mistake. He had some brain swelling shortly after the surgery. Thats it. Still great to have posted it, amazing guy

Have you tried reading the article? Because he literally gave himself severe brain damage / trauma from the operation: """ 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…

The original commentator's point still stands. The initial post-operative complications were chalked up to brain swelling in the end and the lasting damage was fairly minor for the procedure being conducted. All mentions of fear from the operation were attributed to the surgeon performing the operation rather than Dr.Kennedy who was undergoing the surgery.

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."'

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#103

Post by fundamental » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 3:12 PM UTC

fao_ wrote: post #101

cf141q5325 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While it was just "postoperative brain swelling" and the brain "can heal". 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.…

> As i said, brain swelling from the surgery. Which constitutes brain trauma! > Which wasnt the case, it worked and he collected his dataset with his ancient hardware till it had to be removed again. Unfortunately as others have pointed out, his dataset is pretty worthless and the claims around it have been largely unsubstantiated. From your earlier post, > And the frame of the article is aimed at clicks and keeping…

> his dataset is pretty worthless and the claims around it have been largely unsubstantiated.

The really sad part of it is that with fairly minor changes it could have been a landmark dataset IMO. Having better recording equipment, a lower noise floor environment for data collection (e.g. don't run fluorescent lights while recording), having precise timestamps integrated into the recording, better temporal separation between recording of various phrases, adding simultaneous EMG/EEG, etc would have resolved quite a few data related issues. It's a unique situation (for good reason), but bad data...

From seeing the data, I suspect the electrode placement was in a good enough location that novel things could have been done with a cleaner data source. I guess the major limiting factor is that absolutely no one would want to be involved with the project at that stage. What sort of IRB would approve any of this? Better data would answer some key questions that could generalize to lock-in patients (theoretically) and worst case it would provide a strong indicator that no significant BCI can be made for the task given the electrode placement.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#104

Post by cf141q5325 » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

fao_ wrote: post #101

cf141q5325 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While it was just "postoperative brain swelling" and the brain "can heal". 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.…

> As i said, brain swelling from the surgery. Which constitutes brain trauma! > Which wasnt the case, it worked and he collected his dataset with his ancient hardware till it had to be removed again. Unfortunately as others have pointed out, his dataset is pretty worthless and the claims around it have been largely unsubstantiated. From your earlier post, > And the frame of the article is aimed at clicks and keeping…

>Which constitutes brain trauma!

Yes, i got that from your post the first time. Like i said, brainswelling from the surgery. It read to me as if the article wanted to create another picture. The author not mentioning up front that it was only the probes that got implanted left to me the impression that the speech problems were due to an error with the implant. Which it wasnt.

>Unfortunately as others have pointed out, his dataset is pretty worthless and the claims around it have been largely unsubstantiated.

One said the approach was worthless, because there exist better (less invasive and cheaper) approaches using eye movement tracking apps today. It was also as the reason given why nobody else researched into this. That wasnt however aimed at the dataset. The feedback to the dataset started at

>When Kennedy finally did present the data that he’d gathered from himself ...

Notably >By taking on the risk himself, by working alone and out-of-pocket, Kennedy managed to create a sui generis record of language in the brain, Chang says: “It’s a very precious set of data, whether or not it will ultimately hold the secret for a speech prosthetic. It’s truly an extraordinary event.”

>IMHO he had, and if you ask literally any neurosurgeon or anyone working in neuroscience I'm willing to bet that they would say the same.

He was 66 and was first left hanging waiting for a willing subject who could still talk to validate earlier results. He then couldnt afford recertification of his invention and was faced with nobody else working on this approach.

You are skipping over the fact that it worked. His lifes work and deep obsession turned out to work. He did it, what more is there to say other then good for him? Even if the dataset would turn out to be without practical implications, you can see at his pondering at the very end, whether to put an implant into the other site, that he would have regretted it deeply to have it sit there and stare at him for the rest of his life.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#105

Post by mwattsun » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

rjh29 wrote: post #92

cf141q5325 wrote: post #67

The headline is quite a bit of clickbait. And the frame of the article is aimed at clicks and keeping the reader hooked by creating the impression he had made some monumental mistake. He had some brain swelling shortly after the surgery. Thats it. Still great to have posted it, amazing guy

Thanks, headlines like these I always go straight to the comments to find out why the headline is totally wrong. It's quite satisfying. If you like this sort of thing check out the 'savedyouaclick' subreddit for more!

This is the greatest thing about Hacker News in my opinion. Obviously, there are limits on what I know so I depend on people here to help me out. Thank you! That said, I've learned that headlines are often not written by the authors of the article, but the magazine editor to drive clicks.

“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

https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#106

Post by cf141q5325 » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

mwattsun wrote: post #105

rjh29 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, headlines like these I always go straight to the comments to find out why the headline is totally wrong. It's quite satisfying. If you like this sort of thing check out the 'savedyouaclick' subreddit for more!

This is the greatest thing about Hacker News in my opinion. Obviously, there are limits on what I know so I depend on people here to help me out. Thank you! That said, I've learned that headlines are often not written by the authors of the article, but the magazine editor to drive clicks. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. I…

Its also a great danger. I didnt aim at giving a summary, i just called out the frame the author created. Something that "fao_" pointed out well when coming to the authors conclusion as well.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#107

Post by saghm » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #32

markdown wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why Wikipedia is so western-centric. I could be the world expert in my field, say... coconut picking. I haven't published any papers about picking coconuts, and neither is it a subject that the newspapers want to write about. If I wrote wikipedia entry about picking coconuts, it would be immediately deleted because personal experience isn't a citable source. I need to tell some other fool about what I do, ha…

Larry Sanger, who cofounded Wikipedia, left Wikipedia to found a competitor named Citizendium, where experts were supposed to play a greater role than on Wikipedia. It failed. The Encyclopedia Britannica, which had articles exclusively written by experts, was also outcompeted by Wikipedia. It's unlikely that Wikipedia is going to change its model to give experts a greater say than they already do, but it would be int…

I might be remembering wrong, but wasn't Encarta mostly offline (or at least, it required an offline installation)? I vaguely remember my family having an Encarta CD among all our CDs in the computer desk drawer; it must have been the late 90s or early 2000s, so I was still pretty young, so I might be remembering wrong. Did Encarta ever try to go fully online? I feel like that's one of the big reasons why Wikipedia was able to grow so fast; being web-based means that anyone can access it with software they already have installed and share links with their friends/family with very little effort. Maybe there was a way to share entries in Encarta, but I have trouble imagining it had as little friction as just sharing a URL.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#108

Post by mwattsun » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

cf141q5325 wrote: post #106

mwattsun wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the greatest thing about Hacker News in my opinion. Obviously, there are limits on what I know so I depend on people here to help me out. Thank you! That said, I've learned that headlines are often not written by the authors of the article, but the magazine editor to drive clicks. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. I…

Its also a great danger. I didnt aim at giving a summary, i just called out the frame the author created. Something that "fao_" pointed out well when coming to the authors conclusion as well.

I wasn't responding to the contents of the article, but the usefulness of Hacker News as a reality check.

I skimmed the article. It's from 2016 so it's outdated and doesn't include comments about Elon Musk's Neuralink

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#109

Post by bawolff » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 5:18 PM UTC

eternityforest wrote: post #94

bawolff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but realistically wikiversity doesn't have much to show for it.

It's sad that wikibooks and Wikipedia have almost nothing interesting that's complete.

Wikipedia and wikibooks have plenty of interesting things. Wikiversity less so.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#110

Post by eternityforest » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #109

eternityforest wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that wikibooks and Wikipedia have almost nothing interesting that's complete.

Wikipedia and wikibooks have plenty of interesting things. Wikiversity less so.

Oops, I meant wikibooks and Wikipedia.

Wikibooks has a few things, but almost nothing seems actually complete and hardly anyone seems to work on in, compared to Wikipedia