Keenan: Brain stimulation making breakthroughs for disorders like ADHD

A decade ago, when I wrote my book Technocreep, I talked about “wireheading” – the practice of directly stimulating the pleasure centres of the brain with small electric currents. That term comes from science fiction. In a 1969 Larry Niven story called Death by Ecstasy, a character apparently starves to death while stimulating his brain. Experiments on animals show that this is indeed a possibility. Perhaps the most disturbing tale was recounted in, of all places, the UCLA Law Review. It describes “a dolphin who, inadvertently left in a pool with the (brain stimulation) switch connected, delighted himself to death with an all-night orgy of pleasure.” That story has never been authenticated.