Doctors discovered that stimulating the claustrum with electrodes caused the patient’s consciousness to fade out, and return when stimulation ended. They performed a few tests to ensure it wasn’t just memory loss. Now, it’s just one patient (it’s not exactly common to stick electrodes that deep in the brain, and this is the first claustrum targeted). What I find interesting is that this was predicted by Francis Crick, who was working on a paper on this very possibility just before he passed away.
Found via reddit in a science summary post: Consciousness On/Off Switch Discovered Deep in Brain.
5 Likes
Nice one!
…In spite of it being rather a big deal to go poking electrodes into somebody’s brain, I’m surprised that this sort of research moves this slowly; that they only just got around to stimulating this part of the brain seems, I dunno… tardy.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 956 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
