60 Minutes
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2024
26:38 · 1.4M views · Jan 15, 2024
A 60 Minutes report on neurosurgeon Ali Rezai using focused ultrasound on the brain to treat Alzheimer's and addiction. It shows experiments opening the blood-brain barrier and targeting addiction-related regions.
HN cites it as a fascinating look at ultrasound-based brain treatments.
4 comments from Hacker News
Have you seen the video on hn a couple of weeks ago about the scientist using ultrasound to halt the progression of Alzheimer’s and to treat addiction? Most fascinating video I’ve seen in a long time. Edit: If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend checking it out this video
It patches a misconfigured reward system pathway in the brain using hormones. > There are two plausible places GLP-1 drugs could lower weight: the body or the brain. In the body, it could change stomach contraction rate, hormone production, etc. In the brain, it could control the mental sensation of hunger. To separate these two effects, scientists bred rats that only had GLP-1 receptors in the body vs. in the brain. The results were unequivocal: Ozempic and its relatives work in the brain. Although they have some effects in the body, these are short-lived and not really relevant to their mechanism of action for weight loss. This should've been obvious the moment there was evidence GLP-1 agonists were preventing addictive behaviors, versus solely digestive system effects. Interestingly, this works by crossing the blood brain barrier, so the next question is: can you speed up the effects by temporarily opening that barrier using ultrasound such is done for Alzheimer's treatment [1]? Also, what does an fMRI look like when someone is being treated with a GLP-1 [2]? [1] this video [2] [LINK]
TDCS is a form of neurostimulation that can be used to treat addiction, among other things. You can’t outrun a bad diet, and if you look at food as an addiction, then you can treat it that way. There’s even an ultrasound brain surgery they can do for addiction. this video
What if it's a really skinny ice pick? Apparently if you're really good, you can actually find the part of the brain that has to do with addiction and zap it. They use ultrasound after getting it to work with a metal probe. this video