DB Chapter 6 Respond to the prompt below. The prompt/question is designed to bri
ID: 3497793 • Letter: D
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DB Chapter 6 Respond to the prompt below. The prompt/question is designed to bring about the Suggested length is 100 words. Submit your response here by the date on the course key points of the module through peer interaction and group participation. calendar so that we have time to discuss the implications of your response. You should do the reading assignment for the week before you answer your discussion question, and you should refer to the reading in your response, if appropriate. You may include material from other sources in your response if desired. You will also be responsible for participating in at least three threads other than your own by responding to the posts of two other participants. Responses should be 50 words each. Suppose that you could have an electrode implanted in your brain and connected to an iPod-style controller. Twirl the controller and electrical impulses stimulate one of your brains "pleasure centers" (see text). The very few humans who have ever had a chance to try direct brain stimulation report feeling intense pleasure that is better than food, water, sex, drugs, or any other primary reinforcer (Heath, 1963). What would be the impact of such a procedure if it were made available to large segments of the general population? Search entries or author Unread 6 ReplyExplanation / Answer
Current methods for improving your mood are wildly inefficient. Recreational drugs can make you crazy, pharmaceuticals can erase your personality and damage your organs. Sugar and alcohol make you fat and depressed. Caffeine stresses you out, and cigarettes fill your lungs with death. We don't welcome these side effects, but we deal with them because these substances have the potential to alter our emotional thermostat.
It would be so much easier if we could bypass the body altogether and go straight to the source: Our brain.
You could create your own reality, instead of having your emotions be subject to the external world around you. This, essentially, is the essence of addiction.
In addition to its potential to teach us volumes about how the brain works, years down the road, this direct access to brain networks could be used to treat epilepsy, mental illness, chronic pain, and brain cancer with few to no side effects.
Yet as with most forms of medical research involving the brain's pleasure center, the potential for abuse from patients—and exploitation of that abuse from big business—is incredibly high.
Anyone with even the most casual sci-fi imagination can conjure up some pretty nefarious uses for a brain implant that controls your body and emotions. Films like Universal Soldier, The Matrix, and The Manchurian Candidate have given us a healthy fear of authoritarian biotechnology.
Knowing what we do about our difficulties handling substances like sugar, booze, drugs, or experiences like sex or television, in spite of all the problems that come with them, how much trouble could we get into when there isn't the disincentive of side effects?
Humans learn through experience. As children, our emotions explode wildly, but most of us eventually learn to control our behavior by regulating those emotions, accepting momentary discomfort in exchange for meeting long term goals (i.e., resisting the impulse to punch your boss in the face or reveal how much you like someone on the first date).
Technology in the wrong hands always has potentially negative consequences.
It's possible the wrong hands may be our own.
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