http://www.iplant.eu/fiction.html
iPlant fiction
This is a novel-in-progress by
Chris Harris. It describes the development of iPlants from the perspective of reserchers working in the private brain surgery industry. The different segments of the story are not in chronological order.
In the novel,
conditional rewarding brain stimulation (CRBS) is first introduced as a last-resort procedure to help morbidly obese patients exercise. The move is motivated by a worsening obesity-cardiovascular-neurodegeneration-aging epidemic, unsuccessful attempts to inhibit hunger in morbidly obese patients with traditional deep brain stimulation procedures (
Hamani et al 2008), and several effective applications of CRBS to motivate exercise in rats (
Burgess et al 1991,
Garner et al 1991). Following success in several hospitals, the procedure is rapidly applied to a wide variety of patient groups and behaviours, including learning. As the effectiveness and safety of the implants improve, an increasing number of clinically healthy individuals choose to undergo the surgical procedure, and private clinics specializing in the procedure become increasingly lucrative. Ike, Meg, Lucy and the narrator Chris conduct R&D at such a clinic/company. Their research is necessarily self-experimental. The novel begins with the public launch of the 'iPlant' - an advanced CRBS implant aimed at a general market, which, unlike previous CRBS implants, targes
dopamine and
serotonin nuclei directly.