Christopher deCharms, the chief executive of Omneuron is planning the “unthinkable,” teaching us to train our brains to manage neurological and psychological conditions — anything from drug addiction, to chronic pain, craving that delicious cheeseburger and even “truth verification.” Essentially, Omneuron is giving people the power to control their own thoughts. God Forbid.
Omneuron is one of a number of new companies that are commercializing a brain-scanning technology called real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. Using large scanners to measure blood flow to different parts of the brain, the technology makes the brain’s activity visible by revealing which of its parts are busiest when we perform different tasks.
It sounds rather silly: Are our minds really powerful enough to control our own thoughts, or are mind and matter so far removed they are their own enemies? Common sense would suggest the former. However, when pain is an issue, maybe we’re not as in control as we could be. After I broke my ankle in a high school basketball game, I rolled around on the ground screaming obscenties at anyone who’d listen. My father calmly approached and said with a smile, “if I hit your arm really hard with a 2×4, you’ll forget about your ankle!” While cruel and humorless at the time, maybe he was on to something. Could I essentially think the pain away?
Here’s how Omneuron uses fMRI to treat chronic pain: A patient slides into the coffin-like scanner and watches a computer-generated flame projected on the screen of virtual-reality goggles; the flame’s intensity reflects the neural activity of regions of the brain involved in the perception of pain. Using a variety of mental techniques — for instance, imagining that a painful area is being flooded with soothing chemicals — most people can, with a little concentration, make the flame wax or wane. As the flame wanes, the patient feels better. Superficially similar to an older technology, electroencephalogram biofeedback, which measures electrical feedback across multiple areas of the brain, fMRI feedback measures the blood flow in precise areas of the brain.
“We believe that people will use real-time fMRI feedback to hone cognitive strategies that will increase activation of brain regions,” Dr. deCharms said. With practice and repetition, he said, this could lead to “long-term changes in the brain.”
In time, he hopes, a patient could evoke the effect without the machine.
But Dr. deCharms says that controlling pain is just one of many possible uses for fMRI feedback. Today, Omneuron is also researching treatments for addiction, depression and other psychological illnesses. In addition, he said. the company has contemplated “several dozen applications,” including the treatment of stroke and epilepsy. Brain scanning could even be used to improve athletic performance, he speculated.
Doctors and drug-abuse experts are particularly excited about the idea of treating addiction using fMRI. While scientists have talked about such an application since the technology was invented, Omneuron is the first to work on a real therapy. “We might have a tool to help control the inner sensation of craving,” said Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which helped fund Omneuron’s research into addiction.
A growing number of ventures hope to turn fMRI into a business. The most well-publicized is No Lie MRI, which wants to sell brain scanning to law firms and governmental bodies like police departments or security and intelligence agencies as a replacement for the notoriously unreliable polygraph test. No Lie MRI has already begun selling what it calls its truth verification technology for about $10,000 to individuals keen to prove their innocence.
Joel Huizenga, the chief executive of No Lie MRI, said: “A technology gets known by its first product. For fMRI, that application is going to be truth verification.”
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