Into the cuckoo's nest

Woah. Apparently brain surgery is coming back. Remember Walter Freeman and his lobotomies from the 50s and 60s? Well, it's not using an ice pick, but with lasers they're burning little holes into the brain in an attempt to see if they can cure OCD. Apparently they had success with one person, another had no change, and another became incapacitated.

"For all the progress that has been made, some psychiatrists and medical ethicists say, doctors still do not know much about the circuits they are tampering with, and the results are unpredictable...."

I read a fantastic book called "My Lobotomy" (Link to the NPR story) about a guy who went through a lobotomy when he was in his teens. He was trying to figure out what effect it had on his life, and if it's what caused him so much trouble. He's a little impaired from it, but apparently your brain can grow back some of the damaged parts, and since he was 12 when it happened, some spaces grew back and he has better function than most who had an icepick to the brain.

I'm not sure brain surgery is the way of the future. Of course, ECT was given a bad rap not too long ago, and now it's back. Doctors are using it to "shake" people out of bad depressions, and it seems to be working.

So who knows what will happen in the future. Maybe we'll all end up with better brains through science. Or we'll all end up in nursing homes.