1953. When psychologists James Olds and Peter Milner discovered a way to stimulate sexual pleasure in the brain, two key findings emerged: one was the neuroanatomy of pleasure and happiness. The second was how catastrophe befell anyone able to harness and channel pleasure at will. The test subjects of their seminal paper were rats, placed to wander aimlessly in a Skinner Box, a chamber designed to study conditioned behavior. When interacting with the lever, the rodents would receive an electrical stimulation which elicited pleasure in their septal region. In other tests, the end result of pulling a lever would be pain. Rats would learn to avoid the “pain” levers, while developing a fixation for the “pleasure” ones. Promisingly enough, the rats would complete the basic task of pulling a lever when faced with the prospect of a short burst of bliss. The downside was that they would also neglect their fundamental needs, like eating and drinking. They would wither and die while indulging themselves with mindless pleasure, pulling the same lever at intervals of 5 seconds. 1972. The controversial Dr. Robert G. Heath attempted to “cure” homosexuality via the same self-directed cranial electrostimulation. The bold experiment would culminate with the intercourse between a clinically depressed gay man and a prostitute. It was not a complete failure: the electrode implanted in the man’s brain had helped him overcome his natural repulsion for women. But only temporarily. Subject “B-19” would not turn heterosexual; alas, he would still not actively pursue sex with a woman out of his own volition. He would, however, pleasure himself to the point of “euphoria” with the remote control of the electrode whenever he had the chance. Medical personnel would need to remove it by force. A similar case happened in 1986, this time with a with a woman who would compulsively masturbate by tampering with a clinical device embedded in her brain. Originally, the procedure was meant to treat her chronic muscle tremors. If the recurring theme in all the stories presented so far is not “catastrophe”, there surely is more than a shared hint of “messiness”. Is there anything that cybernetical enhancements, or “biohacking”, can do to improve our sexual well-being? Or does it just turn us into junkies? Everything we have seen so far does not seem exactly safe, nor healthy, nor remotely advisable to try. Let’s move to 2018. The most successful case of hacking the human pleasure centers might be related to Samppa Von Cyborg, a Finnish body modification artist. Controllable electrodes might be too much even for the most daring individuals, but re-engineering our body might be obtained through less invasive means. Forget tampering with the brain: what about a clitoris magnetic implant, to give woman an extra boost in pleasure when experiencing a specific range of vibrations? It was great for a little while, admittedly. At some point, though, even Samppa’s wife (the only patient known to undergo this procedure) opted to have the magnetic implant removed. Even these small-scale adjustments show, at best, a modicum of viability. Dr. Daniel Kraft, Harvard-trained physician and executive director of FutureMed, best identified the common thread between these relatively novel examples of “hacks” and the old neurological experiments. The velleity of these trends in cutting-edge medical science is “moving from addressing deficiencies to improving normality”. In his own words, hacking the human body shifts the attention from “enabling the disabled” to “becoming super-enabled”. Yet, while high-tech prostheses for disabled individuals show promise and happy future prospects, the idea of bodyhacking – let alone its sexual variations – feels like a shady business. It seems hard to deny that, at present, this type of bodily modifications, be those to enjoy better sex or for other, transhumanist purposes, raise more questions than they give solutions. Ownership, upgrades, companies responsible for your well-being going out of business. What are the implications for elective, or even life-saving procedures in all of these scenarios? Granted, most of these questions are shared with general-purpose biotechnology, aforementioned high-tech prosthetics included. But, in plain terms, what if your genitals get damaged? Or what if your precious DNA code is lost forever due to this technology, or some low-budget equivalent? Sexologists – or even your partner – might have a thing or two to say about that. Tread lightly.
Source link
