An IEEE Spectrum article about electrical neural stimulation techniques? Yes! This is the type of article that my college-era self and my college-era housemate Jon Brookshire could both be fascinated by: neuroscience problems combined with capacitor-efficiency problems. Rockin'.

Admittedly, the things I used to know about this stuff have faded alarmingly quickly — I found an old exam while cleaning out my car a little while ago and was completely shocked at the things I had forgotten. My essay answers were gibberish — did I really once know which enzymes consumed which neurotransmitters? I'd forgotten that I'd forgotten that.

But what little I do remember makes me excited about these therapies. Solving psychological problems by manipulating neurotransmitters with drugs is like trying to solve a city's downtown traffic congestion problem by manipulating the number of taxis on the streets: it's possible, and not too hard to implement, but it's difficult to anticipate the total effect on other parts of the system. Sometimes the taxi system really will be the thing that's fucked up, and what ought to be fixed — but not always. These electrostimulation techniques are still (mostly) pretty inexact, but seem ultimately likely to provide much more targeted action than pharmaceuticals.

[Via BoingBoing]