Sound Waves Shatter Opioid Addiction

[Syne]

Sound Waves Shatter Opioid Addiction In Stunning Medical First
Israeli docs used futuristic brain tech to kill a patient's cravings in 20 minutes flat

Doctors in Israel just pulled off something that addiction specialists have been chasing for decades — and it didn’t require a single scalpel.

In a jaw-dropping medical first, physicians at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa used focused sound wave technology to essentially switch off a patient’s opioid addiction. In less time than it takes to watch a sitcom, a man who had been swallowing roughly 130 pills a day walked away craving zero.

The patient, identified only as H., is a family man in his forties who originally hurt his neck years ago. Doctors prescribed opioids for the pain. The pain eventually faded — but the addiction didn’t. He was trapped, needing the drug just to feel normal and function day-to-day.

That’s when Rambam’s team stepped in with technology developed by Israeli firm Insightec. Using MRI-guided ultrasound waves, physicians targeted the nucleus accumbens — the brain’s pleasure and reward hub — and modulated its electrical activity without cutting, burning, or destroying a single cell. No surgery. No anesthesia. No recovery room.

Within a week, H. tested completely clean. His self-reported craving level: zero out of ten. But the surprises didn’t stop there. The man who used to smoke three packs of cigarettes daily nearly quit cold turkey. His desire for alcohol vanished too. The treatment essentially hit the reset button on his entire reward system.
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I don't even suffer from any addictions, but I wouldn't mind having my reward system reset. A lifetime of little dopamine hits probably builds up some kind of tolerance.

[Zinjanthropos]

Sound Waves Shatter Opioid Addiction In Stunning Medical First
Israeli docs used futuristic brain tech to kill a patient's cravings in 20 minutes flat

Does that mean people who go ‘Cold Turkey’ have the ability to shut off their pleasure and reward hub? Makes me think being able to do so may be an evolutionary adaptation. In my lifetime I have done so with alcohol and cigarettes. Not sure if dumping religion counts. Money and sex? Well that’s a different story.

Same goes for tattoos but never had the urge for those so perhaps that’s not a pleasure hub thing.

[Syne]

Sound Waves Shatter Opioid Addiction In Stunning Medical First
Israeli docs used futuristic brain tech to kill a patient's cravings in 20 minutes flat

Does that mean people who go ‘Cold Turkey’ have the ability to shut off their pleasure and reward hub? Makes me think being able to do so may be an evolutionary adaptation. In my lifetime I have done so with alcohol and cigarettes. Not sure if dumping religion counts. Money and sex? Well that’s a different story.

Same goes for tattoos but never had the urge for those so perhaps that’s not a pleasure hub thing.

Yeah, I quit cigarettes, marijuana, and caffeine basically cold turkey. Even though I use to drink fairly regularly, I never had a thing for alcohol, so that was easy to give up.
I don't think it's a matter of shutting off the pleasure/reward mechanism. If anything, it might be finding that abstaining has its own rewards. But I think that it's just rational willpower (prefrontal cortex executive control) overriding base desires. Basically long-term goals overriding instant gratification.

Some people do seem more prone to instant gratification, so I guess better executive control could be an adaptation. But it could also just be a nurtured/learned behavior, where the consequences of instant gratification never reach the point of being realized as detrimental.

[Zinjanthropos]

From this :https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PM...20illness.

Ontological addiction:

Ontological addiction theory (OAT) is a novel metaphysical model of psychopathology and posits that human beings are prone to forming implausible beliefs concerning the way they think they exist, and that these beliefs can become addictive leading to functional impairments and mental illness.

Basically people become addicted to themselves. Just thinking how that might fit in with gender identity and the pleasure it gives someone for just being different than mainstream. Like, could you eliminate a person’s desire to be the opposite sex with 20 mins of sonic therapy?

[Syne]

Mmm, not sure if the pleasure center is involved with a behavior likely caused by trauma, but for the social contagion strain it might work.