Wiring the Modules

A Stimulating Solution to Severe Depression: Canada’s (CBC) weekly science podcast January 21, 2006 carried a report about a new way to treat “untreatable” depression. Most clinically diagnosed depression responds to modern treatment methods. A small number of cases resist current treatments. From the CBC text description:

Now a team of Canadian scientists has developed a radical solution for treatment-resistant depression: brain surgery. These researchers have discovered a "sadness centre" in the brain, and by stimulating that area with electrodes implanted in the brain, they've been able to bring light into these people's lives for the first time.

Here is the link: Quirks and Quarks
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Of some interest is the method for identifying the “sadness center.” In one phase, they had healthy people read sad stories or watch sad movies. Then they used a PET scan to identify active areas. They found a consistent rise in activity in a specific area. In another phase, they used medication to treat sadness. They observed a consistent decline in activity in that same area.

The brain stimulation method has been used on only a few patients, but has produced dramatic results in most of those cases.

Nothing here of direct use to the public. But reverse field. Healthy people can activate the “sadness center” by reading sad stories or watching sad movies. Perhaps they can turn down the “sadness center” with happy or amusing content.

I think most people realize that they can influence their moods by the kind of entertainment content they choose. They probably have some idea about the effect of particular kinds of entertainment content. But I wonder how often people consciously choose a particular kind of entertainment content to get a particular effect on mood.

I am not talking about the passive choice of picking music or other entertainment to match your mood. That works to strengthen a mood that is already there. But you might not want to strengthen a mood. You might want to change a mood.

Have you ever tried selecting a mood and choosing entertainment content to build it? Apparently, this is a fairly common practice in the case of music. For example:
When is Music Used to Change Mood
Objective measurement of mood change induced by contemporary music.

Music has offered POD (play-on-demand) features for most of the last century, so its use as an active mood-mover may result from its availability. Now that we have POD features on most entertainment, people may want to experiment with mood-moving by DVD or video recording.

Entrepreneurial Alert: Some enterprising person might go further. How about mood-movers on the web? A website, for example, that offers links or playlists selected to encourage a particular mood. This is not something you would do for treatment of disorders, of course. But it might be a useful way for healthy people to send wireless messages their brains modules.