Dr Shock speculates that I am busy with Twitter. But that is not the case. I am busy with my historical research on electrotherapy with a focus on magnetic stimulation and psychiatry. Now I am working on the period around 1900.  I found a lot of documents about German magnetotherapy. An electrotechnical engineer Eugen Konrad Müller produced a apparatus that produced an alternating magnetic field with an alternating current.  He claims he saw phosphenes in 1883 when he placed his head near an alternating magnetic field. Around 1900, he founded an institute in Zürich to investigate the effects of the magnetic waves produced by his apparatus. Physicians also got involved. They claimed that the apparatus was able to heal 70% of all conditions caused by an irritated nervous system (for instance neurasthenia) and  vasomotoric problems.  But Müller was not the only one who made an electromagnetic apparatus. The firm Trüb also produced an electromagnetic therapeutic machine. This machine worked with a rotating simple magnet. There was a lot of debate which machine worked and if the machines worked at all.

This is a just a little insight in the research I am doing right now. I want to extend the period to  nowadays and investigate how it came about that magnetic brain stimulation is al around.  I am still looking for interesting articles about magnetotherapy in the UK, France and US around 1900. So if someone has some clues or some interesting links please let me know. The research is not confined the scientific articles. Everything (photos, populair articles, newspaper articles) is interesting.

I would love to go to the exhibition about mental illness and visual arts in Vienna 1900. This would be a nice addition to the things I allready know about this period.

Do you want an easy adaptable transcranial magnetic stimulator? It might be possible in the (near) future. At OpenStim you can read about an open source rTMS stimulator. The WIKI has two goals:

1. Create a community that designs the core technology for a safe, highly functional, inexpensive, efficacious noninvasive transcranial magnetic stimulator (TMS) device for stimulating the central nervous system.

2. Facilitate experimentation and exchange of ideas, on the topic of modulation of brain function in a variety of people and contexts, so that we can learn more about the neural circuits mediating our subjective experiences, and improve mental functions (aka hacking your brain).

Another question that came to my mind about (r)TMS was whether you need to be a physician (MD) in the Netherlands to apply (r)TMS.  You need to be a physician to apply electroconvulsive therapy (dutch). But does (r)TMS belong to that category? And how about Magnetic Seizure Therapy?

Since I will be busy finishing my thesis about on a history of brain stimulation in psychiatry with a focus on TMS, DBS and VNS, I will keep you updated about my achievements. This will mean that I will post less about web 2.0 and all that kind of stuff.

Later I will tell something about the way I work. How do I cope with loads of pdf (>100) and loads of references (>3000). But for now I just want to share some interesting videos about brain stimulation. Two are about TMS. The first one is a promotional video (thanks to Brain Stimulant).  It tells us that Deep TMS was invented in 2001, but I am not really sure that is true.  But I will find out during my research.

The next video does not feature a psychiatric application but is nevertheless interesting. It is about eye tracking with TMS.

And the last one is about DBS.

Update
Even more videos on Youtube about this subject.

And Taiwan will host the first international conference on neuroprosthetic devices.

As some of you might know I am conducting a historical research about the use of electricity and magnetism in psychiatry. For now I am focussing on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.  This morning I was looking at some videos on TED. This made me wonder if and what kind of videos are online available about TMS. I was hoping to find an old video no one ever heard that I could use for my reseach but unfortunatelly that did not happen. I tried Youtube with the search “transcranial magnetic stimulation” and only a handful of interesting modern videos were the result. No old videos about guinea pigs in a magnetic stimulator came up. Nevertheless I will present the videos below. So if you might come across interesting videos or other information about TMS please let me know in the comments.

Talking and TMS, what happens?

TMS a possible solution for migraine?

TMS apparatus, what is for sale?

TMS by a Dutch psychologist (thanks to Dr Shock)