In order to trigger his patients hand to make a fist dr delago stimulated the individuals

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NEW HAVEN. “WE are going to talk about love and war and hate,” begins the professor, Dr. José M. R. Delgado of the Yale Uni versity School of Medicine. The class is an undergraduate course at Yale. Although registration was lim ited to 15, the seminar room is crowded; every chair around the long table is filled, and some stu dents are sitting on packing cases stored at one end, and some are on extra chairs near the door. “But we shall consider these subjects in a novel way: from the inside of the thinking brain. What is going on there, what is happening in the nerve cells while we talk, while we behave, while we feel?”

Delgado, an emotional speaker, pauses. A spare man in his mid‐50's, he leans forward on the table, rest ing his weight on both large hands. His eyes, restless and light in color, rove swiftly around the circle of staring faces. “We have a new way to study behavior, a new method ology which we have developed,” he resumes in a voice that is low but as vibrant with promise as a preacher's. There is a stir, almost a sigh from the students; this is what they want to hear about, this “new methodology.”

It is E. S. B.: electrical stimula tion of the brain. Delgado is one of the leading pioneers in its refine ment and development. He is also the impassioned prophet of a new “psychocivilized” society whose members would influence and alter their own mental functions to cre ate a “happier, less destructive and better balanced man.”

A few days earlier, just before the start of classes, The New York Times ran a front ‐ page story on Dr. Delgado which was picked up by newspapers across the coun try. It described his most recent ac complishment: the establishment of direct nonsensory communication between the computer and the brain of a chimp. This study was the latest in a series of experiments involving two‐way radio‐wave contact with the brains of freely interacting animals. Because it clearly demonstrates that behavior can be influenced by re‐ mote radio command, this research has been seen by some as posing an ultimate threat to human freedom and integrity.

THE morning that story appeared, it was raining mildly in New Haven. In Delgado's secretary's office, part of the cluttered wing his staff oc cupies on the second floor of the Sterling Hall of Medicine, the tele phone started ringing early; it kept on and on. In the darkroom next door, Delgado was just finishing the photographing of some E.E.G. record ings, or “brain waves.” He bustles back across the hall and into his own office, immaculate as a surgeon in his white laboratory coat. “What do you want me to tell you?” he asks shortly, sitting down at his desk. He runs an irritable hand over his short cut, curly hair. “I don't want to talk about my wife, my family, my friends. That's not science.” He glances, scowling, through the win dow at the large white square of the School of Public Health building next door, and his expression sud denly clears. He turns back, leans forward over his desk relaxedly in one of the rapid mood changes which one very quickly learns to expect.

“The human race,” he says, “is at an evolutionary turning point. We're very close to having the power to construct our own mental functions, through a knowledge of genetics (which I think will be complete within the next 25 years); and through a knowledge of the cerebral mechanisms which underlie our be havior. The question is what sort of humans would we like, ideally, to construct?” He smiles. “Not only our cities are very badly planned; we as human beings are, too. The results in both cases are disastrous.

“I am an optimist,” continues Del gado. “I don't accept Lorenz's ‘cos mic slip.’ I don't think we're condemned by our natural fate to violence and self‐destruc tion. My thesis is that just as we've evolved in our under standing of material forces, so we can — through a com bination of new technology and of intelligence — evolve in our understanding of the mind.

“Man once used his intel ligence to achieve ecological liberation, so that he no long er had to be wet when it rained, or cold when the sun was hidden, or killed because predators were hungry. He can achieve mental liberation also. Through an understand ing of the brain, the brain it self may act to reshape its own structures and functions intelligently. That we bring this about is most essential for the future of mankind.”

Delgado glances at his watch: “Come, I will show you around; I must hurry; I'm leaving for Zurich in two days.” He looks impatient and harried again.

We go across the hall, through the secretary's office, into a large room full of equipment. Here, the two elec tronics engineers on Delgado's staff are at work. “How are you coming along?” asks Delgado, falling into a rapid conversation about equipment that will be needed for an ex periment going on in Ber muda, for a motion‐recording study to be carried out in a psychiatric ward, for a mon key‐colony investigation going on upstairs; also, he checks over drawings of an improved transdermal (under the skin) brain stimulator. The noise of the phone and the secretary's voice provide a constant back drop: “Dr. Delgado?” she asks, hurrying in suddenly. “How would you like to be on tele vision?”

“What?” he says distract edly, in his rapid Spanish ac cent. “I wouldn't like it at all.”

“How would you like to be on the David Frost show?”

“What's that?” He taps his foot impatiently. She seems uncomfortable: “He doesn't know,” she says, looking at the two engineers helplessly. But they both shake their heads and shrug; they don't know either. “What shall say?” she asks.

“Say no,” Delgado answers curtly, but then, more gently, adds: “Tell them I'm going to Zurich. Tell them to call me some other time. I'm sorry.”

On the way up to the fourth‐floor laboratory, he stops in his office to pick up a small plastic box which at first sight looks empty. “Here is something that's going to be fantastic, really exciting,” he says, holding it up like a conjuror. “But I can't tell you what it is; it's too early, it wouldn't be scientific.”

Wouldn't he be willing to explain what it is privately? He hesitates: “All right … ” But then he hurries off, at a pace only a little short of a run. Staring at the box in his hand, I see that it does con tain something — two tiny chemitrodes, that is, arrays of electrodes and fine chemical tubes that can be inserted into the brain. “When we know the mechanisms by which the brain operates,” resumes Del gado, “then we will be able to control our reality. The predicament of mankind is not too different from that of the dinosaurs, who flourished on earth for some 30 million years. They had very little in telligence; and 40 tons of flesh and bones. When the environ ment began to change, they lacked the intelligence to un derstand their situation, to adapt. Their fate—extinction.”

“We, too, have developed disproportionate muscles and bones: missiles, guns, bio logical warfare. Our brains are not developed accordingly; they must become so or our own fate will be the same.” We pass through a wide corridor. On either side are shining steel machines with bright plastic, electric leads coming out of them; it looks as cheery as a nursery school. In one room a monkey is calmly sit ting in a plastic chair while his brain waves are recorded. He throws us a curious glance as we go by.

Delgado turns into a MOM at the left, the laboratory of his new young assistant, freshly arrived from Germany. They sit down together and the older man begins a careful explanation of how the chemi trodes are to be mounted. When he is finished, the new researcher blushes and stam mers: “Please, I'm still not understanding too well … the English. Won't you re peat?” Delgado, very patient ly, goes over the instructions. Then he stands up and excuses himself for a moment.

While he is gone, I ask the assistant what the new ex periment will be. He explains, haltingly, that they are going to infuse a radioactive sub stance through the monkey's brain very slowly—“Stop, don't say anything!” cries Del gado, rushing back into the laboratory. “You mustn't tell her, she's dangerous. She's journalist!”

“What, what?” demands the assistant, jumping back frightened. And suddenly, in explicably, the three of us burst out laughing.

IN a small corridor off the end of the main hallway are the animal cages, full of rhesus monkeys and gibbons right now Delgado goes into one room, opening the cage of a female rhesus named Linda (after his 8‐year‐old daughter). “Hello, hello, Linda,” he says softly to the monkey, who scampers up on to the wire mesh ceiling. “It's O.K., it's O.K., come down.” He takes a piece of apple, holds it out to her. Linda comes down, grabs the apple; a mo ment later she throws it at Delgado. He laughs: “That's not nice Linda, come down.” She consents at last, comes swiftly to sit in Delgado's arms and throws her own around his neck.

He parts the hair on her shoulder, revealing an almost invisible transdermal brain stimulator. “Linda has been wearing this for over a year now; it's very important in its implication for humans. One of the real difficulties with humans is the cos metic one. This transdermal can be placed below the skin and sealed forever, so that there are no unsightly plugs or equipment showing. We're working now on another one that would be even smaller.”

Delgado strokes Linda's fur, then he looks up: “I have a great respect for the human brain,” he remarks with the air of a man who has had to reiterate the statement often. “It distressed me greatly when I first came to this country in the early fifties to see so many patients without frontal lobes. Of course, much psy chosurgery has now been re placed by drug treatment, but there are still people with dangerous seizures which sim ply do not respond to medi cation. In these cases, rather extensive portions of the temporal lobe may be removed —and since brain tissue doesn't regenerate, those functions which are lost are lost.

“Intracerebral electrodes offer a more conservative ap proach. Instead of cutting down through cerebral tissue, we insert very fine stainless steel wires. Then we can re cord the activity of various brain areas; in this way it be comes possible to locate the disturbances with a good de gree of precision. After that, damaged areas can be treated by cauterization, or by E.S.B. in a brain area which inhibits on‐going activity. Or still an other possibility would be in ducing electrical excitement in a competing area. For instance, there is one epileptic patient who uses a self‐stimulator each time he feels a seizure coming on. By activating an other part of the brain, he stops the discharge from spreading; the fit never de velops.”

In the past several years, electrode implantation has been used in the diagnosis and treatment of involuntary movements and intractable pain, as well as in epilepsy, some cases of schizophrenia and of excessive anxiety. Del gado was one of a small group of brain researchers to pioneer their clinical application. Im plantation of electrodes, al though carried out only as an alternative to destructive sur gery, is “like installing a magic window through which one may look at the activity of the conscious, behaving brain.

“We are,” says Delgado, “only in the initial stages of our understanding of E.S.B., but we know that it can delay a heartbeat, move a finger, bring a word to memory, evoke a sensation.”

Brain stimulation in humans has elicited diverse and curi ous responses. It has stirred long hallucinations, such as hearing a piece of music being played from beginning to end; it has produced pe culiar illusions of déjà vu — the intense feeling that the present moment has been ex perienced in the past. Patients have also described the vivid “reliving” of moments from their past, far more im mediate than mere recollec tion. All the sensations of the former experience seem to spring to life—cars passing in the street outside, the sounds of children playing, words said and forgotten long ago.

“There are basic mecha nisms inside the brain, I be lieve,” says Delgado, “that are responsible for all mental activities, including emotion. I think we are now on the threshold of understanding them. We must do so—and soon—if the precarious race between unchained atoms and intelligent brains is to be won.”

JOSE MANUEL RODRIGUEZ DELGADO was born in Ronda, Spain, in 1915. The town, which stands high on a rocky cliff to the southwest of Gran ada, was one of the last strongholds of the Moors. Dr. Delgado is the son of Rafael Rodriguez Amerigo; on the paternal side he is directly descended from Amerigo Ves pucci. (The name Delgado is his mother's maiden name: in Spain, where lineage is of paramount importance, a child takes the names of both grandparents as surname. Thus, Delgado's last name there is Rodriguez Delgado.)

José, the second of three boys (his older brother is a staff member of the United Nations), went directly from high school to the Uni versity of Madrid, taking his degree in medicine just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In 1938 he was drafted and joined the Spanish Republicans. “I fought with them until the triumph of France, then I was thrown in a concentration camp. Those few months had a great effect upon me; they shaped me.”

In what way?

“Oh, well,” he shrugs slight ly, his brows beetling in an noyance; he dislikes direct questions. “That all has noth ing to do with my work.” After his release in 1939, Del gado returned to the Univer sity of Madrid to take his M.D. once again (the old one was no longer valid). Then he lingered to take a Ph.D. in science at the Cajal Institute in Madrid. In 1950, he was invited to Yale by the famed neurophysiologist John Fulton. “And I never have left here,” he concludes in a pleased voice.

In 1956, Delgado, in his early 40's, met Caroline Stod dard, the pretty, 22‐year‐old daughter of a Yale adminis trator; they were married within the year. They now have two children: Linda, 8, and José Carlos, 11. After 14 years of marriage, Caroline Delgado is quietly and pas sionately devoted to her hus band's work, perhaps even a bit awed by it. (She sometimes refers to him, in a voice innocent of irony, as “the great Delgado.”) “I go in to the lab with José pretty much every morning,” she says cheerfully. She generally works in the same office, edit ing and typing papers. Does she mind the work? “Oh, no, I love it! It's nice being with someone who's always opti mistic. And then it's a con tinuing circus; it's fun to see what's coming next. The brain is a relatively new field— there's a tremendous feeling of excitement.”

THE human brain—that most delicate, complex organ, the organ of selection and imagination—is a mass of about 10 billion neurons, or nerve cells, which are almost continually receiving, trans mitting, and discharging elec trical impulses. In the early nineteen‐twenties, Hans Berg er, a German psychiatrist, first recorded the electri cal activity of the human brain. Berger's electroenceph alograms (E.E.G.'s) were made by attaching electrodes to the outside of the scalp. They could convey only the crudest information, for the signals emanating from the “black box” of the brain were be wildering and manifold: It was like opening the door on a cocktail party where many conversations were going on at once. Some of the voices were persistent, some started and stopped; there was a great deal of background racket. Not for many years—and not until the advent of electronic computers—were researchers able to sort out the signals coming from various struc tures and areas of the brain.

Shortly after Berger first recorded brain waves, the Swiss neurophysiologist W. R. Hess implanted very fine, stainless‐steel electrodes deep within the brain of a cat. The cat, once recovered from the anesthesia, could not feel the wires at all. For the brain, the most exquisite of sensory in terpreters, actually has no re ceptors or nerve endings in its own tissue; it feels nothing. Hess introduced a mild elec trical impulse, stimulating the central gray matter, and the cat suddenly behaved “as if threatened by a dog.” Evi dently, nerve cells associated with emotions of rage had been activated. “It spits, snorts or growls,” wrote Hess, “… its pupils widen … its ears lie back, or move back and forth to frighten the non‐ existing enemy.”

Hess's experiment raised some excited speculations. It was known that certain areas of the brain controlled spe cific functions such as speech, sight, the flexing of arm and leg muscles. But emotions were not thought to be repre sented specifically—was it possible that there were areas or “centers” in the brain which corresponded to the different emotional states? E.S.B. seemed to offer a way to study the mechanisms of emotions experimentally, and yet, says Delgado: “When I came to this country some 20 years after Hess's early work, there were very few people— practically no one—working with brain stimulation.”

Delgado had learned E.S.B. techniques while still in Spain, “mainly from reading about Hess's experiments. I was self ‐ taught.” Electrode im plantation does not entail a large opening in the skull. Only a small burr hole is drilled, through which micromanipulators guide the electrode shafts — assemblies of very fine wires insulated with Teflon and scraped bare at the tips to permit the pas sage of current—down to their desired locations in the brain. The electrodes can be placed quite precisely with the aid of special (stereotaxic) maps of the brain and meas uring instruments. Once they are in, the ends of the wires are soldered to a small ex terior socket anchored to the skull.

After anesthesia wears off, plugging into the fully awake brain of cat, monkey or man is as simple as putting a lamp plug in a wall socket. There is no “awareness” of the elec trodes, no ensuing damage to brain tissue. “There are chimps in our laboratory,” Delgado says, “who have had up to 100 contacts implanted for more than four years; there seems to be no limit to how long they may safely be left in.”

DELGADO'S early work at Yale was done with cats, and then increasingly with the far more intelligent and interest ing monkey. Under the influ ence of E.S.B., the animals performed like electrical toys. “By pushing the right ‘but ton’ we could make a monkey open or shut his eyes, turn his head, move his tongue, flex his limbs. He could be made to yawn, sneeze, hop.” During one experi ment, a cat began the mo tions of licking each time it was stimulated at a certain point in the cortex. If the animal happened to be sleep ing, it licked in its sleep; if awake, however, the cat looked around for a milk bowl to lap at; if there was no bowl, it began licking its own fur. “The cat seemed deter mined,” smiles Delgado, “to make sense out of what he was doing.”

E.S.B. can evoke not only simple but complicated be haviors which may be per formed in sequence. One monkey, Ludy, each time she was stimulated in the red nucleus (in the posterior part of the brain) would stop what she was doing; change expression, turn her head to the right; stand up on two feet and circle to the right; climb a pole and then descend again; growl, threaten and often attack another monkey; then change attitude and ap proach the rest of the group in a friendly way. This “au tomatism” was repeated in the same order each time— through 20,000 stimulations!

“Interestingly enough,” re marks Delgado, “when Ludy was stimulated at another point in the red nucleus only 3 millimeters away, she sim ply yawned.”

Stimulation of certain brain areas has caused animals to increase the amount of food they eat by as much as 1,000 per cent, while E.S.B. at hun ger‐inhibiting points will make starving monkeys and cats turn away from food. The tickling of a few electric volts can send a monkey into a deep sleep, or snap him awake. “By brain stimulations in the hypothalamic region we can adjust the size of a mon key's eye pupil, making it larger or smaller as easily as you would the lens of a cam era,” Delgado adds.

Sometimes it may happen that the voluntary impulse of an animal opposes an elec trically evoked movement such as raising of a foreleg; in that case, the movement might not occur. “But,” Del gado says, “by increasing the intensity of stimulation it is always possible to get the ani mal to respond as ‘directed.’ ”

Similarly, human beings are unable to resist motor re sponses elicited by E.S.B.: Del gado describes a patient under treatment for psychomotor epilepsy who slowly clenched his hand into a fist each time he was stimulated through an electrode in the left parietal cortex. When asked to try to keep his fingers extended through the next stimulation, the man simply could not do it. “I guess, doctor,” he com mented ruefully, “that your electricity is stronger than my will.”

ONE fascinating question, debated since the time of Hess, was whether the rage which could be induced in cats by E.S.B. was truly experi enced by them emotionally. Were the hissing and spitting mere motor responses—or did the cat actually feel all the noxious sensations which ac company anger and fear? In 1954, Delgado, working with Warren Roberts and Neal Miller, the well‐known psy chologist, demonstrated that E.S.B. in certain brain areas which produce rage responses could act as a powerful pun ishment. Hungry cats who re ceived E.S.B. at these points each time they began to eat quickly learned to avoid food. But cats being stimulated in other cerebral areas—though they might rear back from the bowl momentarily—never were motivated to learn to re fuse food: they returned to eating as soon as the stimu lation was over.

“The implication,” explains Delgado, “was that there were places in the brain which cor responded to negative emo tional states, to the cerebral perception of pain. If that were so, we could understand the mechanisms of suffering and block them at their source.” Shortly after this ex periment, doctors started to use brain stimulation for the relief of intractable pain.

A few months after the Delgado‐Roberts‐Miller study was published, a young Cana dian, James Olds, began won dering … If there were “pain centers” in the brain, were there also areas devoted to the perception of pleasure? Olds, working at McGill Uni versity, implanted electrodes in the brains of a group of rats: He meant to probe an area just below the one that the Yale group had been studying, but in one rat an electrode went astray, landing a good deal above its target— it was an inspired mistake. For, as Olds soon realized, the rat found the stimulation re warding; in fact it kept con tinually and dedicatedly re turning for more.

Olds's subsequent large‐scale studies of rats with electrodes in this “pleasureful area” found that they preferred E.S.B. above all else—includ ing water, sex and food. Even when famished, they would run toward a stimulating lever faster than they would run to ward food. They would re move obstacles, run mazes and even cross electrified grids in order to press the wonderful lever that provided self ‐ stimulation. Sometimes ravenously hungry rats, ig noring nearby food, would stimulate themselves up to 5,000 times an hour—persist ing with manic singleness of purpose for more than a day running, until they keeled over on the floor in a faint!

Olds thought that the pleas ure areas must contain nerve cells that would be excited by satisfaction of the basic drives —such as hunger and sex— but that somehow E.S.B. of them was even better. In a subsequent experiment he demonstrated that the de lights of E.S.B. in certain brain areas could be abolished by castration; they could then be restored by injections of the sex hormone, testosterone.

DELGADO, among others, later confirmed the existence of “reward areas” in the brain of the monkey. “In humans also, during diagnostic pro cedures, states of arousal and pleasure have been evoked. We have seen this in our own experience. One patient of ours was a rather reserved 30‐year‐old woman suffering from psychomotor epilepsy; she had electrodes implanted in her right temporal lobe. E.S.B. at one cerebral point made her suddenly confess her passionate regard for the therapist—whom she'd never seen before. She grabbed, his hands and kissed them and told him how grateful she was for what he was doing for her.

“When stimulation was over, she was as poised and distant as ever; she remained so during E.S.B. through all other electrodes. But,” one of Delgado's eyebrows rises slightly, “the same thing hap pened when she was stimu lated at the same point on another day.”

There have been several studies of humans with im planted electrodes. One carried out by Dr. C. Sem‐Jacobsen in Norway with a group of patients suffering from schizo phrenia and Parkinson's dis ease describes E.S.B. at dif ferent cerebral points as producing moods which ranged from “feeling good,” to “slight euphoria,” to where “the euphoria was beyond normal limits” and the pa tients laughed hilariously. During another study, a man being treated for narcolepsia (irresistible sleep attacks) was given a small self‐stimulator. He kept pushing one particular button which, he declared, made him feel as if he were building up to a sexual climax.

“Pleasure is not in the skin being caressed or in a full stomach,” remarks Delgado. “It is somewhere inside the cranial vault.”

And so, also, are anxiety, fear, aggression. Early in the sixties, Delgado wanted to study problems of aggression —and its inhibition—among rhesus monkey colonies in which some members were receiving E.S.B. which in creased or decreased levels of hostility. But there were prac tical problems: the monkeys tended to become curious about trailing wires, and their destructive capabilities were legendary. Most researchers had to keep them separated and restrained in little plastic chairs.

The nineteen‐fifties, how ever, had brought advances in electronic technology and miniaturization of components. Delgado, who is, in the words of a colleague, “a kind of 19th century mad inventor, a real technological wizard,” devel oped an instrument called a stimoceiver. This was, as its name implies, both a brain stimulator and brain wave re ceiver; it could send stimula tions by remote radio com mand on three channels and receive E.E.G. recordings on three channels. Weighing roughly just over an ounce, the stimoceiver was easily anchored to the animal's skull: it was monkey‐proof.

A series of experiments was now carried out with monkeys who were freed of wires, in teracting spontaneously and receiving E.S.B. by remote radio command. They demon strated that while stimulation could increase the level of hostility experienced by an animal, whether or not he ex pressed his hostility against another monkey depended upon the social situation. Monkeys form hierarchical societies. If rage and aggres sion were evoked in a monkey at the bottom of the social scale, no threats would be di rected against other monkeys. If, however, the animal were moved into another colony in which he held a higher rank, he would threaten or attack the animals below him. When the “boss monkey” of a col ony was stimulated, his at tacks were also carefully determined by the social sit uation: he attacked the male just below him in rank, never his favorite girl friend.

Thus, while E.S.B. could arouse aggressions in peace ful simian societies, these feelings were always ex pressed in socially intelligent ways. In one study a small female named Elsa learned to press a lever which ac tivated a radio stimulator and inhibited the aggressive ness of the powerful, mean‐ tempered boss of the colony. “The old dream of an in dividual overpowering the strength of a dictator by re mote control has come true,” laughs Delgado. “At least, in our monkey colonies.”

TWO years after developing the stimoceiver he and his invention made world head lines when Delgado took part in a “bullfight” in Spain. Climbing into the ring at a farm near Cordova, this mata dor in sweater and slacks faced a brave bull—one of a species genetically bred for fierceness.

Delgado, standing in the sun, waved a heavy red cape in the air. The bull lowered his head and charged through the dust. But, as the animal bore down on him, Delgado pressed a small button on the radio transmitter in his hand: the bull braked to a halt.

When the professor pressed another button, the bull turned away and trotted docilely to ward the high wooden barrier. The bull had, of course, had e'ectrodes implanted shortly before. The radio stimulation had activated an inhibitory area deep in the bull's brain, thus halting it in mid‐charge.

This disquieting demonstra tion of the power of brain stimulation aroused a flurry of speculation about the possi bilities of remote‐controlled behavior. “Since that time,” Delgado says ruefully, “I've received mail each year from people who think I'm con trolling their thoughts.”

Crank letters are not likely to stop arriving after Delgado's recent announce ment that he has established two‐way, nonsensory com munication between the brain and the computer. In the ex periment a young chimp named Paddy (after an Irish research assistant) was equipped with 100 electrodes implanted in his brain and wired to a socket on top of his skull. Mounted over the socket was a stimoceiver, its tiny components encased in a Teflon box not much bigger than a cigarette lighter.

Paddy, in the company of three other chimpanzees, was left to roam about an artifi cial, moat‐surrounded island at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. As he ran, ate, sat and played, his brain waves and other activities were monitored 24 hours a day. During early testing, it was found that E.S.B. in the central gray—the emotionally “negative” area explored by Hess and then Delgado—was obnoxious and disturbing for Paddy.

In the meanwhile, a com puter standing nearby was programed to receive radio signals which were broadcasts of electrical activity from the chimp's brain and to respond to certain waves called “spin dles.” The spindles, coming from the amygdala, a struc ture deep in the temporal lobe, are correlated with ag gressiveness and excitement; they occur spontaneously about 1,000 times an hour in the brain waves from the amygdala. In response to each spindle, the computer was in structed to deliver a radio stimulation to Paddy's central gray.

When the experiment be gan, each spindle produced by the amygdala was fol lowed immediately by the punishing E.S.B. in the emo tionally negative area—it was similar to the slapping of a child's hand each time he touches a forbidden object. Within two hours, spindling had diminished by 50 per cent. A few days later, there were practically no spindles at all. One part of the brain (the central gray) had “talked to” the other: it had forced the amygdala to change its nor mally occurring electrical ac tivity! Paddy's behavior changed also. He was less ag gressive, his appetite waned, he sat around lazily with visi tors or with the other chimps. “In this case, we were able to get one area of the brain to communicate with the other,” Delgado says. “Soon, with the aid of the computer, we may have direct contact between two different brains —without the participation of the senses.”

PADDY'S changed behavior persisted for two weeks fol lowing the experiment. Then the amygdala resumed its spindling and the chimp re turned to normal. “One of the implications of this study,” explains Delgado, “is that un wanted patterns of brain ac tivity—for instance those cor related with assaultive or antisocial activity—could be recognized by the computer before they ever reached con sciousness in order to trigger pacification of the subject.

“Another speculation is that the onset of epileptic attacks could be recognized and avoided by feedback.” (Feed back occurs when the activi ties of an organism or ma chine are modified continu ously by the interaction be tween its signals or output and the environment; thus, E.S.B. in the central gray made the amygdala suppress its spindling in much the same way that warmth rising in a room causes a thermostat to shut off the supply of heat.)

Delgado looks forward to a time “not very far in the fu ture” when cerebral pace makers, operating in much the same way that cardiac pace makers now do, will treat illnesses such as Parkinson's disease, anxiety, fear, obses sions, violent behavior, by direct stimulation of the brain. The premise is that each of these illnesses has its own characteristic pattern of elec trical activity. In the case of an epileptic, these would be the high voltage slow waves which represent the simultane ous “explosion” of groups of neurons. Long before the first muscle twitch of an epileptic fit is seen, the brain waves show this typical pattern. If they were being monitored by a computer, the machine could respond immediately by trig gering radio stimulation to brain areas that would inhibit and contain the seizure.

This would all take place below the level of perception, without the person's conscious awareness. For instance, man walking down a street, equipped with a subcutaneous stimulator, could avoid an epileptic seizure through in teraction with a computer miles away—and never know it. Or, as seems quite feasible technologically, a minicompu ter programed to respond to a specific type of electrical ac tivity could be worn on the person's body. Thus, the “go‐ between” connecting two areas of the same brain might be situated either in the mid dle of a medical center or the middle of a shirt pocket.

Certain types of uncontrol lably assaultive behavior might be treated without the com puter, using carefully pro gramed stimulation in inhibi tory brain areas. According to Delgado, these could, over a period of time, cause a mel lowing of aggressive reactions.

WHAT is the choice? Does it lie on the one hand be tween spiraling violence and continuous outbreaks of ag gression and war, and, on the other hand, the development of a race of electrical toys whose every antisocial im pulse could be neatly nipped by the computer before it ever became realized in the form of behavior? In his intriguing, troubling book, “Physical Con trol of the Mind,” Delgado carefully explores the implica tions of E.S.B.:

“The possibility of scientific annihilation of personal iden tity, or even worse, its pur poseful control, has some times been considered a future threat more awful than atomic holocaust,” he writes. “The prospect of any degree of physical control of the mind provokes a variety of objec tions: theological objections because it affects free will, moral objections because it affects individual responsibili ty, ethical objections because it may block self‐defense mechanisms, philosophical ob jections because it threatens personal identity.”

However: “… it is not knowledge itself but its im proper use which should be regulated. A knife is neither good nor bad; but it may be used by a surgeon or an as sassin … Psychoanalysis, the use of drugs … insulin or electroshock … are all aimed at influencing the abnormal personality of the patient in order to change his undesir able mental characteristics.”

Patients on drugs, he points out, are being controlled. Their behavior is modified, their systems are flooded and some times there are deleterious side effects; also, they are made lethargic and stupid. “And why? Because one little group of neurons keep misfir ing. Is it destroying that pa tient's personal freedom to of fer him precise, on‐demand medication affecting only the area involved, so that none of his other mental processes are altered?

“Suppose that the onset of epileptic attacks could be recognized by the computer and avoided by feedback: would that threaten identity? Or if you think of patients displaying assaultive behavior due to abnormalities in brain functioning: do we preserve their individual integrity by keeping them locked up in wards for the criminally in sane?”

E.S.B. is actually a rather crude technique based on the delivery of a monotonous train of messageless electrical pulses. Like the button which launches a rocket, it sets off a train of programed events: biochemical, thermal, enzy matic, electrical. “Nothing which is not already in the brain can be put there by E.S.B.,” Delgado says. It can not be used as a teaching tool [to impart knowledge]. Since it doesn't carry specific thoughts it can certainly not be used to implant ideas or to order people about like robots —you couldn't use it to direct a person down to the mailbox to get the mail.”

Brain stimulation does of fer, however, an experimental method for the study of the neurophysiological basis of behavior. “True freedom,” in sists Delgado, “will come from an understanding of how the brain works; then we will be able to control our reality.” A high‐priority national goal ought to be an intensive study of cerebral processes for the purpose of establishing an educational system based on that knowledge: “We must first start with the realization that the mind, to all intents and purposes, does not exist at birth; in some brain areas as many as 80 to 90 per cent of the neurons don't form un til afterwards. Personal identi ty is not something we are born with. It is a combination of genetic bias, the sensory in formation we receive, our edu cational and cultural inherit ance. In other words, the mind is not revealed as the child matures; it is constructed.”

Genetic determination is like the blueprint of a beau tiful house, Delgado contends: “But the house itself is not there; you can't sleep in a blueprint. The kind of build ing you eventually have will depend on the choice of which bricks, which wood, which glass are used—just as the virgin brain will be shaped by what is given to it from the environment. Now in or der to give this newborn brain the best possible building materials, there are questions to which we need answers: What is the chronology of im printing? At what ages are certain patterns fixed? What are the true sources of pleas ure and accomplishment? — this question has not only a psychological but a neuro physiological component, since we know that pleasure is localized in certain areas of the brain.”

Most important, according to Delgado, is the need to de velop an educational system that is based on knowledge of our biological realities, an education that would attempt to: first, establish good “au tomatisms” in the child, and, second, as he matures, permit his thinking capability to evolve without being subject ed to unknown forces and impulses which may over power his rational intelli gence.

Like many another prophet, Delgado is not always seen as such in his own country. Aside from the fantasy and fears aroused by his experiments, there are criticisms of the public stance he has adopted, as well as of his techniques and method. “There's some thing idiosyncratic about the way he works,” remarks one Yale colleague. “He doesn't follow the ordinary rules. mean one mustn't confuse technological elegance with methodological rigor: there must be the slow dogged part, the careful checking of obser vations, the randomization of experiments, the estimate of the probability that your find ings weren't just due to chance …

“Delgado doesn't seem to have the patience to fool around with that. If he stimu lates a monkey's brain and gets an expected reaction he gets bored. He gets a lot of things started, and then leaves other people to clean up after him. But let's face it, tech nologically the man's incredi ble; he's a real genius in a practical way— a sort of Thomas Edison of the brain.”

Questions about the brain, says a young neurophysiolo gist, are extremely complex: “People like Delgado can talk about breakthroughs in this and that, but progress in knowledge is slow. It may be several centuries before we have any real understanding of what is going on … And besides there are different schools of thought. Some neurophysiologists think it's a waste of time to study groups of neurons and over‐all behavior — that we'll learn more by figuring out what's happening in a single nerve cell. To a man with this ap proach, trying to understand the workings of the brain through gross stimulation ap pears silly—like using a hand lens to try and unlock the mysteries of the fine struc ture of a virus.”

Nevertheless, if not the dog matic experimentalist, Del gado, according to his re search associates, more than makes up for it: “He's an in ventor in the purest sense. You can't fault his creativity,” says Dan Snyder. a Ph.D. in physiological psychology who has worked with Delgado for the past several years. “The man drops gems of ideas in his casual conversations the way some people shed bac teria. That's part of the prob lem: he hasn't time to beat an experiment to death because he's got so many good ideas that he more or less has to be in 10 places at once.”

“The truth is,” adds Snyder, “he's opened up enough re search potentials to keep sev eral laboratories busy for a lifetime.”

Speculations about the future implications of E.S.B. —medical and social—are still various and vague. According to Dr. Morton Reiser, chair man of the Yale department of psychiatry (in which Del gado holds his appointment as professor of physiology), there are “probably some frighten ing potentials” in Delgado's work. “If you can use com puter technology to send an unmanned space satellite to the moon, then it doesn't seem utterly impossible that one day our computers will be sophisticated enough to be used to put thoughts into people's heads.” He pauses doubtfully. “At any rate, one could possibly exert some in fluence on gross emotional behavior. Suppose, for in stance, there were someone with uncontrollable rage re actions which were due to something detectable in the nervous system. The computer could send back a stimulus to inhibit that response. I don't think that's science fic tion. …”

Professor David Hamburg, chairman of the psychiatry de partment at Stanford and an expert on brain and behavior, says: “The stronger our scien tific base, the better our posi tion for making rational choices. Brain stimulation could lead to the relief of much human suffering, to new treatments for mental and neurological disorders; it could possibly help to solve some human problems and it may ultimately affect man's understanding and conception of himself.

“Of course,” adds Ham burg, “the utilization of knowledge always presents certain problems. Any in crease in understanding can be used in ways that are harm ful or helpful. As with atomic research, as with our investi gation into the chemistry of behavior, E.S.B. does open up possibilities for exploitation and harm. Any new tech nique for understanding how the brain mediates behavior could affect our lives for bet ter or worse.”

Certainly, mistrust and doubt are aroused on many sides by the suggestion that thought process can be re routed and the mind physi cally controlled. According to one psychoanalyst, “The dan ger of this being abused is, think, tremendous.”

“I suppose,” remarks Del gado, aware of the contro versy his work inevitably stirs, “that to primitive man the idea of diverting the course of a river would have seemed irreligious.”