From Lobotomies to Brain-Machine Interfaces: Nine Decades of Neurotechnology Around the World

The last century saw the birth of neurotechnologies, a combination of neuroscience and machines, hardware devices, and software designed to alleviate certain neuropsychiatric illnesses and repair deficient functions (motor skills, senses, speech, etc.). Neurotechnologies can be implanted in the brain (intrusive device) or placed on the surface of the skull (headband or headset, non-intrusive device). Commercial players now sell these devices to measure human performance, or even "augment" humans, at school or at work. A look back at nine decades of scientific discoveries, commercial launches, and attempts to regulate these research and practices .

• 1935: first lobotomy (section of fibers connecting various parts of the brain), intrusive procedure performed by neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz in Lisbon► 1947-1948: the Nuremberg Code establishes the requirement of informed consent for any experimental or invasive intervention.
• 1949: The Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded to Antonio Egas Moniz for his quickly controversial lobotomy technique. However, thousands of patients suffering from mental disorders, OCD or depression will receive this treatment for decades, the vast majority of them women (between 1935 and 1985, they represent 84% of procedures in Belgium, France and Switzerland, according to the journal Nature ). ► 1964: The World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki rejects any experimentation or treatment without proven benefit and without respect for human dignity. ► 1975: The UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons with Mental Disabilities denounces degrading treatment and non-respect of the consent of psychiatric patients.
• 1987: First implants to treat Parkinson's disease. This deep brain stimulation (intrusive device) is performed by Alim Louis Benabid (neurosurgeon) and Pierre Pollak (neurologist) at the Grenoble University Hospital. Nearly 250,000 people worldwide have been implanted.
• 1999 : first intracranial implants to treat OCD and Tourette syndrome (intrusive device) performed at the University Hospital of Louvain and Ghent (Belgium) by Bart Nuttin and Veerle Visser Vandewalle respectively.
• 2005: first intracranial implants to treat resistant depression (intrusive device) by Helen Mayberg (neurologist) and Andres Lozano (neurosurgeon) at the University of Toronto, Canada.

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