Wildly optimistic notions about the potential of neuroscience aren’t new. In the 1960s and 1970s, famed neuroscientist José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado predicted that innovations in cybernetics and brain anatomy would lead to a “psychocivilized society.”
Delgado’s experiments with cybernetic brain implants in monkeys, apes, and even cows were revolutionary for their time. In one famous instance, he was able to stop a charging bull by sending a radio signal into a tiny electrode receiver (a stimoceiver) implanted in the animal’s caudate nucleus, an area of the brain that controls voluntary movement.
In another experiment, he put several small macaque monkeys in a cage with an aggressive male macaque that had similarly wired with a stimoceiver to his caudate nucleus. Also in the cage was a lever that — when activated — sent a signal to the implant. Delgado describes the results of the experiment in his book Physical Control of the Mind, writing, “A female monkey named Elsa soon discovered that Ali’s [the male] aggressiveness could be inhibited by pressing the lever, and when Ali threatened her, it was repeatedly observed that Elsa responded by lever pressing. Her attitude of looking straight at the boss was highly significant because a submissive monkey would not dare to do so, for fear of immediate retaliation.… Although Elsa did not become the dominant animal, she was responsible for blocking many attacks against herself and for maintaining a peaceful coexistence within the whole colony.”
In the late 1960s, Delgado was outspoken in his assertions that neuroscience, and particularly the suppression of urges through electrical stimulation, could lead to a world without war, strife, crime, or even cruelty.
“We are only at the beginning of our experimental understanding of the inhibitory mechanisms of behavior in animals and man, but their existence has already been well substantiated. It is clear that manifestations as important as aggressive responses depend not only on environmental circumstances but also on their interpretation by the central nervous system where they can be enhanced or totally inhibited by manipulating the reactivity of specific intracerebral structures,” he wrote.
— Patrick Tucker