The information is a little surprising, and the photographs are frankly shocking. Several media report that a man of Russian nationality was hospitalized for long weeks after having pierced his own skull to install a chip in order to control his dreams. Something he confirmed and documented in the first person on his Twitter account.
Trephination at home
Mikhail Raduga, a 40-year-old Russian national, said he carried out his experiment in an apartment in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He bought a basic drill and used it on his skull to insert a chip that would allow him to control his dreams. To perform such a procedure, the man would have simply studied videos on the Internet showing the work of neurosurgeons. “On May 17, 2023, I performed a trephination, electrode implantation and electrical stimulation of the motor cortex of my brain myself.he said in a tweet. I needed it to test brain stimulation during lucid dreaming”.
The operation, extremely dangerous, could have led him to the grave. He explains that he lost a lot of blood – about 1 liter – and came close to losing consciousness. He then went to the hospital for treatment. Comparing his experience to the movie InceptionMikhaïl Radouga seems very active in this field, and his Twitter biography mentions studies on the “REM sleep, sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming and out-of-body experience”.
“I’m glad I survived but I was ready to die”said the man at the DailyMail. Bad news for him: the implant was finally removed at the hospital after five weeks in his skull. He could also suffer from long-term complications as a result of this procedure, such as epileptic seizures.
THE biohacking extreme
Brain implants are at the heart of the research of Neuralink, a company founded by Elon Musk regularly criticized for its animal testing. On May 25, the company got the green light from US authorities to test its implants on human brains.
Augmentation of the human body through implants is a research topic referred to as biohacking. This term brings together a set of practices relating to the sciences, techniques and so-called living arts. End of 2022, Digital went to meet Patrick Paumen, a Dutchman who is one of the pioneers of biohacking, who currently has 35 chips implanted in his body.