Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@michael_raduga
Topics: World News, Health, Technology
Claire Reid
A man claims he has implanted a chip into his brain in the hopes that he will one day be able to control his own dreams.
Russian Michael Raduga lost ‘a lot of blood’ during his 10-hour DIY neurosurgery, which he performed at his home last month.
Despite opting to operate on his own brain, Raduga told the Daily Mail he has no neurosurgery qualifications and that he held parts of his skin back with paper clips while going at his skull with a drill he found in a hardware store so he can implant the electrode.
Speaking about the procedure, he said: “During the first 30 minutes I was ready to give up many times because first of all I lost a lot of blood - approximately a litre of blood. And I was afraid I could just lose consciousness."
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Now, you may be wondering why anyone would put themselves through such a gruesome procedure - but Raduga told the Daily Mail that he was happy to play guinea pig as he believes the procedure could one day prove very useful and allow people to enter lucid dreams at will.
He told the publication: “I am glad I survived but I was ready to die.
“For many people, it will be some sort of entertainment. Now, imagine a paralysed person who cannot experience anything in this life and now we find a way to help him to get into a lucid dream where everything is possible. Have sex, eat something, do something interesting.”
Five weeks after implanting the chip, Raduga removed it but there are concerns that he could already be at risk of long-lasting damage due to carrying out the procedure.
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It goes without saying that you should absolutely not try this at home - but if you wanted a second opinion, consultant neurosurgeon, Alex Green of the University of Oxford, told the outlet that it was an ‘extremely dangerous thing to do’.
“Neurosurgery should only be practised by experienced and qualified neurosurgeons. All sorts of complications could have happened,” he said.
“For example, if he had caused bleeding from a cortical vein or an intracerebral vessel he could have had a stroke with permanent deficit or death.”
He went on to say that aside from the obvious and multiple dangers associated with Raduga’s operation that we are ‘probably decades away’ from being able to control dreams with a device or implant.