Purpose:Treatment-resistant cluster headache can be successfully alleviated with deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the posterior hypothalamus [1]. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a non-invasive functional imaging technique with both high temporal and high spatial resolution. However, it is not known whether the inherent electromagnetic (EM) noise produced by high frequency DBS is compatible with MEG.Materials and methods:We used MEG to record brain activity in an asymptomatic cluster headache patient with a DBS implanted in the right posterior hypothalamus while he made small movements during periods of no stimulation, 7 Hz stimulation and 180 Hz stimulation.Results:We were able to measure brain activity successfully both during low and high frequency stimulation. Analysis of the MEG recordings showed similar activation in motor areas in during the patient’s movements as expected. We also observed similar activations in cortical and subcortical areas that have previously been reported to be associated with pain when the patient’s stimulator was turned on or off [2,3].Conclusion:These results show that MEG can be used to measure brain activity regardless of the presence of high frequency deep brain stimulation.

This essay tracks the conceptualizations and representations of the human/animal relation in Freud’s late anthropological work Civilization and its Discontents (1930). Rather than seeking to identify a univocal Freudian position on this problematic, I examine the variances and tensions that mark Freud’s thinking with respect to it. Animals and animality, I argue, are not just critical points of reference and illustration in his text but also potential ‘pressure’ points at which distinct theoretical orientations and assumptions overlap and where, under scrutiny, the cogency of Freud’s main theses on man and civilization can be put at risk. However, rather than seeking to attack Freud or demolish his argument, I propose that these instabilities may be read as indices of a certain, problematic ‘exigency’ exerted on thought by the human/animal relation as such – an exigency that Freud himself partially apprehends, and incipiently interrogates, within what Leo Bersani has called the ‘unconscious’ of the text itself: the speculative – and frequently unappreciated – footnotes on anthropogenesis in chapter 4.