Psychosurgery

Psychosurgery is the selective, surgical alteration of a transhuman mind. It is a separate field from neural genetic modification (which alters genetic code), neuralware implantation (adding cybernetic or biotech inserts to the brain or nervous system), or brainhacking (software attacks on computer brains, neural inserts, and infomorphs), though they are sometimes combined.

Psychosurgery is performed on a digital mind state. A real-time emulation, backup, or fork of the subject is uploaded and run in a simulspace. The subject need not be willing, and in these cases their VR permissions are restricted. Numerous psychosurgery simulspace environments are available, each custom-designed for specific psychosurgical goals and programmed with a thorough selection of psychotherapy treatment options.

The actual process of psychosurgery breaks down into several stages. First is diagnosis, which involves neuroimaging of morphed characters, mapping synaptic connections, and building a neurochemical model. It can also involve complete psychological profiling and psychometric behavioral testing, including personality tests and simulspace scenarios. Digital mind states can be compared to records of people with similar symptoms in order to identify related information clusters. This analysis is used to plan the procedure.

The actual implementation of psychosurgical alteration can involve several methods, depending on the desired results. Applying external modules to the mind state is often the best approach, as it doesn’t meddle with complicated connections and new inputs are readily interpreted and assimilated. For treatments, mental health software patches compiled from databases of healthy minds are matched, customized, and applied. Specialized programs can be run to stimulate certain mental processes for therapeutic purposes. Before an alteration is even applied, it can first be performed on a fork of the subject and run at accelerated speeds to evaluate the outcome. Likewise, multiple treatment choices can be applied to time-accelerated forks this way, allowing the psychosurgeon to test which is likely to work best.

Not all psychosurgery is performed for the subject’s benefit. Psychosurgery is used to interrogate, torture, erase memories, modify behavior, and inflict crippling impairments. It is also used as a legal punishment, deterring and impairing criminal activity. Such methods are often brute-forced rather than fine-tuned, ignoring safety parameters and resulting in detrimental side effects.

Difficulties

Mind editing is not an easy, safe, and error-proof process — it is difficult, dangerous, and often flawed. Neuroscience is light years ahead of where it was a century ago, but many aspects of the brain and neural functions continue to confound and elude even the brightest experts and AIs. Technologies like nanoneural mapping, uploading, digital mind emulation, and artificial intelligence are also comparatively in their infancy, being mere decades old. Though transhumanity has a handle on how to make these processes work, it does not always fully understand the underlying mechanisms.

Any psychosurgeon will tell you that mucking around in the mind’s muddy depths is a messy business. Brains are organic devices, molded by millions of years of unplanned evolutionary development. Each is grown haphazardly, loaded with mutative leftovers, and randomly modified by an unlimited array of life events and environmental factors. Every mind features numerous mechanisms — cells, connections, receptors — that handle a dizzying array of functions: memory, perception, learning, reasoning, emotion, instinct, consciousness, and more. Its system of organization and storage is holonomic, diffused, and disorganized. Even the genetically modified and enhanced brains of transhumans are crowded, chaotic, crosswired places, with each mind storing its memories, personality, and other defining features in unique ways.

What this means is that though the general architecture and topography of neural networks can be scanned and deduced, the devil is in the details. Techniques used to modify, repair, or enhance one person’s mind are not guaranteed equal success when applied to another’s. For example, the process by which brains store knowledge, skills, and memories results in a strange chaining process where these memories are linked and associated with others. Altering one memory often has adverse affects on others. In the end, minds are slippery and dodgy things, and attempts to reshape them rarely go as planned.

Using Psychosurgery

To use psychosurgery, you must have access to the target’s digitized ego (acquired the same way as uploading or forking). You must also have a psychosurgery app and access to a server to run a VR simulspace.

Psychosurgery is conducted with a Medicine: Psychosurgery Test. This is a task action, with a timeframe dependent upon the specific procedure, as noted below. Time contraction can drastically reduce the amount of real time required (Virtual Reality). The subject may not take other actions while the procedure is underway.

If you succeed, the psychosurgery is effective and permanent. The alteration becomes an enduring part of the subject’s ego and is copied when uploaded, forking, resleeving, etc. If you fail, the attempt does not work. On a critical success, no stress is inflicted at all. On a critical failure, you inflict permanent damage to the subject in the form of a Mental Disorder, Neural Damage, or other negative ego trait (GM discretion).

Every psychosurgery procedure lists a Stress Value (SV) that is inflicted on the subject. The value before the slash is inflicted if the procedure fails; the value after the slash is inflicted if the test succeeds. Superior failures inflict an extra SV 1d6 each.

Psychosurgery Modifiers

Situation	Modifier
Improper Preparation/Diagnostics	−30
Ignored Safety Protocols	+20/+SV 1d6
Time-Contraction Simulspace	−20
Subjects is infolife or uplift	−20

Roleplaying Mind Edits

The changes incurred by psychosurgery are nebulous and difficult to pin down with game mechanics. Alterations to a character’s personality and mind state are often better handled as roleplaying. This means that you should make a real effort to integrate mental modifications into your character’s words and actions, and GMs should ensure that a character’s portrayal plays true to their mind edits. Some psychosurgical mods can be reflected with ego traits, while others might incur modifiers to certain tests or in certain situations. The GM should carefully weigh a brain alteration’s effects and apply modifiers as they see appropriate.