In the magazine this month, we have an amazing first-person account of getting deep brain stimulation surgery. What's that? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Deep brain stimulation surgery is a relatively new procedure where doctors insert electrodes into the middle of your brain so they can continually give small jolts of electricity to a specific area. In many brain maladies, there's just a tiny part of your gray matter that has gone haywire, and is lighting up with all kinds of random electrical flare-ups. The stimulators target this area and somehow make things better. They're not really sure exactly how: It's unclear if the stimulation reduces the errant shocks, or if it helps the shocks get bigger and become more normal. All they know is that it seems to work.

It turns out anything that involves bad brain activity can be treated this way. Brain stimulators are now being used for everything from epilepsy to depression to eating disorders. They just spot the neural firestorms with CT scans, run some wires into that area, and zap!

Steven Gulie had this surgery for Parkinson's Disease, and he recounts the tale like the geek he is (he's a technical writer at Apple). It's a joy to listen to him dissect what's happening to him. He even narrated a slideshow of the whole thing. It's pretty amazing. Check it out.

Of course, Wired has a celebrated tradition of stories by and about people getting things jacked into their brains. Some memorable ones:

John Donoghue created a brian implant that lets paralyzed patients control a cursor with their minds.

Michael Chorost went all experimental with his cochlear implant in an effort to once again be able to hear the masterpiece Bolero.

And of course there's the story of William Dobelle, who plugged a computer into a blind man's head, and, well, allowed that man to see again. Then Dobelle let the man drive his car.