Researchers have been studying the potential of electrical stimulation for the treatment of mental disorders for decades. But the severity of depression is determined by a questionnaire, and the method often gives unstable results. We fight depression by playing at an ऑनलाइन कैसीनो.
A team led by Sameer Sheth, a neurosurgeon at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, has found a way to assess a person’s brain activity. In this way, it will be possible to determine the severity of depression and more accurately apply the treatment.
The results look very promising. This is the first demonstration of successful and permanent mood decoding in humans in these areas of the brain.
What Is DBS?
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an operation where the patient’s brain is placed with a special stimulator. Electrical stimulation helps regulate abnormal brain activity that causes disability symptoms. Patients with Parkinson’s disease show positive results after using such a procedure.
That is why scientists are trying to determine. whether it can help in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, and depression.
In the 2000s, some studies suggested that DBS would be effective for people with depression. Such people were not helped by traditional treatments like antidepressants. But the first clinical trials failed and were discontinued.
Back then that kind of technology was not developed well.
Experiment
For their experiment, the team used a surgical technique that is sometimes used in the treatment of epilepsy. It involves placing electrodes in the brain to determine exactly where the seizures start. Then these areas of the brain are stimulated with electrodes or removed.
Unlike epilepsy, depression does not occur at a single point. But the approach helps to understand how brain activity differs when a person feels better or worse. Volunteers with depression took part in the experiment. They were fitted with 2 permanent DBS electrodes and 5 temporary electrodes on each hemisphere of the brain to monitor mood and cognitive activity. They were removed after 9 days.
DBS electrodes connected to a battery on the chest periodically emitted pulses to correct mood. After half a year. The group of scientists switches off the stimulators in the brain. The symptoms of depression instantly worsened.
Since then, the device has been working continuously. In total, the procedure was performed on 5 volunteers with persistent depression. That is not amenable to medical treatment. It is planned to increase the number of participants in the experiment to 12.
Despite early signs of success, the scientists do not plan to mass-produce the experiment. It is an invasive and expensive procedure that is time-consuming and carries risks.
Instead, the researchers hope to identify common trends and improve DBS technology. The “mood decoder” they developed made it possible to determine how the participant in the experiment feels. The researchers hope that in the future it will be possible to create a non-invasive method for collecting such information.
Currently, the severity of depression is determined using a questionnaire. Objective measurements can help provide better care and even diagnose depression.