The use of brain pacemaker is well-known in the case of treating the effects of Parkinson’s, but new studies have shown it might help with depression too.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a treatment where an implant is placed in the patient’s head, acting in a similar way to a pacemaker used in the heart to regulate the heartbeat.
Brain un-freeze
Only a few patients have undergone the treatment so far, but six of the 17 were in remission a year after undergoing the treatment, with four more showing noteworthy improvements.
More than half of the 26 obsessive-compulsive patients involved in the studies from a team at the Cleveland Clinic, Brown University, and Belgium's University of Leuven, showed marked improvement as well.
Significant responses
"Not all patients get better, but when patients respond, it's significant," says Dr. Helen Mayberg of Emory University, who has placed the implant in around 50 patients thus far.
"We're rewiring the brain in many ways," says Dr. Ali Rezai, chief of the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Neurologic Restoration.
Further study required
The treatment is still a long way off being ready for the prime-time, as careful attention and study is needed in each case when working out where to place the implant.
But it offers hope to millions of depression sufferers worldwide, and shows technology will always have a positive place in society.
Your comments (3) Click to add a new comment
aditi
June 23rd 2008
3. Is it so i had never come accrossed about this but how do implaint basically respond with this heartbeat.
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Aditi
Dual Diagnosis
http://www.dual-diagnosis.net
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nicolasmerritt
May 29th 2008
2. Yes, although I imagine opening up someone's brain in order to place a functionally useless implant in order to test the placebo effect might raise some ethical questions.
I wonder how these things ARE tested, come to think of it. Easy to determine placebo effect with a sugar pill. But when it comes to metal and plastic... anyone know?
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lth
May 28th 2008
1. I do worry about these things - one can only ever do very small studies and of course can't realistically do placebos in these situations.
Unfortunately, it's been shown that the strength of placebo correlates with the level of medical intervention - so taking four sugar pills a day is more effective than two, and a saline injection is more effective than pills, because it is a greater intervention.
...So the placebo effect for brain surgery must be pretty damn intense, even if the surgery itself is functionally useless. And of course it is also well known that placebos play a much bigger part in psychological disorders such as lower back pain (most sufferers of this are manifesting their anxiety through nonspecific pain) and of course depression. So whether any medical benefit has really accrued is, I think, questionable - particularly since the quoted remission rate was only 30%.
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