Drugs didn’t help her depression. Brain-zapping did
3 years, 5 months ago

Drugs didn’t help her depression. Brain-zapping did

Wired  

Sarah, a 36-year-old woman, has suffered from severe, unrelenting depression since childhood. It’s estimated that up to 30 per cent of people who go through treatment for depression are considered treatment-resistant, which means that they’ve tried at least two different courses of drugs to treat their condition but found little or no improvement in symptoms. Her despair led her to enrol in a trial being run at the University of California, San Francisco, which was testing the use of deep brain stimulation to treat treatment-resistant depression. During this, Sarah filled out surveys on her mood – her levels of depression, anxiety and energy – which meant that a pattern of brain activity could be linked with a specific mood fluctuation. They also found that by monitoring the activity in the region of the brain called the amygdala, which plays a role in emotional processing, they could help predict when Sarah’s symptoms would be at their most severe.

Depression Brain Treat Sarah Her Brain Dbs  brain  sarahs  sarah  region  treat  help  activity  brainzapping  trial  depression  didnt  device  stimulation  drugs

History of this topic

A brain pacemaker helped a woman with crippling depression. It may soon be available to more people
1 year, 1 month ago

A brain pacemaker helped a woman with crippling depression. It may soon be available to more people

Associated Press  

NEW YORK — Emily Hollenbeck lived with a deep, recurring depression she likened to a black hole, where gravity felt so strong and her limbs so heavy she could barely move. Emily Hollenbeck, a deep brain stimulation therapy patient being treated for depression, stands for a portrait at the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center in New York on …

A surgery for depression: What is deep brain stimulation?
1 year, 8 months ago

A surgery for depression: What is deep brain stimulation?

Firstpost  

An Australian woman became the first patient in Mumbai to undergo surgery for depression. An Australian woman who had been struggling with depression for 26 years underwent her first psychiatric procedure in Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital last month, according to The Quint. Deep brain stimulation surgery The American Association of Neurological Surgeons describes deep brain stimulation as an elective surgical procedure …

The Quest to Treat Binge-Eating and Addiction—With Brain Zaps
2 years, 5 months ago

The Quest to Treat Binge-Eating and Addiction—With Brain Zaps

Wired  

The brain is constantly pulsing with electricity. That’s the idea behind deep brain stimulation, a technique that delivers tiny zaps of electricity to brain tissue via implanted electrodes. Those live in different brain areas,” says Sameer Sheth, a neurosurgeon at Baylor College of Medicine who studies DBS and coauthored a recent review paper on its use for obsessive-compulsive disorder. “The …

A pacemaker for brain may treat most severe depression
3 years, 5 months ago

A pacemaker for brain may treat most severe depression

India TV News  

For the first time ever in the world, a woman suffering from a severe form of depression was treated using electric brain implantation, giving hope to millions of people suffering from the mental illness who do not respond to other therapies. The experimental therapy led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco uses a magnet to download her …

Brain stimulation acts ‘like a switch’ to turn off severe depression for one patient
3 years, 5 months ago

Brain stimulation acts ‘like a switch’ to turn off severe depression for one patient

CNN  

CNN — After years of suffering, a patient with severe and untreatable depression has finally found relief with an experimental brain implant originally developed to help people with epilepsy, researchers in California reported Monday. “When we turned this treatment on, our patient’s depression symptoms dissolved and in a remarkably small time she went into remission,” Dr. Katherine Scangos, a psychiatrist …

Zapping 'mystery region' of the brain relieves depression symptoms study suggests
6 years, 3 months ago

Zapping 'mystery region' of the brain relieves depression symptoms study suggests

Daily Mail  

Zapping parts of the brain with electricity could beat the blues, a new study suggests. Delivering electrical impulses to the poorly-understood OFC region of the brain consistently helped depressed epilepsy patients within just three minutes in a new small study Nearly half of depression patients have treatment resistant forms of the mood disorder. Though it's still small, the new UCSCF …

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