Brain Probes: "Between the Ears Buzz" That Is Putting Some People Back on Their Feet

The technique involves drilling two dime-size holes in a person's skull and carefully guiding electrodes to a spot about the size of a Tic Tac or a small olive. Then, electrodes are connected with leads that snake down under the skin of the neck to a battery-operated device implanted under the collarbone

Implanted brain electrodes have proven useful in treatment for Parkinson's Disease, a movement disorder. But research on using brain electrodes to treat intractable depression, obsessive compulsion disorder, and other crippling psychiatric disorders is providing some intriguing findings.

About 300 medical centers offer deep brain stimulation to patients with Parkinson's in the U.S., and about 40,000 procedures have been performed across the world...But medical device companies such as Medtronic Inc. and St. Jude Medical Inc., which are paying for most of the ongoing research across the U.S., see enormous potential to expand the market...If the treatment proves effective in treating other psychiatric and neurological illnesses that do not respond to conventional therapies, it will be lucrative for hospitals and doctors, as each procedure can cost $150,000.

...A trial of 26 patients with obsessive compulsive disorder, meanwhile, found that 60 percent responded to brain stimulation with a "meaningful" reduction in symptoms, said Dr. Benjamin Greenberg, an associate professor at Brown Medical School who is leading the study...After the patients also reported a significant lightening of their mood, Greenberg and his colleagues initiated a study of stimulation in the same location for 10 depressed patients. About half are "very much improved" three years after therapy began, Greenberg said.

That is very close to results reported recently in a study of 20 severely depressed people treated by Lozano's group in Toronto. Eleven experienced a significant reduction in symptoms after one year, and about half of those patients now have no signs of depression whatsoever..."By seeing severe depression as a circuit disease, we have developed a new platform for treatment that can give people hope," said Dr. Helen Mayberg, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at Emory University. _ChicacoTribune

Guiding researchers' efforts are new brain maps generated by sophisticated imaging technologies such as functional MRIs and PET scans. By recording activity in both sick and healthy people, scientists are learning how brain circuits work and discovering where significant breakdowns seem to occur.

Those locations become possible targets for deep brain stimulation, or the application of a constant current of electricity to a specific location in the brain. The current tamps down circuits that are firing abnormally or revs up circuits that are underactive, experts theorize.

"The brain is an electrical organ, so it makes sense to use electrical stimulation to try to alter its activity," said Dr. Roy A.E. Bakay, professor of neurological surgery at Rush, which has performed hundreds of the procedures on Parkinson's patients. _Physorg

Electromagnetic stimulation of brain circuits is still in its early growth and learning stages. The expense of neurosurgical implantation of brain probe stimulators is far too great for this procedure to become widespread. It is important to find better, less expensive methods of influencing these critical circuits of well-being and well-functioning. When neuro-pharmacology fails to aid an individual, it is important to find other treatments.

On a parallel topic of neuropharmacology: Is it possible for pharmaceuticals to enhance a person's moral sense? H/T Brain Stimulant Blog