A team of researchers after the University of California,
San Francisco, USA, was able to use a personalized brain implant to alleviate
the suppressive symptoms of severe depression in a 36-year-old woman, Sarah,
allowing her to see the beauty. peace and life. "It's like my worldview
has changed," said Sarah, a patient volunteer who asked to be called only
by her first name .
Sarah was very depressed for several years .
Scientists have implanted temporary electrodes made of thin
wire into her brain. These electrodes allowed the researchers to track brain activity
consistent with Sarah's symptoms of depression, a pattern the researchers could
use as a biomarker. In this patient's case, a special symptom emerged: a fast
brain wave, called a gamma wave, in her amygdala, a brain structure known to be
involved in emotions .
Deep brain stimulation
So they made an individual device for her - the implant was
built specifically for Sarah's brain. Based on deep brain stimulation, the
procedure uses an electrical connection between two components implanted in the
body: an electrode with multiple points of contact implanted in the brain and a
programmable pulse generator implanted somewhere under the skin. Through trial
and error, the scientists identified a closely related area of the brain, the
ventral striatum, where a small dose of electricity had an immediate and
profound effect .
Electrodes implanted in her brain sent electrical impulses
to other implanted structures, almost like a "brain pacemaker."
High-frequency stimulation of the target area of the brain blocked the
signals that caused the symptoms of depression .
After treatment, the woman experienced a "rapid and
sustained improvement" in the severity of her depression, the researchers
explain in her study published in the journal Nature Medicine.
"More work is needed to determine whether the results
and approach of this single-patient study can be generalized to a broader
population," explains UCSF neuroscientist Catherine Skangos, who led the
study.
The device costs about $ 35,000 (about 30,000 euros) and is
an adapted version of a device commonly used to treat epilepsy called the
NeuroPace RNS System. The approach used by the researchers required many
sophisticated image processing and machine learning technologies.
Although the therapy has been tested in one patient and is
only suitable for people with serious medical conditions, success is considered
to be very significant. Thanks to this progress, depression could soon be
treated simply with a brain implant, building on the successful results of this
groundbreaking experiment and to be able to offer personalized treatment for
all difficult-to-treat neuropsychiatric disorders.
Rendering to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than
264 million people worldwide suffer from MDD and another 20 million suffer from
schizophrenia. Both are among the most common omens of suicide.
So far, the researchers have already recruited two more
patients and hope to recruit nine more to assess whether the technique can be
applied more widely.
