jtotheizzoe:

Brain Electrodes Fix Deep Depression Long-Term

A placebo-controlled study showed that an electrode surgically implanted into a particular brain region could eliminate symptoms of the deepest, most untreatable forms of depression:

Deep depression that fails to respond to any other form of therapy can be moderated or reversed by stimulation of areas deep inside the brain. Now the first placebo-controlled study of this procedure shows that these responses can be maintained in the long term¹.

Neurologist Helen Mayberg at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, followed ten patients with major depressive disorder and seven with bipolar disorder, or manic depression, after an electrode device was implanted in the subcallosal cingulate white matter of their brains and the area continuously stimulated.

For psychiatrists accustomed to seeing severely depressed patients fail to respond — or fail to maintain a response — to antidepressant or cognitive therapy, these results seem near miraculous.

All but one of twelve patients who reached the two-year point in the study had completely shed their depression or had only mild symptoms.

“Its almost spooky.”

Of course, surgical implants to treat depression will never be mainstream or generally ethical*, but it shows that focused therapies dealing with very precise brain regions could alleviate symptoms, at least for some of the most untreatable sufferers of depression.

(via Nature News)

*EDIT: I should have written this more carefully and explained what I meant by my “ethical” comment. I posted a little more context here.

scinerds:

Sea Slug Offers Clues to Improving Long-Term Memory

Using sea slugs as models, scientists someday may be able to design learning protocols that improve long-term memory formation in humans, a new study suggests.

The researchers used information about biochemical pathways in the brain of the sea slug Aplysia to design a computer model that identified the times when the mollusk’s brain is primed for learning. They tested the model by submitting the animals to a series of training sessions, involving electric shocks, and found that Aplysia experienced a significant increase in memory formation when the sessions were conducted during the peak periods predicted by the model.

The proof-of-principle study may someday help scientists discover ways to improve human memory, the researchers said.

“This is very impressive,” David Glanzman, a neurobiologist at the University of California Los Angeles, said of the study, in which he was not involved. “If someone had asked me ahead of time, ‘Are you going to be able to improve learning if you model these two pathways?’ I would have predicted no.”

Some of those nights….