From BBC Health - June 27, 2005 12:42
Fitting patients with a brain pacemaker could switch off hard-to-treat depression, believe UK experts.
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The technology, already used to treat Parkinson's disease, uses wires and a battery source to stimulate deep parts of the brain with electric currents.
As well as helping depressed patients who have failed on all other therapies, it might also be helpful for treating obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
UK neurologists said they planned to test this after promising US trials.
This development builds on the work of Professor Helen Mayberg, from Emory University School of Medicine in the US, who first began studying the use of deep brain stimulation for depression 15 years ago.
By looking at brain scans of people with severe depression that could not be alleviated with drugs, psychotherapy or other available treatments, she found they tended to have very high activity in an area of the brain within the limbic system, which is known to be involved with mood.
These people also had lower than normal activity in the frontal lobe, which appeared to be linked to the abnormally high activity in the part of the limbic system that Professor Mayberg calls area 25.
She reasoned that stimulating area 25 with electric currents would rebalance brain activity and alleviate depression.
The device that she used consists of a matchbox-sized, battery-powered generator that sits in the chest, much like a heart pacemaker, and produces the electric currents.
