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From the do-taze-me-bro dept.
An article over at Medical Xpress details study results published on 4 October, 2016 in Nature Scientific Reports [Full paper], from a group of neuroscientists investigating the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), using MRI imaging.
From the Medical Xpress article:
Rather than taking medication, a growing number of people who suffer from chronic pain, epilepsy and drug cravings are zapping their skulls in the hopes that a weak electric current will jolt them back to health.
This brain hacking—"transcranial direct current stimulation" (tDCS)—is used to treat neurological and psychiatric symptoms. A do-it-yourself community has sprouted on Reddit, providing unconventional tips for how to use a weak electric current to treat everything from depression to schizophrenia. People are even using commercial tDCS equipment to improve their gaming ability. But tDCS is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and scientists are split on its efficacy, with some calling it quackery and bad science.
Here's the issue: Until now, scientists have been unable to look under the hood of this do-it-yourself therapeutic technique to understand what is happening. Danny JJ Wang, a professor of neurology at the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, said his team is the first to develop an MRI method whereby the magnetic fields induced by tDCS currents can be visualized in living humans. Their results were published Oct. 4 in Scientific Reports, a Nature Publishing Group journal.
"Although this therapy is taking off at the grassroots level and in academia [with an exponential increase in publications], evidence that tDCS does what is being promised is not conclusive," said Wang, the study's senior author. "Scientists don't yet understand the mechanisms at work, which prevents the FDA from regulating the therapy. Our study is the first step to experimentally map the tDCS currents in the brain and to provide solid data so researchers can develop science-based treatment."
People in antiquity used electric fish to zap away headaches, but tDCS, as it is now known, was introduced in 2000, said Mayank Jog, study lead author and a graduate student conducting research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
"Since then, this noninvasive, easy-to-use, low-cost technology has been shown to improve cognition as well as treat clinical symptoms," Jog said.
So what say you, Soylentils? Ready to cut that electrical cord, plug it into the wall and stick it in your ear? I'm sure there are quite a few who'd be willing to assist!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday October 05 2016, @10:04PM
There may be [wikipedia.org].
A meta-analysis on the effectiveness of ECT in unipolar and bipolar depression was conducted in 2012. Results indicated that although patients with unipolar depression and bipolar depression responded to other medical treatments very differently, both groups responded equally well to ECT. Overall remission rate for patients given a round of ECT treatment was 51.5% for those with unipolar depression and 50.9% for those with bipolar depression….
In 2008, a meta-analytic review paper found in terms of efficacy, "a significant superiority of ECT in all comparisons: ECT versus simulated ECT, ECT versus placebo, ECT versus antidepressants in general, ECT versus TCAs and ECT versus MAOIs…."
Compared with transcranial magnetic stimulation for people with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, ECT relieves depression about twice as well, reducing the score on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression by about 15 points, while TMS reduced it by 9 points.
Keep in mind that there are memory-related side-effects as Wikipedia notes.
A lot of people think of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) as some kind torture technique. That's simply not true. The mechanism that results in relief from depression isn't well understood, however.
Also, ECT unfortunately can't cure heterosexuality, either, regardless of what religious people wish it did.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 05 2016, @10:21PM
Whaaaaaaat... yo... pass that blunt
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday October 05 2016, @10:55PM
Heteronormative Crusader [tvtropes.org]
(TV Tropes time-suck warning)
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday October 05 2016, @11:12PM
Found the link I was actually looking for:
Quit flaunting it, straight people! [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday October 06 2016, @01:42AM
*holds it in*
*holds it in*
*exhales*
Here you go, man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @11:16PM
Are those remission rates good or bad? What's the baseline? What are the remission rates with simulated ECT and with a placebo? The paper those figures you quoted appears to come from is pay-walled, so I can't read more than the abstract.
I did however find a critical abstract [nih.gov] for it, which wasn't very positive about the quality of the meta-analysis.
Lacking better evidence, I'd take the claims of ECT's effectiveness with a sizeable pinch of salt.