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"Powerful magnetic pulses applied to the scalp to stimulate the brain can bring fast relief to many severely depressed patients for whom standard treatments have failed. Yet it's been a mystery exactly how transcranial magnetic stimulation, as the treatment is known, changes the brain to dissipate depression. Now, research led by Stanford Medicine scientists has found that the treatment works by reversing the direction of abnormal brain signals."
"When they analyzed fMRI data across the whole brain, one connection stood out. In the normal brain, the anterior insula, a region that integrates bodily sensations, sends signals to a region that governs emotions, the anterior cingulate cortex.
"You could think of it as the anterior cingulate cortex receiving this information about the body—like heart rate or temperature—and then deciding how to feel on the basis of all these signals," Mitra said.
In three-quarters of the participants with depression, however, the typical flow of activity was reversed: The anterior cingulate cortex sent signals to the anterior insula. The more severe the depression, the higher the proportion of signals that traveled the wrong way."
"When depressed patients were treated with SNT, the flow of neural activity shifted to the normal direction within a week, coinciding with a lifting of their depression."
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-depression-reversing-brain-wrong.html
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19, @12:09AM
This sounds a lot like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which is sometimes colloquially referred to as shock therapy. It sounds like the treatment is applied differently, but the resulting effects on brain activity might be similar. Specifically, it sounds like it disrupts the existing activity within the brain, then hoping that more normal brain activity is established. What are the side effects of this treatment?
A member of my family had severe depression and actually received ECT. They had some significant side effects, which as I recall included severe headaches and memory loss. For this reason, they chose to discontinue ECT, even though other treatments weren't working well at the time. Are the side effects of this treatment similar to ECT, or are they less severe?
As a more general question, I don't believe ECT or this treatment are targeted at a specific area of the brain known to be associated with depression. As understand it, this is applied to the entire brain. Isn't there a risk that using this mechanism to restore normal brain activity in one area might cause abnormal activity in other regions? Couldn't that cause some problematic side effects?
I'm just skeptical because, as I said, a member of my family had a nasty experience with ECT, and this sounds somewhat similar.