DBS

Persistence pays off: After 8‑year follow-up, study finds robust and sustained antidepressant response to deep brain stimulation (DBS)

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Long-Term Fol­low-Up Data Shows Deep Brain Stim­u­la­tion Is an Effec­tive Treat­ment for Treat­ment-Resis­tant Depres­sion (Mount Sinai press release):

“A study pub­lished online on Fri­day, Octo­ber 4, in The Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Psy­chi­a­try found that deep brain stim­u­la­tion (DBS) of an area in the brain called the sub­cal­los­al cin­gu­late (SCC) pro­vides a robust anti­de­pres­sant effect that is sus­tained over a long peri­od of time in patients with treat­ment-resis­tant depres­sion [Read more…] about Per­sis­tence pays off: After 8‑year fol­low-up, study finds robust and sus­tained anti­de­pres­sant response to deep brain stim­u­la­tion (DBS)

Witnessing an explosion of consumer-facing neurotechnologies to (potentially) harness lifelong neuroplasticity

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Last week I shared some key sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and invest­ment trends rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing Brain Health, based on my par­tic­i­pa­tion at the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, and promised a sec­ond arti­cle more focused on the tech­nol­o­gy side of things.

Here it is 🙂

Just a few weeks after the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit I also attend­ed CES 2017. While I enjoyed the myr­i­ad emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies –autonomous vehi­cles, robot­ics, drones, aug­ment­ed and vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­sets, voice acti­vat­ed every­thing– I was most­ly struck by a firm named Halo Neu­ro­science. They have a fas­ci­nat­ing wear­able prod­uct, Halo Sport, claim­ing to accel­er­ate gains in strength, explo­sive­ness, endurance, and mus­cle mem­o­ry, improv­ing the brain’s response to ath­let­ic train­ing. It uses tDCS (tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion), essen­tial­ly prim­ing move­ment-relat­ed cir­cuits of the brain to become more recep­tive to stim­uli, help­ing the brain wire in the prac­tice for improved future response.

The cutting edge of applied neuroplasticity

Both con­fer­ences allowed me to see the cut­ting edge of [Read more…] about Wit­ness­ing an explo­sion of con­sumer-fac­ing neu­rotech­nolo­gies to (poten­tial­ly) har­ness life­long neuroplasticity

Good survey of brain stimulation methods, value and limitations

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brain_stimulationStim­u­lat­ing the Brain: From If to How (The Dana Foundation):

“Recent years have brought mod­ern meth­ods of brain stim­u­la­tion into the main­stream of neu­rol­o­gy and psy­chi­a­try. But their mechanism—how exact­ly deep brain stim­u­la­tion (DBS) relieves Parkinson’s dis­ease symp­toms and how repet­i­tive tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion (rTMS) improves depres­sion, for example—remains obscure. Research [Read more…] about Good sur­vey of brain stim­u­la­tion meth­ods, val­ue and limitations

Can Direct Brain Stimulation Boost Performance?

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Neu­rons in the brain trans­mit infor­ma­tion by exchang­ing elec­tri­cal and chem­i­cal sig­nals. What would hap­pen if these elec­tri­cal sig­nals were trans­formed by apply­ing an exter­nal cur­rent? Could this help boost brain functions?

In this arti­cle, Tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS) is report­ed to help peo­ple solve brain-teasers. In the study weak cur­rents altered the activ­i­ty of neu­rons in the ante­ri­or tem­po­ral lobes through elec­trodes on the scalp. Read more

In this oth­er arti­cle anoth­er tech­nique was used: Tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion (TMS). TMS works by gen­er­at­ing a mag­net­ic field that pass­es the scalp and the skull. In the study an explorato­ry use of TMS com­bined with cog­ni­tive train­ing was test­ed for a few months on 8 Alzheimer’s patients. The results were promis­ing. Read more

Final­ly, this arti­cle reports the use of a dif­fer­ent, more inva­sive tech­nique: deep brain stim­u­la­tion (DBS). [Read more…] about Can Direct Brain Stim­u­la­tion Boost Performance?