Brain Pacemakers Tackle Depression
Lauran Neergaard, Associated Press

        http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/05/27/depression-pacemaker-print.html



May 27, 2008 -- It's a new frontier for psychiatric illness: 
Brain pacemakers that promise to act as antidepressants by 
changing how patients' nerve circuitry fires.

Scientists already know the power of these devices to block 
the tremors of Parkinson's disease and related illnesses; 
more than 40,000 such patients worldwide have the implants.

But psychiatric illnesses are much more complex and the new 
experiments with so-called deep brain stimulation, or DBS, 
are in their infancy. Only a few dozen patients with severe 
depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder so far have been 
treated in closely monitored studies.
Still, the early results are promising. Dramatic video shows 
one patient visibly brightening as doctors turn on her brain 
pacemaker and she says in surprise: "I'm starting to smile." 
And new reports this month show that some worst-case 
patients -- whose depression wasn't relieved by medication, 
psychotherapy, even controversial shock treatment -- are 
finding lasting relief.

Six of 17 severely depressed patients were in remission a 
year after undergoing DBS and four more markedly improved, 
and more than half of 26 obsessive-compulsive patients 
showed substantial improvement over three years, say studies 
from a team at the Cleveland Clinic, Brown University, and 
Belgium's University of Leuven.
"Not all patients get better, but when patients respond, 
it's significant," says Dr. Helen Mayberg of Emory 
University, who has implanted about 50 depression patients. 
Her first remains in remission after five years; she 
estimates that four of every six show enough improvement to 
be classified "responders."

... more 

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