The February 20th issue of U.S. News & World Report features Miracles of Brain Repair on its cover. The article is a very good resource for learning more about vagus nerve stimulation therapy as a treatment for depression. Welcome to the new science of brain repair notes the author, Josh Fischman. Doctors are now using tiny electrical devices to help mend broken brains--and not only those injured by Parkinson's. Neurologists at several hospitals have just started a major trial of a promising implant that can fix brain damage caused by strokes. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration also approved a nerve stimulator to treat serious depression. And at a neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C., in November, scientists showcased a brand-new implant that allows a quadriplegic to control a remote robotic arm with, literally, his mind. Says Harold Sackheim, a brain stimulation expert at the New York State Psychiatric Institute: "There's a ton of stuff going on." Dr. Sackheim, the nation's leading psychiatric thought leader commented, it's all being pushed by tremendous advances in brain mapping, allowing doctors to target tiny areas, and new implants with computer chips to control them that can fit in these small spaces. "But the big thing is that our understanding of targets has changed," Sackheim says. "The brain is an electrical organ. And there is no more efficient way of getting it to act than by using a tiny electrical current. You can't get drugs, for example, to target just one region. That's why you see all sorts of bad side effects. We're seeing the start of a whole new class of medicine." Vagus nerve stimulation is a ninety-minute out-patient procedure which targets those key areas of the brain responsible for depression. |
