Major
Depression Treated with Transcranial Alternating Current Brain Stimulation
There are implantable devices out there that are very effective at treating
Depression in a lot of patients. These
look like pacemakers and they have electrical leads stretching out, usually, to the vagus nerve, and there are
Transcranial direct
Stimulation devices
with electrodes placed directly onto the brain. Of course implants have a whole host of consequences, including a limited battery lifetime, a chance that the therapy won’t work and explantation will be required, as well as potentially limited ability to receive MRI scans.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina have been testing a new approach, called*transcranial
Alternating Current Brain Stimulation (tACS), to hopefully be able to offer a different, non invasive option.
The technology relies on an electrode headset that looks like an EEG cap, but instead of listening for faint
Brain signals, it delivers weak
Alternating Current pulses in a very targeted way toward a specific location within the brain.
In a study on 32 individuals, 70 percent of those that received the therapy saw “marked” improvement in their
Depression symptoms. This is still an early and very limited clinical study, which will help the researchers to optimize their
Stimulation protocol and better target the disease.
Future, more extensive studies will be required to really prove the efficacy of this technology and better figure out what kinds of patients are best suited for it.
Study in
Translational Psychology:
Double-blind, randomized pilot clinical trial targeting alpha oscillations with transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD)…
Via:
UNC…
