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Biotech Science

A Brain Pacemaker for Depression 99

Posted by timothy from the 10-years-too-late dept.
Ranger writes "Scientists claim to have developed a pacemaker 'cure' for depression. It may also have applications to controlling tremor's in Parkison' sufferers. This sounds vaguely like Ren & Stimpy's Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy helmet from Stimpy's Invention."
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A Brain Pacemaker for Depression More

A Brain Pacemaker for Depression

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  • Terminal Man (Score:2, Insightful)

    by WhatAmIDoingHere ( 742870 ) *
    Anybody [amazon.com]?

    That's the first thing that popped into my head.

  • "Make my day" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig@hogger.gmail@com> on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:08PM (#11818420) Journal
    Sounds like a "Tasp", from Larry Niven "Known Space" novels.

    (A Tasp is a device that lets one remotely tickle someone else's brain pleasure center. It's illegal, of course, since very often, the victim, after a moment of pure joy, is bound to get depressed and eventually becomes a wirehead, by having a wire to the pleasure center surgically implanted, then getting high on house current [presumably transformed down to a managable voltage/current] and avoiding normal sundry chores like working, washing-up and eventually eating).

    • Re:"Make my day" (Score:4, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:22PM (#11818607) Homepage Journal
      Niven didn't actually invent the "tasp". Like a lot of his concepts, it was just regurgitated magazine articles and folklore. In this case, there was a story circulating that somebody had wired a lever into the "pleasure center" of a rat's brain. Another lever dispensed the rat's food supply. Supposedly, the rat was so caught up in pressing the pleasure lever, it never got around to pushing the food lever, and starved to death.

      As usual, Niven did manage to turn this concept into interesting stories. Though (as usual) he also rather beat the idea to death. But the sad thing is that the whole concept is probably either an urban legend or a distortion of real research. I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a "pleasure center". It is true that things directly induce pleasure in the brain also tend to override basic drives, such as hunger -- something every crack addict demonstrates.

      • Re:"Make my day" (Score:5, Informative)

        by Mark_MF-WN ( 678030 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:30PM (#11818707)
        There actually is such a thing. It's located in the limbic system, and is primarily affected by the release of dopamine (which is why drugs that stimulate the release of dopamine are so pleasurable). The rat story isn't apocryphal, although I'd feel better if I had a link to a journal it was published in.
        • Perhaps there's a place in the limbic system you can stimulate and cause pleasure -- that wouldn't suprise me. But that's not a "pleasure center". That idea comes from a simplistic neo-phrenological [umn.edu] model of brain architecture.
          • And yet we all accept that there's a speech center, a language center, an optical center, etc. What's so different about a pleasure center that it invokes your bizarre ire?
            • You accept that there is. Neuroscientists have a rather more sophisticated model.
              • Which is? I'm unfamiliar with any model that doesn't involve identifying specific brain structures that perform certain groups of functions. If that wasn't a good model for the brain, brain surgery would be virtually impossible, as would most forms of brain-imaging.

                But please, enlighten me. Can you point me in the direction of some new, superior model?

                • I agree: there are specific brain structures that perform specific groups of functions. But that's not the same thing as saying that there's a specific brain center that's in charge of "pleasure". That's like saying there a little demon in your head that evaluates whether you are supposed to enjoy each and every experience. Which makes no sense.

                  Nor is there a "language center". What you do have is a lot of different structures, such as Broca's Area" [wikipedia.org] that seem to play a role in use of language.

                  • You're just playing semantics now -- what's the difference between "performing specific groups of functions" and being "in charge" of those functions? The wikipedia link you include describes one of the parts of the brain where the structural model is most applicable! Broca's centre and Wernicke's centers are just about the most localized brain features in the entire cerebral cortex (which is, ironically, the least structural component of the brain).

                    Once you get outside of the cerebral cortex, the struc

                    • he wikipedia link you include describes one of the parts of the brain where the structural model is most applicable!

                      I never said that you couldn't describe functional centers of the brain. Of course the brain has functional centers. But what is the job of specific centers? Nobody really knows. It's clear that Broca's area plays a role in language processing, since damage to that area tends to cause language aphasia. But there's similar evidence for language roles in various other brain areas. So there's

                    • Give it up man. The "Admit it when I'm wrong" part of his brain is damaged or missing.
                • LOL. Man, what a day not to have mod points.

        • Re:"Make my day" (Score:2, Informative)

          by Harodotus ( 680139 ) *

          IANAR(researcher), but for journal references how about:

          From M.A. Bozarth (1994). Pleasure systems in the brain. [addictionscience.net] In D.M. Warburton (ed.), Pleasure: The politics and the reality (pp. 5-14 + refs). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

          Based on research from the origanal study:

          Olds, J. and Milner, P.: Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain. J. Comp. Physiol. Psychol. 47: 419-427, 1954 [Medline pre1966 - no text online availble] [aspetjournals.org].

      • Supposedly, the rat was so caught up in pressing the pleasure lever, it never got around to pushing the food lever, and starved to death.

        Leading to the famous quote:

        "If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a 'fix' of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine."
        -- Rob Stampfli

        (source [stearns.org])
        • Rob has a point. But that's nothing to MMORPGs. People have been known to play themselves to death. I mean literally, as in playing for several days without food or sleep, and then dropping dead.
      • Actually, there are several pleasure centers (after all, there ain't just one kind of pleasure), each one corresponding to different areas of the brain and different kinds of stimulation (eg sexual pleasure, eating pleasure etc).

        Don't have time to scrounge up a link since I'm at work, but google should be able to help you out.

    • I'm reminded more of the Michael Crichton book 'Terminal Man'. A person was wired with a similar device that automatically sent a mild shock into his brain when he was having a psychotic episode (or something like that).

      He snapped and went on a murderous rampage, despite the device (or because of it).

      This sounds disturbingly similar.

      Not that reality will follow fiction.

  • World (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mark_MF-WN ( 678030 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:14PM (#11818509)
    Didn't it ever occurr to anyone to just make the world less shitty? That would clear up most depression quite nicely.

    Seriously though -- I've seen people with medication-resistant major depressive disorder, and it sucks real bad. Anything that can help these people is worth looking into.

    • Re:World (Score:2, Funny)

      by GreyWolf3000 ( 468618 )
      Umm, I don't think depression is caused by the world's problems, but by the individual's problems with the world.

      In korea, for example, only old men have depression.

    • Re:World (Score:5, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:33PM (#11818748) Homepage Journal
      That's the usual misconception about clinical depression -- that it's just a fancy way of saying "unhappy". But to doctors it describes various syndromes where a person's mental function is "depressed". It means not just a bad mood, but an inability to feel a good mood. Or to think clearly, respond to events, and a lot of other inabilities.

      Moving a person with such a condition onto another planet where everything's perfect might help them feel better. Or not. People with a built-in capacity for depression can get depressed -- even suicidal -- over things that most people wouldn't even notice.

      Thing is, the word "depression" doesn't really explain anything. It's just a handy label for a wide variety of conditions, some fairly well understood, others hardly understood at all. So it ends up being a dumping bin for any condition with mostly psychological symptoms that a doctor can't explain through physical disease. So really depression is "diagnosed" only by elimination -- and it often happens that the doctor has not eliminated all other possibilities.

      • Oh, I'm well aware of that. Hence the "seriously though".

        Depression is definitely a nasty business. It's often extremely difficult treat (some people are virtually immune to the positive effects of psychotropic medications, although rarely to the negative ones). Psychotherapy is often unhelpful for intelligent and/or cynical people. It's a bad scene.

    • Re:World (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Shihar ( 153932 )
      Actually, a neat theory I heard about depression is that it comes into existence because the world doesn't suck. The basic idea is this. In nature a human be under constant life and death adversity. You would always be hungry and always searching for food. Depression in such in instance would offer up a defense against a lack of food. If you ran out of food, you would become depressed, expend less energy, and spend your time worrying how to obtain more food. Hopefully, you would find more food and res
      • Thank you for sharing. One can never have too much BS in one's life.
      • That makes an enormous amount of sense. I have noticed that my depressive episodes are usually triggered by the complexity of modern life, whereas, put me in a survival-ish situation and I couldn't be happier. I guess this is why I like winter camping in the mountains.

    • And??? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DesScorp ( 410532 )
      We've been making the world "less shitty" for centuries with every advance; improved medicine, housing, communications, and education. If people of 100 years ago had peered into the future and seen our world, they'd be amazed at the lengths we've traveled.

      And yet we're more miserable than ever.

      It's as if all of the things we go to buy at Circuit City to fill our empty holes are only making them deeper.

      There is a possibility, however: perhaps it's that, with each advance, our imagination travels more and
      • First off, you completely missed the fact that I was making a joke .

        Secondly, the only reason depression seems so prevalent now is that in the past, it wasn't diagnosed, and people who had it either wasted away and died, or they killed themselves. It's nothing to do with being spoiled, with imagination, or anything like that.

        There's nothing that pisses me off more than people who come up with stupid ideas about depression stemming from jealousy, or being spoiled, or anything like that. Depression ste

      • We've been making the world "less shitty" for centuries with every advance; improved medicine, housing, communications, and education.

        You can never get enough of what it is that you never really wanted in the first place.

        In Buddhism (which, at its best, is more applied psychology than religion), there is an image of hell realms full of "hungry ghosts". As Gary Snyder put it in one of my favorite poems [marigold.com], "loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill i

    • That's not a bad point, really. There is probably nothing pathologic about feeling negative emotions in response to negative stimulus. My guess is that quite a few people taking SSRI's are not depressed in the neurophysiologic sense, but rather "unhappy." If any real understanding of the efficacy of one depression treatment vs. another is ever to be had, it will be after sorting out the true depressives from the larger group of unhappy people. If you drop out of med school to work at a potato chip factory,
      • True enough. There's also the genetic aspect -- some people just spiral into depression, and never get out. Normal treatments fail, because they're designed to correct the depression and then end (a normal course of SSRIs or psychotherapy is two years). And then there's people who have a negative stimulus (such as a loved one dieing), but their grieving period never really ends. And geriatric-onset depression -- lots of eldery people become extremely depressed, although I understand this is one of the e
    • The major (not only) cause of depression is not doing what you know you should.

      The best cure for nearly all depression is doing what you know is right.

      (Note: I do not suggest that depression begins and ends in relation to what others think you should do, but in relation to what YOU KNOW is right.)
      • That's a bunch of hippy Rogerian bullshit. If that were true, why would ECT and SSRIs eliminate depression in so many cases?
    • Didn't it ever occurr to anyone to just make the world less shitty? That would clear up most depression quite nicely.

      Didn't it ever occurr to anyone to just make the world less irrational? That would clear up most schizophrenia quite nicely. :)

      -

  • Already exists... (Score:5, Funny)

    by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:17PM (#11818544) Homepage Journal
    Such a device already exists, and is used by hundreds of thousands of geeks across the globe!

    Bored at work. Bored at work. Getting depressed. Getting depressed.

    Oh, new story on Slashdot! Yay! Something to do. Happy! Happy!

    Ok. Read story. Not so good after all. Bored at work. Bored at work. Getting depressed. Getting depressed.

    Oh, new story on Slashdot! Yay! Something to do. Happy! Happy!

  • I thought this looked familiar... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SoCalChris ( 573049 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:19PM (#11818560) Journal
    A dupe [slashdot.org] from almost a year ago.

  • Violation of Inalienable Rights (Score:3, Interesting)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:20PM (#11818577)
    Hey - the basic catechism of life in America is that you have the right to pursue happiness. This implies that you cannot ever achieve it because then you would lose the ability to pursue it.

    So this helmet has to go.

  • This article is PR. TMS has more of a future. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Red Moose ( 31712 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:24PM (#11818632)
    Vagal Nerve Stimulation is OK but as it's invasive I would see it as not being as "good" as alternatives. The reason is it being publicised is because the technology already exists, the theory is decades old and it's a "chargeable" procedure. But it is invasive and as such carries more risks than ECT. It will make certain corporations a lot of money and undoubedtly will lead to a reversal to the macroscopic analogies of psychiatric illness of 50 years ago. It's crude, put it that way.

    Possibly a better track is the TMS - Transcranial Magnetic Ultrasound. This is non-invasive and uses magnetic and electrical principles to achieve the neurogenesis seen in ECT which is the best treatment for certain types of depression. It's cheaper and quicker and has none of the risks of ECT which are primarily those associated with a general anaesthesia.

    So VNS will lead down a path of the cingulotomies of the past with a GA to implant and complications of that. GA causes enough of the ECT problems like memory loss and disorientation. It will however make procedural money and insurance companies love procedures. Vagal Nerve Stimulation is more invasive and drastic than ECT. The article quotes one of them saying the opposite.

    TMS is non-invasive, carries none of the related side-effects of General Anaesthetic (used in ECT and Vagal Nerve Stimulation). It is misleading in this article to suppose that ECT is more "drastic". VNS = corporate money + risk of neurosurgery. TMS = better results for patient with less side effects.

    Surgical intervention such as anterior cingulotomy have only been found succesful in very rare cases.

  • Related device: The Orgasmatron (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:25PM (#11818645) Journal
    This reminds me a little bit of an article I read a little while back on a spinal cord stimulation device which has been dubbed the "Orgasmatron."

    Article link [go.com]

    Snippet:

    While Dr. Stuart Meloy was working on a new device to treat chronic pain, he was surprised to discover it could also bring pleasure to his female patients.

    While Meloy, an anesthesiologist and pain specialist in Winston-Salem, was putting an electrode into the spine of a female patient with chronic back pain, the woman reported a decrease in her pain and a delightful, but very unexpected, side effect.

    "When we turned on the power in this case, she let out a moan and began hyperventilating," Meloy said on ABC News' Good Morning America. "Of course we cut the power and I looked around the drapes and asked her what was going on. Once she caught her breath, she said 'you're gonna have to teach my husband how to do that!' "

    Meloy soon realized he may have discovered a device that could help thousands of women who have trouble achieving orgasm.

    "The device is the use of a pre-existing device called a spinal cord stimulator," he said. "Instead of treating chronic pain with the stimulator, we're treating orgasmic dysfunction," Meloy said.

    In a surgical procedure done in his office, Meloy implants the electrodes from this device into the back of the patient, at the bottom part of the spinal cord. When the electrodes are stimulated with a remote control, the brain interprets the signal as an orgasm, he said. The device is about the size of a pacemaker and can be turned on and off with a handheld remote control.

  • Side Effects? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lhaeh ( 463179 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:25PM (#11818649)
    I've been on two antidepressant medications. They both made me an emotionless zombie.

    What else will this do, other then 'cure' depression?

    • Re:Side Effects? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've tried a fair number of anti-depression remedies myself. The best of them, endorphin highs from exercise and anti-depressant medications made me feel a bit empty and disconnected. I was still depressed, but it didn't really bother me that I was.

    • Re:Side Effects? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mark_MF-WN ( 678030 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @07:48PM (#11818918)
      That happens a lot with some of the older SSRIs. Some of the newer ones are better about those side effects.

      To be fair though, SSRIs have some of the mildest side effects of any psychotropic medications. I was on a tiny dose of a mild antipsychotic for three weeks; the end result was that I temporarily became sociopathically antisocial, I gained fifty pounds (and I wasn't exactly Tommy Tune to start with), and my liver had started failing. I'm STILL taking the weight off. Apparently people often die of heart disease after just a few years on an antipsychotic. Lame, huh?

      • Side effect is a reductionist euphemism. Try 'shitty effect'. Everything a drug does is an effect. We are organisms, complex systems. Is my left kidney a side organ just because my brain and gonads are my primary interest? Really, it just comes off as drugmaker propaganda.
        • A side effect is any effect other than the intended effect. Just like my CPU catching on fire is a side effect of recompiling the Linux kernel.

          Reductionist euphemism? Welcome to the world -- everything is a reduction. The only thing that isn't a reduction is the entire universe itself. We reduce because describing the entire universe in complete detail is a bit more difficult than using reductionist nouns and pronouns.

          • A side effect is any effect other than the intended effect.

            No. A side effect is a minor effect aside from the intended effect. I'm objecting to your (and the drug companies') definition, since it is used to mislead.

            Reductionist euphemism? Welcome to the world -- everything is a reduction.

            That is a specious use of the word. Reduction is a provisional tool when examining systems, and needs to be discarded at the earliest opportunity. A forest is not an aggregation of trees.

            Reductionism is a mistaken the

  • Too many people are depressed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SunFan ( 845761 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @08:43PM (#11819355)

    While there are certainly people who are clearly depressed, most people I know who are on anti-depressants are perfectly normal. They mistake the occasional lack of motivation or bad day for depression, and it seems doctors love to write prescriptions for antidepressants with little or no questioning if they are needed (kickbacks?). My frame of comparison for "normal" is a person I know who is truly bipolar (it's unmistakable, and medication is necessary).

    • I completely agree that doctors are too quick to prescribe SSRIs. Quite often for milder cases of depression (like mine), a diet and exercise routine can work without all the risks/side effects of SSRIs. I now take 5-HTP (available at any drug store) and eat a more balanced diet and never really feel all that down anymore. Also, taking 5-HTP regularly has pretty much killed the sugar cravings I used to get all the time, so I've dropped a few pounds.

      I have no doubt that for serious cases, SSRIs can be ve

      • Re:Too many people are depressed (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Being depressive myself (bipolar II, actually) I'm just curious: what diet and exercises can help with depression? Is it really working? Thanks in advance...
        • I can't tell if this is a joke, but diet and exercise are an integral part of your mental health. Your body is a system and it needs to be treated systemically.

          Keeping a regular sleep pattern, eating healthy, and exercise are the foundations of good health. For someone in very good shape (or who is young) they may be able to get away without skipping some of these things -- but for people with health problems, bad habits often exasturbate their condition.

          BPD can't be cured with exercise since the caus

        • For me, it was primarily decreasing the amount of carbohydrates that I consumed. It's not as extreme as Atkins or South Beach, but I basically try to make sure that every meal is less than 50% carbs. The 5-HTP helps with this since I rarely crave carbs anymore. I also try to make sure that the carbs I do eat aren't from corn syrup (something I now believe to incredibly unhealthy, though I have no real evidence to back that up.)

          The exercise part probably has as much to do with keeping my sleep patterns a

  • It is already being used for Parkinsons' Disease (Score:4, Informative)

    by madstork2000 ( 143169 ) * on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @09:48PM (#11819909) Homepage
    My grandfather just had this done as a treatment for Parkinsons. He can no longer write nor drink out of a cup without a straw because of the trembling.

    He had to have three surgeries total. Two were to implant the brain stimulators. One week they drilled the left side, the next week they drilled the right side. The third week they implanted the "pace maker / battery pack" into his back.

    He has not yet had the device activated. The doctors make him wait about a month for the injuries from the surgeries to heal. They do test the implants immediately after the drilling and implants. In case you did not notice from the article it is a "Local' anethesia, which for those of you out there not paying attention, means they drill into your head while you are awake.

    That part sucks big time, but it is needed because they count on feed-back from the patient to make sure the electrodes are placed properly within the brain.

    Anyway, he has not yet had the device turned on for every day use. His healing period was delayed when he got pnuemonia. He is getting anxious to have the device activated. He said the other people who have had this procedure have greatly improved, almost immediately.

    How it works for depression I don't know, but it is already being used for Parkinsons.

    -MS2k
    • Sort of a departure from the topic, but hey, no one else seems to care.

      My mother had this exact procedure several years ago. It was a fantastic effect, once they turned it on. She went from near-immobile rigidity (she didn't tremble too too much) to free motion over night. It was very nice to see, I can tell you.

      She's had it long enough now that her battery is wearing out. Soon, she'll have to go in for surgery to get upgraded. Yay! Mom 3.0!
  • This reminds me of the book Michael Crichton wrote in the late 60's/early 70's titled "The Terminal Man".
    The book tells a (fictional) tale of a man who has terrible seizures, transforming him from a weenie into a psychopathic destructive asshole. To cure his seizures a bunch of doctors surgically attach electrodes and a power pack to the pleasure centres in his brain, and when he is about to flip out, this device zaps him and he goes back to normal.
    Of course like most Michael Crichton books things don't g
  • I used to get depressed.... then I took a tough step to ruthlessly go over every aspect of my life & thought that touched me emotionally - and have had to get *really* honest with myself as well. The result: I'm much more functional today than I ever was because I came to understand the nature of where my depression came from and DEAL WITH IT HEAD ON. So many depressives I've met all have characteristic personality traits that indicate to me that they are in avoidance of being aware of certain aspects
    • Yeah but that takes work! AND you even have to think!

      I totally agree with you. What follows is my rant.

      We live in a society where the central question has become: "What do I do so I don't have to think?" Of course we are reaching the point where people ask themselves: "What can someone else do so that I don't have to think."

      Everyone wants a pill to fix their problems. "I have heart disease cause I eat too much fat. What can someone do for me?" And here come the pills. One for weight loss, one for

      • Everyone wants a pill to fix their problems. ... So you are depressed? Go to the analyst. Read some books. ...

        Actually, the preferred way to treat depression is to start out with medicine to "lift the cloud" as a temporary measure, then try to address the root causes with therapy (e.g. "Why are you depressed about the future, just because your livelihood is being stomped to death by greedy offshoring-driven corporations? Just get another livelihood!). If you get the root causes addressed, you then come

      • Ok, nice rant. Not terribly informative or informed, but definitly a rant.

        First off, why the assumption that people who are suffering from depression don't think. That they are hiding from the big scary reality under their beds.

        I can only speak for myself here, unlike some of you who have the uncanny ability to know what others are thinking, but I do think. I think there for I am... I think you think so I'll give you the benifit of the doubt on the question of existence.

        In fact there are times that I

    • You are very ignorant.

      There is a BIG difference between "being depressed" and clinical depression, which is what this device is for.

      It is true that people are being overprescribed drugs like Paxil and Prozac for trivial problems that should be dealt with through therapy or even by themselves. It is also true that people are being given misleading information about themselves by watching too many advertisements for these types of drugs.

      However, there is a clear difference between depression, e.g. unipolar
      • When did you first realize that you were "clinically depressed"? Feel free to answer via direct email. I've honestly never met anyone who claimed such level of depression - and I've dated a person what was clinical Borderline Personality Disorder. My conversations with her alluded to the fact that she was aware of her mechanisms for the way she was/acted, but avoided the overwhelming nature of addressing them. Heavily masked - carefully layered, but aware of a hairline route to take. I'm not saying you
  • I have been following this news for several years. For me, and the thousands like me who get no relief from medication I am pleased to see this project moving forward.

    -Joe G.

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