Suffering from severe depression, a 36-year-old woman was successfully treated in the United States with an electric brain implant. This experiment is a first and it can only be carried out in patients with a serious mental disorder, according to information from The Guardian, relayed by Slate this Tuesday.
“When I received the first stimulation, I felt the most intensely joyful sensation and my depression was a distant nightmare for a while. It was the first time I spontaneously laughed or smiled in five years, ”said Sarah, the patient who received this electric brain implant.
“An incredible breakthrough” in the study of mental illness
First, using a brain implant, the scientists were able to locate the area of his brain where the depressive symptoms were manifesting. They then decided to install a permanent implant whose mission is to detect the activity of the “signature of depression” in the amygdala of the young woman. This process allows the implant to send about 300 small, painless shocks to the woman’s brain every day to treat her depression.
This experience is an “incredible advance in our knowledge of the brain function that underlies mental illness,” said Katherine Scangos, researcher and assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco. For this 30-something, it’s a new page in her life that has opened after five years of suffering. According to her, this therapy gave her “a life worth living”. In total, the procedure cost him around $ 35,000.
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