I've abstracted the following from sections of an article in the March 5, 2001 Forbes, titled "Stimulating the Brain". a.r.s. followers might find it stimulates some interesting questions as well ------------------------------ Lauri Sandoval tried more than a dozen drugs to treat the deep depression that darkened most of her adult life. None worked for long. ... Then she underwent surgery to implant an experimental device that treats her blues by transmitting tiny pulses of electricity to nerves in her neck.

Soon, this mini-shock-therapy started to work. Today Sandoval is back to working full time, as a personal assistant to a Hollywood star, and she regularly goes out on the town with friends. "It's incredible," she says. "I am actually happy. I've never been able to say that before."

The device that brought her back, made by publicly held Cyberonics in Houston TX, is one of a new generation of pacemaker-style gadgets that use mild electrical jolts to treat myriad mental and neurological illnesses. While they aren't cures, they may reduce or eliminate symptoms in severe cases, offering hope to millions of patients who get no relief from drugs.

The brain ... uses electrical current to communicate within itself and with other parts of the body. ... Researchers are learning that precisely targeting zaps of barely noticeable pulses to affected areas of the brain can help restore some normal function to the cerebral circuitry.

Cyberonics poker-chip-size device, implanted in the chest during surgery, is approved for treating drug resistant epilepsy, and has moved into final-stage human tests for the far bigger market of drug-resistant depression. Medical device giant Medtronic is testing a related technique called deep-brain stimulation, in which electrodes from a device in the chest are surgically threaded several inches into the brain to the site of damage. The method is approved for tremor, and could win clearance for Parkinson's disease later this year. A third method avoids surgery entirely: at a doctor's office, patients wear a magnetic device on their head that generates gentle therapeutic currents in parts of the brain hit by depression and schizophrenia.

It is being tested by Neotonus of Marietta GA and others.

Doctors have spent decades using drugs to tweak aberrant brain chemicals, with only limited success. Of 6 million Americans treated for depression, more than 1 million don't respond to drugs. Among the nation's 2.5 million epileptics, about 10% can't be helped by chemical therapy. Drugs for Parkinson's disease often work initially, but their effectiveness eventually fades.

Scientists have long thought electricity might help, but until recently they have been unable to preciely target particular regions of the brain.

Electroshock therapy, the decades-old treatment of last resort for depression, indiscriminately blasts the entire head to induce seizures and jar patients out of their blues. ...

The new techniques are to shock therapy what laser-guided rifles are to carpet-bombing - better targeted with less collateral damage. Among the more promising is Cyberonics' vagus nerve stimulation approach ...

The vagus nerve links the brain to major internal organs such as the heart, lungs, and stomach. ... Zabara [Cyberonics founder and retired Temple U. physiologist] wondered if the vagus might help regulate other brain functions, such as nausea or seizures. ...

Human trials in treating epilepsy took longer than expected, but the gadget won approval in 1996, after trials on 310 patients found it reduced the frequency of seizures 23% after three months. Surprisingly, the effectiveness of the device ... actually improves over time, unlike drugs, whose power often wanes. ...

In some epilepsy trials, some patients didn't see any reduction in seizures, yet they reported feeling happier nonetheless. That made Cyberonics ask whether the device might help depression. It approached psychiatrist and neurologist Mark George at the Medical University of South Carolina, who looked at brain scans of patients with the device.

He found the device altered activity in regions of the brain involved in mood and believed it would affect depression ...

In 1998 Mark George and John Rush of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas tested the Cyberonics device on 30 severely depressed patients ... who had remained depressed for an average of ten years despite numerous drug treatments. A surprising 40% had symptoms cut in half within three months, and 52% had improved after nine months.

The main side effect: hoarseness in the voice when the current comes on, pulsing for 30 seconds every five minutes or so. ...

The most surprising possibility, being tested by surgeon Mitchell Roslin of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, is in obesity.

Numerous lab studies suggest the vagus nerve is a key conduit for the stomach to tell the brain when it is satiated. By connecting leads from Cyberonics' nerve stimulator to extensions of the vagus nerve near the stomach, Roslin hopes to amplify the "I'm full" signal in obese patients, so they stop overeating.

... Cummins says ... "Brain stimulation will be to the next 10 years what cardiac pacemakers were to the last 40". ...
-- seekon@ix.netcom.com (Conner) Eppur si muove - Galilei

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