Brain Stimulation Therapy Eases Tough-to-Treat Depression

Related Encyclopedia • Acoustic Neurinoma • Bell's Palsy • Brain and Spinal Cord Magnetic Resonance Imaging • Brain Tumors More... Related Healthscout Videos Shutting Down Tremor. Weighted Belt for Autism? Helping Jude Talk Pinpointing Mental Illness More... Related Animations • Bipolar Disorder Animation • Depression More... Related Drug Information • Adderal XR • Ambien • Avandia • Concerta More... Related News Articles • Immune Response to Spinal Cord Injury may Worsen Damage • Seizures During Pregnancy Linked to Premature Babies • Technology Takes a Step Toward Treating Paralysis • For Kids, Two Languages Can Be as Easy as One More...

Page:  << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3

People with this movement disorder suffer from disabling involuntary muscle contractions, explained researchers led by Dr. Jan Mehrkens of Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.

According to the authors, GPi deep brain stimulation has been shown to be effective in adults, but there is little research in children, even though the condition often begins at a young age.

For this study, researchers implanted electrodes in five patients aged 16 or younger who had not responded to other treatments for primary dystonia.

Text Continues Below

---

"Significant" improvements were seen for over a year, with all children being able to go back to school, said the authors, two of whom had received speaker's fees from medical device maker Medtronic.

"The advantage of deep brain stimulation over the earlier surgeries is you don't have to destroy any part of the brain. You're essentially turning off the overly active part of the brain and letting the healthy parts of the brain take over," said Dr. Alain de Lotbiniere, medical director of the Northern Westchester Hospital Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., and a practicing neurosurgeon who has performed several deep brain stimulation procedures.

"It's a very exciting area because, up to now, everyone's heard of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's and for essential tremor, but these are additional areas that border neurology and psychiatry where we're just beginning to understand what happens in terms of the brain chemistry and the brain electricity," he continued. "We're just at the beginning of understanding this. There's a lot of hope there for patients who otherwise may have felt that there was nothing they could do."

More information

There's more on deep brain stimulation at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

Page:  << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3