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According to a new study published in the journal, scientists have achieved a historic achievement by demonstrating personalized neuromodulation and providing relief to at least one patient with treatment-resistant depression. Nature medicine.
Although still in a five-year clinical trial, this could revolutionize treatment for around 30% of people with severe depression who may have exhausted all conventional means of treatment.
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Personalized brain stimulation reduces symptoms of severe depression
The new approach is being developed to sharpen its potential for treating a large population of people with severe depression – who do not respond to existing therapies and demonstrate a high risk of suicide, according to a blog post shared on the University of California at San Francisco. (UCSF) official website.
“The brain, like the heart, is an electrical organ, and it is increasingly recognized in the field that the faulty brain networks that cause depression – just like epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease – could be turned into a healthier state through targeted stimulation ”. said Assistant Professor Katherine Scangos of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF, who is also the corresponding author of the new study, in the blog post.
Mapping of mild stimulation of mood-related brain sites
“Previous attempts to develop neuromodulation for depression have consistently applied stimulation at the same site in all patients, and on a regular schedule that fails to specifically target the disease state in the brain,” Scangos added. “We know that depression affects different people very differently, but the idea of mapping individualized sites of neuromodulation that correspond to a patient’s particular symptoms has not been well explored.”
In the new case study, Scangos and colleagues successfully mapped the effects of applying mild stimulation to multiple mood-related brain sites in a patient with severe treatment-resistant depression.
The proof of concept could serve as a new foundation
The scientific team discovered how stimulation at different sites can alleviate distinct symptoms of brain-centric disease – successfully reducing anxiety, restoring pleasure in daily activities, increasing energy levels – and, most importantly. , the neurological stimulation sites depended on the mind in real time. patient’s condition.
This proof-of-concept study lays the necessary foundation for a meaningful five-year clinical trial of Scangos, called the PRESIDIO trial, which aims to assess the effectiveness of personalized neuromodulation in 12 patients with treatment-resistant severe depression.
New framework for personalizing the treatment of depression
This trial will complement the current study by identifying brain signatures capable of reflecting participants’ symptoms in real time. Using this information, scientists can program neuromodulation equipment for real-time responses to faulty states of the network – applying targeted stimulation capable of re-balancing patient brain circuits.
“We have developed a framework on how to personalize treatment in a single individual, showing that the distinctive effects of stimulating different areas of the brain are reproducible, long-lasting, and condition-dependent,” said Andrew Krystal, co-author Study Principal and Director of the Dolby Center at UCSF, who is also the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Personalized brain stimulation could help 30% of patients with severe depression
“Our trial is going to be groundbreaking in that each person in the study is going to potentially benefit from a different and personalized treatment, and we will only offer treatment when personalized brain signatures for a depressed brain state indicate that. treatment is needed, ”Krystal added in the blog post.
This groundbreaking study involving a five-year depression trial came on the heels of epilepsy studies. And as one of the most common psychiatric disorders – affecting up to 264 million people worldwide and linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths each year – up to 30% of patients simply show no response conventional treatments, such as drugs and psychotherapy. While part of this subset responds to more drastic interventions like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), it looks like we may soon see the dawn of a new alternative – in the form of personalized brain stimulation.
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