A 36-year-old woman with severe depression was successfully treated in the United States with an electroencephalogram. This trial is the first and can only be performed in patients with a serious mental disorder, according to information from Watchman, relayed by slate This is Tuesday.
“When I received the first stimulation, I felt the most intense euphoric sensation and my depression was an unattainable nightmare for a while. It was the first time I had spontaneously laughed or smiled in five years,” said Sarah, the patient who underwent the electro-brain transplant.
‘Amazing breakthrough’ in the study of mental illness
First, with the help of a brain implant, scientists were able to pinpoint the area of his brain where the symptoms of depression appeared. Then they decided to install a permanent implant whose job it was to detect “depression signature” activity in the young woman’s amygdala. This process allows the implant to send about 300 small, painless shocks to a woman’s brain each day to treat her depression.
This trial is “a surprising advance in our knowledge of the brain function that underlies mental illness,” says Catherine Skangos, a researcher and assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. For this 30-year-old, she has turned a new page in her life after five years of suffering. According to her, this treatment gave her “a life worth living.” In total, the procedure cost him about $35,000.
