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A Brain Pacemaker for Depression

Posted by timothy on from the 10-years-too-late dept.

Ranger writes "Scientists claim to have developed a pacemaker 'cure' for depression. It may also have applications to controlling tremor's in Parkison' sufferers. This sounds vaguely like Ren & Stimpy's Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy helmet from Stimpy's Invention."

2 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Make my day" by Mark_MF-WN · · Score: 4, Informative

    There actually is such a thing. It's located in the limbic system, and is primarily affected by the release of dopamine (which is why drugs that stimulate the release of dopamine are so pleasurable). The rat story isn't apocryphal, although I'd feel better if I had a link to a journal it was published in.

  2. Re:World by fm6 · · Score: 4, Informative
    That's the usual misconception about clinical depression -- that it's just a fancy way of saying "unhappy". But to doctors it describes various syndromes where a person's mental function is "depressed". It means not just a bad mood, but an inability to feel a good mood. Or to think clearly, respond to events, and a lot of other inabilities.

    Moving a person with such a condition onto another planet where everything's perfect might help them feel better. Or not. People with a built-in capacity for depression can get depressed -- even suicidal -- over things that most people wouldn't even notice.

    Thing is, the word "depression" doesn't really explain anything. It's just a handy label for a wide variety of conditions, some fairly well understood, others hardly understood at all. So it ends up being a dumping bin for any condition with mostly psychological symptoms that a doctor can't explain through physical disease. So really depression is "diagnosed" only by elimination -- and it often happens that the doctor has not eliminated all other possibilities.