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FDA OKs Brain Pacemaker for Depression
Duke Machesne writes "On Friday, the FDA approved a new therapy for the severely depressed who have run out of treatment options: a pacemaker-like implant that sends tiny electric shocks to the brain. The Food and Drug Administration's clearance opens Cyberonics Inc.'s vagus nerve stimulator, or VNS, as a potential treatment for an estimated 4 million Americans with hard-to-treat depression - despite controversy over whether it's really been proven to work."
let the numerous tinfoil hat references begin!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
First post! (Always wanted to say that) But in reality, isn't this the same treatment for severe cases of Parkinson's? Have those patients shown mood changes as well?
Shockings will continue until morale improves!
Agile Artisans
I wouldn't trust it. My room/cell mate had one and it didn't seem to do him any good, although his was for treating epilepsy.
Philosophy.
...welcome our new micro-electric shock therapy overlords.
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
Imagine if someone with one of these devices stands downwind of the military's (relatively) new microwave riot-control gun. Woooeee. Should be interesting. Of course, I guess that applies to traditional cardiac pacemakers as well. Best not riot, Mr. Cheney.
If it cures depression, what is stopping it from doing the opposite. Could this be a new friendly "happy" drug?
Wuhoo! Now I can be a wirehead with FDA approval.
Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy, Joy!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Mr. Huxley, here I come!
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Just imagine if you got one of these things implanted in your brain and it didn't work at all - that would be extremely depressing. :-)
Electric Monkey Pants
Michael Crichton sort of covered this in his book Terminal Man... the guy gets electrical current run into his brain when he starts getting blacking out and becoming violent...
Great book. Read it.
evil adrian
*BZZT*
Vagus baby, YEAA!!
US$0.02++
Why not hook up another sense to the brain implant instead of random impulses?
:-)
How about sonar or ultraviolet vision? Or hooking up an internet connection
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I'm sure there is something snappy I could say here... but I'm really not in to it today...
I think I'm going to go back to bed
For the answer, read or watch Michael Crichton's "The Terminal Man". One of his better stories, from about 30 years ago.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
So, the Happy Hat from Ren & Stimpy has finally left the cartoon world? Cool!
Can you say Harrison Bergeron? I though you could.
Eschew Obfuscation
So how long will it be until we start seeing products that augment perfectly healthy individuals?
This is a new version of a much older device.
The mjor obstalce scientists have been able to overcome is, when you turn the knob up to 4, you do not experience the symptoms of butt frenzy commonly associated with earlier versions of the device.
M
This sounds oddly like Ring World Engineers.
Electric current to the pleasure center of the brain....
Let the addictions begin.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
I wonder how hackable they would be to send 'pleasure' signals... Kinda like a star trekkie thing that keeps your brain in extacy for hours upon hours... That would be the life... who cares about money after that implant.
Seriously, Depression is a dissease that affects almost everyone at some point in our lives. Those who cant be helped with alternative methods could serously benefit from such. Whats needed now is a way to determine if someone is clinincally depressed even if they are denying it. This might have pain and suffering of a local 13 year old who tried to take his own life last winter, but only succeded in making himself worse off.
Please remember that the FDA has approved this device only for treatment-resistant depression. This is not first line therapy.
a while now, and it seems to help keep her from being depressed.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dial in your own emotions.
Of course, my spelling would really go to shit on that thing!
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
How about a tube with drugs flowing directly to to the spot that controls depression.
Sidenote-Believe it or not,read in the paper that people that drink alot coffee have less depression. Not sure on this. I only remember it vaguely.
Do you have to try the gateway drugs first or can you skip right to the good stuff?
"I feel horrible. I need a shock bad. Come on, gimme that shock, doc."
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
I know someone that has gone through traditional electroshock twice and there seems to be very little positive effect when weighed against the side effects. He lost a lot of his memory and right after treatment would commonly get caught in little loops (telling the same joke, story, etc. over and over).
The only good thing is that he would mildly stabilize a few weeks after treatment and the effects would seem to subside (right in time for another round, incidentally). However, if these shocks were continual, then the side effects may be too, rendering it pretty useless.
AC
Depression isn't due to problems in the brain!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Theory: Many instances of depression are due to social injustice, apathy, the slow pace at which society reforms itself.
Concern: If we drug or electrically stimulate ourselves to keep ourselves happy, social progress comes to a halt. We feel good about ourselves, even though horrible things happen around us.
Here is a bibliography kept by AdBusters. I'm not sure how reliable a bibliography kept by AdBusters is, but these are things that we should be thinking about, and research that we should at least consider.
Can you imagine what the commercials for this thing will be like? "Ever feel like there was something wrong with you? Well, we agree, and we have the answer. The device is simply installed in your brain, then your depression will evaporate. Common side effects include reading 1984 in a whole new light, extreme paranoia, and headaches."
I wonder what Tom Cruise thinks about this....
The medieval Latin word vagus means literally "wandering" (the words "vagrant", "vagabond", and "vague" come from the same root).
This nerve supplies motor and sensory parasympathetic fibres to pretty much everything from the neck down to the first third of the transverse colon. In this capacity, it is involved in, amongst other things, such varied tasks as heart rate, gastrointestinal peristalsis, sweating and speech (via the recurrent laryngeal nerve).
The vagus also controls a few skeletal muscles, namely:
* levator veli palatini muscle
* salpingopharyngeus muscle
* stylopharyngeus muscle
* palatoglossus muscle
* palatopharyngeus muscle
* superior, middle and inferior pharyngeal constrictors
* muscles of the larynx (speech).
This means that the vagus nerve is responsible for quite a few muscle movements in the mouth and also is vitally important for speech and in keeping the larynx open for breathing.
It also receives some sensation from the outer ear and part of the meninges.
The vagus nerve and the heart
Parasympathetic innervation of the heart is mediated by the vagus nerve. The right vagus innervates the SA node. Parasympathetic hyperstimulation predisposes those affected to bradyarrhythmias. The left vagus when hyperstimulated predisposes the heart to AV blocks.
Wuhoo! Now I can be a wirehead with FDA approval. Why is this Flamebait? My first thought too was of Gil Hamilton's old crew mate's face grinning at him with a wire running from his skull to the wall. Belter tan and all.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
I'm really feeling down. I just don't know how long I can ZOT! Hey, I'm ready to rock and roll! I think I'll become president of the world! But that would mean having to find an apartment in a big city, and I wouldn't see my wife and kids very much, and I probably wouldn't get to watch reruns of Enterprise. Gawd, they cancelled Enterprise, I can't believe it, no more Star Trek, that's it I'm going to open this window and ZOT! Hey, good riddance, goddamn Enterprise, crappy acting, crappy stories, thank goodness there's Battlestar Galactica. Much better writing, interesting stories. And there's Doctor Who too. Great remake. But Christopher Eccleston isn't coming back for the second season. It'll fail for sure, then I won't have anything to watch and I'll sit in this apartment reading Slashdot crap on my computer. How can I deal with this? I think I'll tie rocks to my shoes and ZOT! Hey! That's okay, I've always got Slashdot. Maybe I'll get moded +48183 Insightful for this post, become King of Slashdot and supplant CmdrTaco! Oh, but then people will mock me, and call me a shill, and claim I do nothing but post dupes. I can't stand that. I'd rather ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Wow, I can't believe how many things people are constantly willing to throw electro shocks at.
:
Hmmm, we've tried everything else...well, lets just trying zapping the living crap out of it and see if that helps!
--
Check out the Uncyclopedia.org
The only wiki source for politically incorrect non-information about things like Kitten Huffing and Pong! the Movie !
Please allow me to hate the creator of the 120-character limit: *HATES*. Thank you.
"The Food and Drug Administration's clearance opens Cyberonics Inc.'s vagus nerve stimulator, "
;)
First read that line as "vague nerve stimulator" and thought to myself "Wow ! The FDA's approving something without really knowing what it does ?!" Wouldn't be the first time i guess
A million monkeys and this is the best sig they could come up with...
I see this, and all I can think is: "Blue Screen of Death."
When I saw it was being produced by a branch of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Competative athletes and the military will try new drugs, bioelectronics, therapies etc. that will give them an edge. Cost and side-effects are minor concerns.
My humor is probably your flamebait
I refuse to get any electrodes in my brain until Tom Cruise says it's ok.
Good to see fellow Niven fans in here. The corresponding Chrichton vehicle that people keep mentioning sounds like his generic "new technology creates monster that runs around killing people" rather than actually exploring the ramifications.
Brilliant new treatment for depression: Get Over It! World sucks, things aren't how you'd like them to be: Get Over It! Girlfriend dumped ya, sleeping with your best friend: Get Over It! Apparently living in a modern world means you get depressed a lot, but with my simple plan you just look past the crap and say 'eh, whatever' and Get Over It!
Please turn off all electronic devices for take off (and then plunge straight into your depression)
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
I'll take a dozen, please!
Actually the tasp was the remote version of it, so you could "Make someone's day" by remotely You are thinking of a droud.
And why is it only for the severely depressed? Why can't the merely morose get it, too?
How about those of us who have just realized that our lives are going nowhere, but other than that we're mostly ok? Don't we get any shock treatments?
I think it could help a lot of people get from "mostly happy" to "Wow, this is a great time to be alive!"
And I wonder if it runs Linux.
When these new devices error, they'll be a lot of emotionally challenged people muttering the name Sarah Connor.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
(for whomever labelled this as flamebait)
This is a reference to Niven's universe, I've heard it first mentioned in the book "Flatlander." Basically, a wirehead is somebody who has become a current addict. A hole is drilled into the skull, and a wire inserted into the pleasure center of the brain.
The end result is that the person becomes addicted to the pleasure supplied by the device, worse than a cokehead or heroin addict.
Addiction should be something we should be careful of, we don't need "wireheads" outside of book-worlds.
How about some more factual information? NPR has done several stories on this kind of treatment, and how it is (and isn't) used. This is not "rats push the button to feel good". This treatment involves a very precise electrical impulse delivered to the malfunctioning area of the brain; it is to electro-shock therapy what a bonsai knife is to a lawnmower, so the side effects, while not well-characterized, are likely to be orders of magnitude less intrusive.
It's used in cases where the depression is not treatable with current drugs. These are people who are so seriously neurochemically depressed that suicide seems attractive for the relief it would offer. The best we could give them before was a hug and a doctor mumbling that they were "interesting," until eventually they gave up and killed themselves. Now we can offer them this, which has at least one major advantage over suicide.
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
but St Johns Wort is natural, and can't be patented. so there is no money in it. other than the obnoxious prices for supplements... why use what nature made when you can create something new, that may have drastic side effects. personally, when i see the drug ads on tv, and they list the side effects, i would rather deal with heartburn than have my sex life go down or suffer from explosive diarria.
Excuse me, sir, but did you just say butt frenzy?
How soon before we can get one of these implanted into Maverick's brain?
Casca
So, when is that Service Pack due again? :)
Psychology and neroscience are still unsure whether chemical imbalances and faulty electrical signaling are the causes or symptoms of depression. Therefore I'm sure that many people in the medical community consider this a treatment of the symptoms of depression rather than the underlying causes.
This treatment would be akin to getting rid of someone's cough and runny nose and then saying the cold was cured. You haven't cured the cold, you've just stopped the visible symptoms of it.
Why is medicine so uninternested in treating the cause? Cause they can't make money. And it is all about money.
Check this out: http://www.eeginfo.com/
This stuff might sould a little quacky, but it works and it works very well. And you don't need to cut into the brain to fix the brain. Look a little searching on labotimies and see what a disaster that was.
yo, wirehead, get me some coffee..
boink!
good slave. have a femto-second of pure pleasure.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Heh. My first thought was from Douglas Adams:
Having fun: this is the big section. It is impossible to have more fun without electrocuting your pleasure center... --SL&TFATF
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Because what happens in vagus stays in vagus.
I've suffered from major depression for 15 years. I'm one of the roughly 30% that are non-responsive to SSRI's. ECT can require up to 2 weeks hospitalization while you are treated 5 or 6 times. It's a confusing period with large memory gaps that may return over time. It's a crap shoot. Some patience require re-treatment after 6 months, some it never helps and memory loss can be permeant. The thing about VNS is early studies indicate success in the 30% range, and that can takes months. Many of those reporting success rate it as moderate. I would have to pay out of pocket for this device, $25,000, plus regular adjustments. Insurance companies aren't touching this for depression now.
Can we make it mandated that all telemarketers must have this product installed and if they don't remove a customer from there call list when asked or violate a do not call list, all the telemarkters at the company, the advertisers and the CEO of the maker of the product get shocked.
O.k. I want it hooked up to the pain centers... O.k. we can do one for the pleasure center, and they get a mental orgasm when they remove some one from their call list and if they go a month with out crossing the do not call list.
The advice we ultimately adopted was that the VNS had too low a success-rate in reducing seizures (even in some cases increasing seizure ativity). That it would help those suffering from various physiological depressions was mentioned as a passing thought.
The VNS is implanted under the skin with leads connected to the vagus nerve -- the device could be manually activated by positioning a magnet over the implant. For epileptics, this was the thing to do when the aura (premonition) came. However, my wife has never had aura before a seizure, so the ultimate benefit was moot (what with my time machine being broken, and all.)
Personally, mild electric shock therapy *could* be of benefit, but mostly I suspect the manufacturer, having lost the "VNS cures epilepsy" headline, are going for a second (but much larger) market.
Your mileage will vary.
Can you say Harrison Bergeron? I though you could.
You could say that, but you would be wrong:
- The handicap helmet George Bergeron wore in the essay emitted sounds, not electric shocks.
- The helmet was designed to keep George down, i.e. to disrupt his brain/thought patterns, not to resolve any problem he might have had (unlike the device in the article).
One of many places to read Harrison Bergeron in its entirety.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I'm a little doubtfull about the benifits of this treatment but hopefully we'll start to see more devices for our brains. what I'd really like to see is something to aid memory, but I guess this is a start. the sooner people get used to the udea of having there brain plugged into something the sooner we get to some real advancements
Could lobbiest program the president from home instead having to go DC and waste time ?
POT!
No, I'm serious. Bang a pot on a depressed person's head and watch them change moods almost instantly!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
There was recently a NIMH report of mental illness in US stating up to a quarter of the population becomes clinically depressed sometime during their lifetime (old age and teens particularly vulnerable). This number sounded high to me, but I dont have a way of verifying it. I sometimes wonder if there is a "lobby" of psychotherapist and drug companies that "enhances" these numbers. Even googling for a URL to this study return a barrage of side-bar ads for therapists and drugs.
Ah, but all joking aside, shock treatment is nothing like the "One Flew Over The Coocoos Nest". I have a friend who went though the procedure after being hospilized for a week, and the change was dramatic. After 12 treatments (each lasting about 20 mins) over two months, they were a different person. If you're hitting bottom, something like this 'jump starts' your mood again, to where meds can maintain you, whereas meds would take much longer. Thus I think an implant would be idea. The only downside of the treatment was some short term memory loss, but that was a small price to pay. Oh, and it's a very gently 'shock' and not one that the patient feels under soft sedation.
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
What I really need is Thethan approval.
What Would Tom Do?
Cheers
Adolfo
The mechanisms for changing depression are very similar to Electroconvulsive Therapy. http://familydoctor.org/058.xml/ From my own research and experience(I have an MA in Psychology), these treatments are generally effective and a good alternative when nothing else has worked. When you're really depressed, even a small chance of dying is worth being normal. Movies have really demonized Electroconvulsive Therapy because it is such a horrible proccess to watch and is so dramatic, but in reality, the patient almost never remembers any pain, and the results can save really depressed people from suicide. Anyway, maybe this can take ECT's place since it doesn't have the same negative connotations attached to it, and potentially helpe alot of people.
My wife is a psych major, so I've been regaled with stories of how people who are severely depressed undergo shock treatment. Yes, the shock treatment from yesteryear's mental wards, like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Apparently it actually works quite well.
A drawback is the loss of long-term memories - for good. But they have patients on tape saying they don't care; before the shocks they couldn't get out of bed because they were so depressed.
This reminds me of something from a Larry Niven novel (wirehead?)
Can I get a caffeine pacemaker for work?
Every once in a while my caffeine levels drop below an ideal level.
The "Smithers Injection".
"Mr. Smithers? But I thought you were gay!"
"No, I'm not, as long as I take these injections every ten minutes." *poke* "GYAARGHH!!! Woo hoo, I love boobies!"
Seriously, though. I only suffer from mild depression, so I'm certainly not going to be looking into getting a vagus nerve stimulator, but I know people who are unable to function at all due to their messed up neurochemistries, and whose depression has resisted all treatments, medical and therapeutic. This is excellent news for those people.
I can't help but wonder, though, what future developments we might see that are similar to this one. The "Smithers Injection" -- either chemical or neuroelectrical -- is certainly not likely to ever come to pass (much to the dismay of the American Taliban), but this certainly opens new worlds of psychiatric interventions.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
http://ladydeathtouch.tripod.com/invention/
Happy Happy Joy Joy!!!
My web domain.
No, it won't!
In fact they'll be compulsary.
Its part of the Bush plan to reform social security.
It''l bne fun. There'll no more old folks bitchin' about how it was better 'way back when.' And no more payments to make upon retirement. Nobody will be retiring.
And the technology to do it all will be a little injector you carry around inplanted in your palm. It will be able to shock and inject all sorts of things.
Eventualy, you'll get to screw a young Farrah Fawcett look-alike, except the girls, unless they want to, and get to know a young guy, everybody left will be young, name of Logan.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Running on Longhorn of course
Red Screen Of Death
Literally.....LOL
Doesn't this kind of sound like the v-chip inplanted into Cartman in the South Park movie?
It just has to be said...
"You see, most blokes will be playing at 10. You're on 10, all the way up, all the way up...Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff...Eleven."
Yaz.
Zoloft, IIRC, took 3 tries to find a study where it performed better than placebo, and when it did it wasn't all that much better (has *some* effect on 70% of cases, or the like). I may be misremembering, but the point is sound -- *all* depression treatments at this point have pretty high fail rates, and if you've seen serious depression, you know that *any* new tools are welcome.
...
Elsewhere it's been pointed out that truly successful depression treatments could mask problems in our society, the same way that truly successful cancer treatments could mask pollution problems. That's true -- but if your mother is dying of cancer, it's sure hard to care
Drug treatments for depression are basically just stimulating parts of the brain chemically, right?
So then this would just be a shortcut. And if pinpointed accurately enough, hopefully avoid some of the nast side-effects which chemical treatment can cause.
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
Does this remind anyone else of the South Park Movie in which they put a chip in Cartman's brain to send him shocks whenever he swore? Well geez, everytime I hear about this new technology from now on I'll be doomed to think "Horse Fucker"...
Hey! I was 6, OK?
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
... Larry Niven's "Ringworld".
Now we are going to have "current addicts", besides potheads and such.
Giving 5-HTP a try might be very worthwhile if you'd benefit from an SSRI such as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, or Lexapro.
Who needs the pacemaker when the Oracle is around to Zot you that much?!?!?
Praise to the Oracle!
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
I read through many replies to this article (but not all) and was saddened by what I saw. Nobody here seems to understand that depression comes in different severities: from a mild disturbance in mood that passes on its own to a disabling, often fatal disease. It can be so severe that doctors sometimes misdiagnose it as some form of brain injury like a stroke.
I chalk it up both to your ignorance, and the unwillingness of the public to discuss mental illness. Chances are, somebody in your family has suffered a serious mental illness, even if you don't recognize it or call it that. Talk to people; you'll be surprised by what you hear.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
I have always wanted to be a wirehead with my very own TASP.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
can it be implemented in robots?
... this sounds disturbingly like the character in "The Terminal Man"...
He went crazy when his mind got addicted to calming shock, and his brain keeps trying to go into a seizure because of that.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Still, critics have complained that without a comparison group, it's unclear if the implant really helped or the depression eased for some other reason.
Did I miss something here, or did the FDA just approve a treatment that wasn't tested against a control group?!
PLUG MODE ON
The Art of Living courses have strong scientific findings for curing depression among other illnesses. Especially the breathing technique "Sudarshan Kriya" has been studied alot in research, with positive results in independent studies.
These courses are held world-wide to fix stress and other modern-world related syndromes. We're just not living life as it's meant to - to be fun - to be a piece of art to admire, that's why our bodies develop all these sickness. To make us come back to ourselves, unless we ignore it too late.
With the medicines and food available to us now, we should be MORE healthy than ever. However, people are falling into a trap, which luckily is easy to come out of.
Well, it has helped me alot, so give it a go today.
PLUG MODE OFF
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
...info copied wholesale from Wikipedia, and largely irrelevant to the story, really ought not to be modded up.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
yeah the tasp is wireless, but the grandparent used the word wirehead in the body of the comment
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
After seeing the flood of speculation and information based misunderstanding so endemic to a /. discussion, I thought I'd add a personal comment.
My brother is 45 years old, and has had severe epilepsy since he was 3 years old. He is also learning disabled and orthopedically handicapped. Epilepsy, as you may or may not know, is the brain's equivalent of a 'lightning storm'. The cause varies, and the most common treatment is a combination of drugs and surgery to reduce either the beginning of the epileptic seizure or slow the propagation of the wave of activity across the cereberal cortex.
In many patients, drug therapy has to be regularly fine-tuned or completely changed. Think of it as regular security patches, because the brain figures ways to hack around the chemical defenses. In some patients, the brain is so good at hacking through the barriers that drug therapy loses effectiveness. This happened to my brother.
An FDA approved treatment for patients in this condition is the use of a Vagal Nerve Stimulator (VNS). He has a controller/power source implanted in his shoulder, a wire threaded up inside his neck, and the eletrode implanted next to the Vagal Nerve. This nerve is down in the brain stem / 'hindbrain'. Every 5 minutes the controller sends a signal(started at 250mv, it's up to 500mv) for 30 seconds into this electrode. If we want to, we can command a pulse our of sequence by passing a strong magnet over the controller.
The results have not been Science Fiction Movie class miraculous, but they have been visible. For the first few days he would physically react to the pulses (facial tick/jerk, shoulder hunch, etc..). After three months, he no longer reacts as visibly.
But, his grand mal seizure activity has dropped. His petit mal seizure activity has dropped as well. He's improving ! He is more alert, vocal, communicative, and is cracking jokes once again.
I don't know how it will work on depression, but I can tell you from personal observation that it seems to work for epilepsy !
Actually, his brain subconciously trained itself because the shocks gave it a kind of high. Pretty good book, kind of short.
More people might recognize the author (Michael Crichton) as the author of Jurassic Park, by the way.
Personally, I always prefer just rubbing my hands together and cackling. The vagus nerve terminates in the palms, and I feel like I'm setting up sympathetic vibrations in the nerve symphony that beats over my heart, and into my mind.
--
make install -not war
I certainly hope that it won't end up that everyone gets implanted with stuff like this since birth... It would be like conditioned to take Soma a la Brave New World.
You're on Slashdot. Liar.
> know how many celebrities are on the Big Drug Co. payrolls [...] hint: many
Please name one, with some proof.
> tom cruise for [...] pointing out the obvious: neuroscience is a huge con.
I don't believe that is his intent, or else he would not buy into a much bigger con, namely scientology.
There is NO SUCH THING as a chemical imbalance
I should just write this AC off as a troll but many people think this way. Vitamins will no help the fact that all your seratonin is being re-uptaken into the neuron instead of making it to the receptor. Yes St. john's wort and some other vitamins have been helpful to some people, but not for people with severe clinical depression. We are talking about people who have brains that aren't sending signals correctly. Different neurotransmitters just aren't being recieve or recieved in high enough quantities to perform properly.
I am sure people who don't suffer from clinical depression would also get some sort of a "lift" from ssri's and mao inhibitors, but for those who need it it's the differenence between: not being able to concentrate, not be interested in anything, being entirely apathetic, having social anxiety, no sexual appetite, frequent sadness... etc
and
acting like a normal person (or 90% of one at least).
Oh And when I list symptoms I don't mean one, i mean all at the same time. Unless you have experienced severe clinical depression you will just write it off as someone that needs to change their outlook in life (and to be fair there are many people who are just that way and don't need medical treatment), however it is not your place to decide what someone does or doesn't need, leave it to the medical proffesionals. Researches may not know much about brain function yet, but they know a lot more than Tom Cruise or anyone else not in the field who will just spout their opinion at will on something they know nothing about.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
You owe the Oracle a brain pacemaker and a bottle of good vodka.
InThane
We really need something in our /. preferences that filters out all "I for one welcome our new ____ overlords" posts.
"I know together we'll make the possible totally impossible" - Homme
Anyway, one time they were doing it on a person with severe pain, and the procedure went fine. The pain left him, and he was able to continue his job.
A few weeks later, though, he came in, complianing about depression. My mom was about to perscribe some anti-depressants, but called the surgeon just to see what he thought. They reprogrammed him to one level up, and the depression left the second the pulse changed.
So, if this type of stuff can cause depression, there is no reason it can't stop it.
Although, in the end, how is this much better than pills? In many cases, there are really deep reasons why people are depressed, but in this society we seem content to throw antidepressants around instead of looking towards therapy. The story of the kid who's parents are divorcing, who is placed on antidepressants is much to common. It's just a band aid to cover a festering wound.
All your brain are belong to us!
"When you reach the thing you were desiring, if it doesn't satisfy you, it was not what you were desiring." C.S. Lewis
Just last month my son had a VNS inserted. This was for epilepsy, and not for depression, and it was quite a trial to be approved for the device. But this was the last resort after years of drug therapy and before major brain surgery for the child. Here's a few observations that might help clarify the whole VNS system:
It is an automatic device that delivers a specific frequency, amplitude, peak duration and general duration of electric shock. There is a "always on" mode where the shock is delivered for 60 seconds, followed by 66 seconds off, repeated indefinately. There is also a mode that is activated with a magnet. This mode is usually programmed to deliver the same frequency and duration, but more amplitude to the shock. The setting of these attributes is done via a PDA and a "wand".
Hackable, I suppose. My curiosity had me wishing for a signal meter to find out the attribute-setting protocol (but dang if I left it at home). But will it solve depression? The only results I've seen are children 10 to 18 who have a life because of this little device. Other than helping regulate seizure behavior, the only obvious side-effect is a slight warbling of the vocal cords. If anything, my boy thinks it's cool that he's now a cyborg and shows off to his friends. He's happy so far, but the real results will come with time.
As was the case for my son, I feel there should be a real medical need before having the VNS surgically inserted. In the case of seizures, it is difficult to operate without some method of control. I have never liked the amount of medications my son needed to refrain from regular seizures, and this seems like a reasonable alternative to having chunks of his brain surgically removed.
If a subject has debilitating depression, then maybe the VNS would be worthwhile for them. But from my perspective, the VNS is a good thing.
H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
Regex post filter? Nice idea, would blatz the database servers though.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
But it takes about 4-6 weeks of taking it 2 to 3 times a day to kick in. Not very useful if you have people with severe depression, and general depressives who tend to not be the sort who will keep to a regimen.
Epilepsy and seizure medications (such as Depakote) are also used to treat bipolar disorder, which isn't the same thing as depression by any means but shares some characteristics. I wonder if there's a connection?
1) Select a /. article
2) ctrl + F for (Score:5, Funny)
depression gone in 2 minutes tops!
(patent pending)
Felt Better! Big headache is gone.
Agreed! My first thought on reading the headline was 'It's a droud!'
He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know...
...So this thing makes me want to waste money on statistically stacked games in the name of weak free drinks and then go to dark strip clubs to gaze drunkenly at plastic women expose themselves for my few remaining dollar bills?
This cures my depression how?
Does it feedback to momentary states? I can see a fantastic market in war, kiddie porn and disaster vids. (Oh! That's awful!) YEAH, BABY!!!
All the SF reference compared with this are wrong.
All the comparisons about deep brain stim, anti-ictal stim, TENS, etc., are wrong. They're similar in that electricity is used. It's different according to the voltage, freqency and placement.
As for the invasiveness of them (except TENS), that's not good, but we're working on it. If we can get TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) to focus down small enough, get a more portable power supply, and get a probe that's significantly smaller than the present ping pong paddle sized device, we'll have a definite improvement over the best available now.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Well that doesn't quite sound like it is with all respect, but I'd be happy to answer any question you have - but you haven't asked one.
Botanicals shouldnt get lumped in with vitamins. St. John's Wort is a mild MAO inhibitor, I believe. Some other plants like Syrian Rue are strong MAO inhibitors. If seratonin is low due to a lack of precursors, then some supplements such as lecithin or choline might help. Sleep disorders are usual in depression and seem to be as much a cause as an effect, so natural sleep aids such as melatonin may be helpful. And sometimes improved body health will pull the mind along with it, so vitamins should not be written off entirely, although diet in general is more important. A relatively steady blood glucose damps mood swings. Excercise often helps, as do yoga, breathing meditation, and similar activities that increase the oxygen available to the brain.
Also the standard antidepressants are not that much more effective than placebos in clinical trials - certainly less than five times better, generally less. A significant number of people will do better with placebos than they would with nothing - and they get fewer side effects. The belief that you are doing something to improve your state of mind has an effect by itself.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
A depression can have many reasons: -Having a family member die -Unsuccessful experiences in work -Somebody being extremely rude to one -Having something important lost/stolen -Marrying the wrong spouse -Being fired -Having some kind of tragedy ...
Instead of working on it, instead of finding the real why we put an eletric stimulator to our head? Is this the solution?
I don't think so. I can even give you the real solution, if you drop a mail to zbalai@yahoo.com.
Now if we can just push that whisker wire about 2 cm toward nirvana......
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Moderation +4
:)
70% Funny
20% Underrated
10% Troll
There really is at least one moderator who can go and mod this as troll!! Geez!
Anyway, you were already marked as my friend for some time ago, and this post just reinforces it
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Two great references: This early punk band ("Wasted Youth") had a song called "WireHead" with the refrain:
1 6.194.99.1/portal/forum/viewtopic.php%3Fp%3D8146%2 6sid%3Da7aa55795968a8bc3c4667517b9c6fca+%22no+more +pain%22+%22wire+in+my+brain%22&hl=en [Google cache]
7
No more pain, there's a wire in my brain
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:Ks5iBSLuLA8J:2
This, in turn, was likeley inspired by Larry Niven's SF short stories about the implanting of "drouds" (this back in 1970!):
The droud was the connector between any wall socket and Louis Wu's brain
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=20
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
Riiiiiiiiight. Send me some links on the "medically proven."
The only thing it's proven to do is A) take money out of your wallet and B) make you more sensitive to sunlight if you consume enough.
Coming from a medical perspective, I'm finding it a little difficult to understand what exactly vagus nerve stimulation has to do with depression.
Firstly, depression is characterized by decreased levels of norepinephrine (NE) and serotonin (5-HT). They also have a depressed mood or anhendonia, along with 5 other specifiers (according to the DSM-IV) including sleep disturbances, loss of interest, guilt, etc.
Nearly every current line of treatment that I know of has nothing to do with vagus nerve stimulation. And although the vagus nerve has several branches for structures in the proximity of the brain, it hasn't really been shown (as far as I know) to have anything to do with depression.
In fact, drugs which attack the neurotransmitter complications are used. These may include, Venalfaxine (Effexor) is a reuptake inhibitor of 5-HT and NE(?), and SSRIs including Prozac and Celexa, which block the reuptake of 5-HT can also be perscribed. This means that these neurotransmitters remain in their respective synaptic clefts longer, hence resulting in mood enhancement.
The vagus nerve stimulators enhances vagus nerve activity (which is parasympathetic) resulting in heart rate decrease, GI motility and secretion, etc. In other words, things that the body does when it is in a relaxed state. Perhaps their relaxed states result in enhanced mood?
Ultimately, if a patient has severe chronic depression that does not respond to any of these treatments, they have a choice of undergoing electroconvulsive therapy which somehow "resets" the brains, and somehow "resets" the neurochemical imbalance.
Sorry, be depression (chronic or acute) is characterized by decreased levels of norepinephrine (NE) and serotonin (5-HT) in the brain. This causes depressed mood since serotonin is one of the primary neurotransmitters involved in the regulation of mood. How is it when 5-HT imbalances are corrected that the patient's mood's are enhanced? If that's not a disease, then what is?
I hear you -- that's the same story I've heard from a psychiatrist friend of mine. At conferences, they call it "poop-out" -- the damn drugs just keep giving out. After ten years, you're on three instead of one, and it's not working as well.
...
My friend is into a new treatment called Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy -- have you come across it? It sounds a little wishy-washy when you first look at it, but it's basically just learning to hack your brain. She's looking at it from a front-lines scientific perspective, and seeing some impressive things
Wow. Exactly HOW is my comment flamebait? Is it too inflammatory to point out that side effects for many medications often occur in a very small percentage of the users and that the risks are often overexaggerated? Why is moderation anonymous?
for everyone... my wife has had severe clinical depression since the age of 12 and she has tried everything (except electro-shock). St.John's wort did nothing for her.
Meh.
you are only talking about situational depression, which everybody gets sometimes in their life. clinical depression is an imbalance of chemicals in your brain, making you be depressed even when everything is great in your life. you obviously do not know any clinically depressed people and you haven't read any medical books on the subject. don't try and tell people you have an answer... you will only make things worse.
Meh.
I have a wife and a sister who are both clinically depressed... and they have both tried talk-therapy only at certain times in their life... and they would both be dead if they hadn't gone back on their meds. I live with this everyday... can't say I understand it, but I do know it's not just a mental state and talking / religion / hypnosis will not fix it.
Meh.
you know nothing about clinical depression. oh well, you are just part of the ignorant masses regarding mental diseases.
Meh.
I agree that they do not understand the human mind. But I an not convinced that the reason is that they are too complex. It is likely that we have just not figured them out yet.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Depression is not a disease. It's a state of mind
I just dropped an envelope containing a ten-spot in the mail. When it arrives at your house, GO OUT AND BUY A CLUE!
Sorry to hear about your disease. Nevertheless, you cannot deny the objective evidence with regards to NE and 5-HT (in the locus coeruleus, etc.). With that in mind, we have seen clear objective evidence that drugs such as SSRIs have significantly improved the lives of (and "cured") many people.
I assume that you know some of the drug treatments available; Effexor, Wellbutrin, Zyban, Celexa, Prozac, etc. I also assume that you know that ECT is another treatment option for major depressive disorder refractory to other treatment.
You simply cannot take your single example and suggest that your self-medicating is a solution that will work for everyone. It may (appear to) work for you, but suggesting that you do not have a neurochemical imbalance isn't necessarily objective.
Do you what one of the major causes of death is with people who have major depressive disorder? Suicide. Not a good thing.
I'm a cognitive neuroscientist. I do research on how brain function relates to psychology. :)
For a community that touts their "above average" intelligence, Slashdotters are showing more than just a little ignorance of what depression and mental illness really are. Please, take a look at the Mayo Clinic's Very brief description of depression before you post more uninformed blather.
Absolutely, but is it possible that 5-HT and NE levels in the brain are influenced through actions? Given the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (albeit, sadly, this research is lacking in light of our society's lack of desire to embrace such techniques in light of instantaneous solutions like SSRIs / SNRIs that often have long-term consequences), I would conclude that this is very likely the case. I overcame, for the most part, generalized anxiety disorder without medication and via therapy, and hence I believe that it is possible to alter neurochemistry through behaviour.
I'll second that. Cognitive behavioural therapy did absolute worlds of good for my generalized anxiety disorder, but 5-HTP enabled me to take the strategies learned during my anxiety recovery and take them a step further.
Furthermore, SSRIs take several weeks to build up in the body until they're effective and often demonstrate a large number of unpleasant side effects and withdrawal, whereas 5-HTP works immediately, usually has no side effects (may cause nausea in some, particularly in the presence of vitamin B-6 which metabolizes it as serotonin aka 5-HT, and serotonin receptors in the stomach can be overstimmed), and demonstrates absolutely no withdrawal.
I would never even consider taking an SSRI in light of how effective 5-HTP can be.
I'm sure that's definitely a posibility, and in many cases, maybe the etiology of the disease.
:)
One of the questions I have to raise, however, is why there is a sudden decrease in NE and 5-HT activity? Because major depressive disorder also tends to run in families, that would suggest that there is some underlying genetic problem where behavioural modification may not always treat the root of the problem.
Ultimately, drugs along with therapy have tended to show the best results. That may of course change the more we learn
i hope they can control the current very precisely; a few milliamps more or less, and the implantee might turn into a grinning idiot. i also wonder what kind of social life they're going to have, even if the implant works perfectly. i know i would have difficulties talking normally to someone whose responses were being controlled electrically.
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. -Gandhi
- "not a disease"
- "probably
... end up killing himself."
- "a safeguard"
- "increasing suicide rates 500%"
None of this has any scientific basis. And it's FUD like this that might keep people from seeking treatment. *That's* how people end up getting killed.This makes sense if you think about it. SSRIs (Selective Serontonin Reuptake Inhibitors) keep your brain from absorbing as much serontonin as it otherwise would, so more is available. If you take 5-HTP on top of that, you can get too much serontonin, and your brain is blocked from bringing the level down by the SSRI.
Yes, it's possible to have too much serontonin. Google "serontonin syndrome". It's not fatal, or even long-term damaging (AFAIK), but it's quite unpleasant.
This also means if you're not on antidepressants, experiment with your 5-HTP dosage, and lower it if you feel... funky.
Of course, the women had to come back for repeat visits :-)
(according to some "history of sex" documentary or other on the History Channel I saw once)
I've always slammed my pyschologist sister when she starts talking about the latest therapy as the holy grail of mental health by dragging up electro shock, lobotomy, drugs, and the like to point out that, for the most part those docs know not what they do. I could see this being the next 'hot therapy' and overdone without regard to long term issues.
Yeah, the 'overlord' stuff does get lame and old, but then, so will I.
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
Since when did we start treating all depressed people as if they were Marvin?
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
I had to drag out of depression. I did not care about anything and eventually I ignored failing brakes on my car. Luckily they failed completely on the empty road and I found doctor to solve this problem. It's VERY easy to blame chemicals in your blood instead of your own wrong perceptions of the world. "The piano has been drinking... not me. Not me. Not me."
Please! What about wirehead references? After all, if they can improve mood, why not put a wire directly in the pleasure center of the brain?
--LWM