Magnet device aims to treat depression patients

Source: Associated Press


By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer – Tue Oct 21, 12:04 pm ET

AP – Graphic shows how magnetic stimulation is used to treat depression;

WASHINGTON – The government has approved the first noninvasive brain stimulator to treat depression — a device that beams magnetic pulses through the skull.

If it sounds like science-fiction, well, those woodpecker-like pulses trigger small electrical charges that spark brain cells to fire.

Yet it doesn't cause the risks of surgically implanted electrodes or the treatment of last resort, shock therapy.

Called transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS, this gentler approach isn't for everyone. The Food and Drug Administration approved Neuronetics Inc.'s NeuroStar therapy specifically for patients who had no relief from their first antidepressant, offering them a different option than trying pill after pill.

"We're opening up a whole new area of medicine," says Dr. Mark George of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, who helped pioneer use of TMS in depression....


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081021/ap_on_he_me/med_healthbeat_depression_magnet

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What do you know?

Now, if this will just be PROVIDED to those who need it....

ensure you need to frequently refill the "prescription" for this device?

This profits 'big pharma' not!

:patriot:

And yes, it's possible.

The coin-operated heating units of England come to mind.

Yes, one can entrain the EEG this way but I doubt they can effectively shape and control the neuro-chemical balance via this method. This is probably just a way to use those expensive research devices as a way to make money with most of the perceived benefit arising more from the ritual than the process. Or, on the other hand, perhaps that Outer Limits episode about cell towers was another case of truth being stranger than fiction.

Shock treatments are effective because they stimulate the brain, but they also stimulate the surface nerves and are painful. By the way, you can drop off your "of the past", because electroshock is still used today (it's just not forced like it used to be).

It sounds like the magnetic pulses are achieving the same result without the surface pain.

Would this treatment cause memory loss or have other side effects?

too early to tell about this.

The patient is sedated and given a drug to paralyze the voluntary muscles. The paralysis is to to prevent the muscle contractions and cramps that occur with Electro Convulsive Therapy. No pain (at least no remembered pain) involved, but it "resets" the brain. Anything that happened just previous to and during the course of treatment (2 to 3 a week for a month or so) is gone. There will likely be other holes in the persons memory as well. I took a friend through a course of ECT awhile back. There's a reason it should be considered a last choice treatment. I had to organize her life for about 2 months, before she was ready to be on her own again.

electro-shock does. The electrical currents in the brain are rearranged by twisting them with an outside magnetic field rather than by overwhelming them with an electrical current. Whether anyone really understand why either procedure works is something I don't know.

...in tissues and muscles of the scalp subjected to the impulses and psychological trauma from the clicking sound experienced inside the head from the treatment :yoiks:

People will fall for anything.

the bushbots, dittoheads and assorted rethugs who will need this after Nov 4 <whistling>

LOL!

Larry Niven introduced the concept of direct brain stimulation to treat depression in the Ringworld series, ca 1973. Unfortunately, the longer one experienced "the wire", the less able one was to function apart from the "droud". Louis Wu himself became addicted to current- a "wirehead" if you will. He kicked the habit because of his tremendous self-discipline and advanced, chemically-enhanced age.