Word: braine
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...psychologists and tried dozens of medications, but nothing seemed to work very well or for very long. Then last June she heard about an experimental treatment being tested at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University. It involved aiming a powerful magnet at a spot on the brain to reset the wayward neural circuits that keep Martha, and millions like her, stuck in the downward spiral of depression...
...preliminary, but researchers believe they can use rTMS at the very least to develop a new understanding of how different parts of the brain are wired together and what goes wrong when some of its signals get crossed. What they cannot do at the moment, somewhat to their embarrassment, is explain why magnetic stimulation might ease anyone's suffering...
Moreover, it's not the magnetic pulses that affect the brain but the modest electrical currents that the pulses induce--almost like an echo--in the brain's nerve cells. At some frequencies, those electrical currents seem to stimulate neural pathways but at other frequencies inhibit them...
...Magnetic stimulation is a clever way to induce current without actually having an electrical connection," says Dr. George Wittenberg, a neurologist at Wake Forest University, who is studying magnetic pulses for their potential to help stroke patients recover more quickly. Unlike electroconvulsive therapy, which affects the whole brain, the magnets are focused only on specific regions at the surface, or cortex. And because the treatment does not trigger a seizure (as electroconvulsive therapy does), there's no need for muscle relaxants or anesthesia and no problem with memory loss. Patients undergoing magnetic stimulation usually feel only a kind of tapping...
...would anyone want to generate tiny electrical currents in their brain? "You have to remember the brain is both an electrical and a chemical organ," says Dr. Mark George, a psychiatrist at the Medical University of South Carolina who is investigating magnetic stimulation as a treatment for depression for the NIMH. Drugs like Prozac and Zoloft address chemical imbalances, but that's only part of the problem. Electroconvulsive therapy, despite its troubling side effects, is still one of the most effective treatments available for severe, unrelenting depression...