Electroconvulsive therapy often evokes inaccurate images of seizing bodies and smoking ears. Better understanding of how it reduces depression symptoms can illuminate new ways to treat mental illness.
Deep brain stimulation can help some people with treatment-resistant depression feel better, but it can be unclear whether a bout of low mood is a relapse or a bad day.
Transcranial alternating current stimulation, or tACS, is a type of brain stimulation that can change neural activity and improve memory, attention and executive function.
Pain has long been subjectively measured, leading to frustrations for patients and doctors alike. Identifying neural biomarkers of pain could improve diagnosis and lead to better treatments of chronic pain conditions.
Existing brain connections may influence the effectiveness of neurostimulation. Tailoring treatments to each individual brain could expand the number of conditions brain stimulation can treat.
When designing neuroprosthetic devices for users to control with their thoughts, engineers must take into account the sensory information brains collect from the environment and how it gets processed.
From dementia to depression to drug addiction, artificial brain stimulation has been hailed as a landmark medical technology for the future. But safeguards are needed if we want the benefits without the risks.
When Zahra Moussavi’s mother developed Alzheimer’s, the scientist pursued a technology that directly stimulates the brain with electromagnets to mitigate the effects of the disease. It worked.
Shelly Fan, University of California, San Francisco
Tinkering with the brain’s electrical field shows tantalizing promise for boosting memory, but it doesn’t always work. A new study offers one reason why.
People who electrically stimulate their brains at home need more information to do it safely… and neuroscience needs to find out more about how and why they do it.
Brain stimulating headsets are being enthusiastically taken up by gamers aiming to boost performance. But there are risks, particularly for children or those vulnerable to mental health problems.
Around 350 million people worldwide have depression. Antidepressant medications are often prescribed to treat the condition, alongside talking therapies and lifestyle changes such as regular exercise…
The practice of physically stimulating the brain in order to alleviate symptoms of illness and injury has been around since the early 20th century. For example, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is still…