Whenever I see news about deep brain stimulation, I perk up. The procedure — which involves implanting electrodes deep into the brain to deliver regular pulses of electricity — is used to treat people like my mom with movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease or epilepsy. Researchers are also exploring whether it can be used to treat depression, but results on that front have been decidedly mixed.
That’s one reason that this story published by MIT Technology Review caught my eye. Neuroscientists have discovered a “mood decoder” — a way to measure a person’s moods by simply looking at their brain activity for the first time — that could improve deep brain stimulation for depression. The research was recently presented at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting.
Unlike Parkinson’s, depression is something we still don’t fully understand from a purely neurological perspective. It’s difficult to figure out which brain regions are associated with…