Deep Brain Stimulation: Treatment for Clinical Depression
Date
2020
Authors
Admassu, Azaria
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Abstract
Depression is the most common mental disorder in the United States. A person with this disorder is generally described as feeling sad, discouraged and in general, disinterested in life. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a method of electrically stimulating a specific part of a brain using implanted electrodes. Since the symptoms of major depressive disorder have been linked to the dysfunction of the reward circuitry system of which the NAcs are the major players of, DBS to these neurons have been one suggested method to improve patients’ symptoms. In 2013, DBS of the NAcs had given a promising result when patients treated by DBS had shown an improvement with little to no side effect. This paper will discuss the advantages to DBS as an anti-depressant by the assessment of available studies and will further discuss the current as well as future challenges facing DBS.