‘Neuroscience’ at Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life, Page 2

A U.S. Senate Finance Committee report says a federal official approved a device to treat persistent depression against the advice of a scientific advisory committee. According to the Senate committee, the official overruled his scientific staff to approve the vagus nerve stimulator device, despite its not having been proved effective against depression in its only clinical trial.

Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere around the US are beginning to offer vagus nerve stimulation, a controversial and expensive new surgical implant, to patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression. While some patients swear by the device, critics point to the lack of clear scientific evidence that the $40,000 vagus nerve stimulation device alleviates depression at all.

New research sheds further light on the role of brain chemistry in anorexia nervosa, indicating that disturbances in the way the brain uses serotonin may persist long after recovery from one type of anorexia.

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) therapy, a treatment recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment-resistant depression, produced a positive response in more than 25 percent of patients in a national, yearlong study led by UT Southwestern Medical Center psychiatrists.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved an electrical brain stimulator which delivers tiny shocks as a treatment for severe depression. A generator the size of a pocket watch is implanted into the chest, and wires snake up the neck to the vagus nerve, delivering tiny electric shocks through that nerve and into a region of the brain thought to play a role in mood.