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Regulation of Depression By a New Type of Brain
Stimulation In Addicted Patients: Reedeming Joy
thesoberworld.com/2018/09/01/regulation-depression-new-type-brain-stimulation-addicted-patients-reedeming-joy
Depression is also known as clinical depression and major depressive disorder (MDD).
This severe medical illness affects 15 million American adults every year or about 5-8% of
the adult population of the US. Women are nearly twice as likely as men to develop major
depression. The severe symptoms effect how you feel, think, and handle daily activities,
such as sleeping, eating, or working. For a clinical diagnosis, the symptoms must be
present for at least two weeks. It is well-known that when patients first attend chemical
dependency treatment centers, clinical assessment measurers show 100% MDD, but upon
completion, 33% remain depressed. Some candidate genes are known to associate with
risk variations (polymorphic alleles) for low dopamine function, and hypodopaminergic
trait (DNA) occurs. Many articles, including “Psychology Today” featuring the work of one
of us (KB) suggested that the “thrill is gone” based on an array of reward genes known to
reduce dopamine function through a well- known cascade called “Brain Reward Cascade”
(see figure 1). Most scientists would agree that in essence, MDD occurs especially in
patients attending a chemical dependency program as a form of lack of experiencing
pleasure from everyday activities (anhedonia) included as one subset of Reward
Deficiency Syndrome (RDS).
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Any intervention intended to alter nervous system function using energy fields such as
electricity, magnetism, electromagnetic field or all the above has been defined as
Neurostimulation.
Neurostimulation
Surprisingly, historical literature has described neurostimulation to treat physical
maladies for over a thousand years. Its use for psychiatric disorders became popular in
the past century especially for overcoming depression (anhedonia). Since the 1930’s,
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was recognized