Personalized brain stimulation may reduce common mental health disorders

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is often rejected because it is merely an obsession with eccentric hand washing or a commitment to checking locked doors.But in reality, mental health conditions have almost serious consequences. 1 billion peopleQuality of life every year. However, effective treatments are limited, and cognitive-behavioral therapy, the most common treatment, is said to be ineffective in 40% of people with this condition. 1 scientific review..

The new approach suggests taking a different approach. Treatment of OCD Directly to the brain. In a new treatise, a team of neuroscientists show how direct stimulation of the brain’s reward processing center can help suppress obsessive-compulsive behavior.

Taking a personalized approach, researchers show that a stimulus of just 30 minutes for 5 days can have a lasting effect up to 3 months after treatment. For some study participants, this approach reduced OCD-related behavior by 30%.

Important reason — Personalized treatment has advantages because OCD can manifest in many ways. But the authors go a step further — they suggest that their personal brain-stimulating approach can be used to treat other forms of compulsive behavior, including: Binge eating, shopping, or gambling..

The· Survey results Published in the journal on Monday Nature medicine..

This is the background — The brain stimulation approach used in this study is called transcranial exchange stimulation (tACS). It works by amplifying the vibrations of the brain itself to enhance certain brain functions.In essence, it looks like an electrode patch applied to the skull — much like an electrode patch applied to the back to provide low intensity electrical stimulation in physiotherapy.

The research team investigated how amplifying these brain waves with tACS improves OCD symptoms by tuning to specific beta-gamma frequencies that come from the reward center of the brain.

The research team recruited 124 people with nonclinical OCD and divided them into control and test groups to see how effective tACS was in suppressing compulsive behavior.

What they did — When divided into study groups, researchers used the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Revised Edition (OCI-R), a common self-reporting index for OCD, to establish baseline levels of OCD for each participant.

In the first part of the experiment, researchers observed how beta-gamma stimulation via tACS affects reward or punishment-based learning when playing games such as gambling. In separate iterations of the game, randomly selected icons were associated with an 80% chance of losing a reward ($ 10) or an 80% chance of losing $ 10.

In the second part of the experiment, participants in the group received tACS for 30 minutes a day for 5 days and examined how it affects OCD symptoms and OCI-R scores in the next 3 months.

What they discovered — From the first experiment, the team observed a causal relationship between reward-guided learning and tACS stimulation.That is, the stimuli during these trials produced more results. Exploratory behavior Depends on the participants. In previous studies, low-level exploration during reward-based learning was associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder, such as alcohol abuse disorder. More Exploration may improve such behavior.

The result of the second experiment is It will be even more encouraging.. After following participants for 3 months after the first 5 days of stimulation, the researchers found a significant reduction in OCD behavior and a reduction in OCI-R levels of up to 28 percent in the months following treatment. Interestingly, researchers also note participants who find the greatest effect to have the highest baseline OCI-R levels. That is, participants with the greatest OCD-related behaviors are most likely to benefit from such treatments.

What’s next- Currently, researchers write that their findings are at best causal evidence of the effectiveness of this treatment, but they hope that future studies will further confirm their first findings with additional neuroimaging. I’m out.

They also state that their current study focuses on nonclinical OCD, but believes that the results can be reproduced as well in research groups with more severe OCD.

The· Reverse analysis- Although the current purpose of this study is to treat disorders that reduce the quality of life of millions, researchers also find that this technique is another more common form of compulsion, including binge eating and shopping. It suggests that it can also be used for the treatment of.

The idea of ​​applying this study beyond the clinic raises unpleasant questions about whether to train the brain with a little stimulus or not, and what else to train. For example, how can these techniques be used by bosses, spouses, and even parents to train new behaviors?

The future of such a dystopia is distant, but it is Ethical concerns You should keep this in mind as your research progresses.

Overview: Nearly one billion people around the world suffer from obsessive-compulsive behaviors, but our mechanical understanding of these behaviors is incomplete and effective treatments are not available. A new perspective characterizes obsessive-compulsive behavior as maladapted habitual learning. This may be related to abnormal beta-gamma neurophysiology of the orbitofrontal-striatal circuit during reward processing. It targets the orbitofrontal cortex with alternating currents personalized to the reward network’s unique beta-gamma frequency, demonstrating rapid and reversible frequency-specific modulation of reward-based selection behavior and learning. Actor critic architectural setting. Next, we show that chronic application of the 5-day procedure strongly weakens obsessive-compulsive behavior in the nonclinical population for 3 months, with the greatest benefit to individuals with more severe symptoms. Finally, we show that the convergence mechanism underlies the modulation of reward learning and the reduction of obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The results contribute to the neurophysiological theory of reward, learning, and compulsive behavior, suggesting a unified functional role for beta-gamma range rhythms, and personalized circuit-based treatment for associated disorders. Lay the foundation for the development of law.