Mild stimulation therapy “improves brain function”
By Ian Birch
As a mental health journalist with schizophrenia I was excited to discover that scientists from Neuro Research Australia (NeuRA) have discovered that a form of painless gentle electrical stimulation to the brain could offer new hope to sufferers like me.
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) has been shown to improve brain function after just 20 minutes, according to researchers. It transmits a very mild electrical current to the brain through electrodes on the scalp. Patients wear a green headband whilst sitting at a computer screen.
Lead researcher Dr Tom Weickert said: “There are very few new treatment options for people with schizophrenia, so finding a different treatment that is promising and also has little in the way of side effects is very exciting. We found that this type of brain stimulation boosted learning from feedback which is important in everyday life, for example in learning to act on cues from other people in social situations.”
One characteristic of schizophrenia is reduced activity in an area of the brain called the “pre-frontal cortex” and it is this area to which tDCS was applied to study participants for 20 minutes.
The study will continue to see if the effects of this new therapy are long-lasting and could offer potential for new treatments.
Transcranial stimulation has been deemed safe by the medical community and should not be associated with the on-going controversy over electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) in which patients are anaesthetised, have induced muscle paralysis, and then have a substantial electrical shock applied to their brains which causes epileptic convulsions (fits). Mental Healthy reported recently how American talk-show host Oprah Winfrey was shocked that ECT is still in use in modern psychiatry.
This week's research was published in the journal Schizophrenia Research and and has exciting future potential, along with the other advances Mental Healthy reported recently.
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Please read Mental Healthy's blog on schizophrenia, written by me, below:
