Nov. 30 (UPI) -- Scientists can improve the mood of people with depression by delivering electrical currents directly to affected regions of the brain, a new study says.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco on Thursday published a study in the journal Current Biology showing that small electrical pulses sent through the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC, region of the brain can help relieve depression brought on by epileptic seizures.
"The OFC has been called one of the least understood regions in the brain, but it is richly connected to various brain structures linked to mood, depression and decision making, making it very well positioned to coordinate activity between emotion and cognition," Eddie Chang, study senior author and a professor of neurosurgery at UCSF, said in a press release.
Researchers at UCSF targeted the OFC because they believe this area houses the brain's mood-regulating wiring. After receiving only three minutes of electric charges to the OFC region, patients with moderate to severe depression noticed significant improvement.
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"Patients said things like 'Wow, I feel better,' 'I feel less anxious,' 'I feel calm, cool and collected,'" said Kristin Sellers, a post-doctoral scholar at UCSF and a co-author on the study. "And just anecdotally, you could see the improvements in patients' body language. They smiled, they sat up straighter, they started to speak more quickly and naturally."
Now the team is looking to develop a self-guided device that can recognize a dip in a patient with a mood disorder and stimulate the OFC in a patient when needed.
"Ultimately, it would be ideal if activity in mood-related brain circuits could be normalized indefinitely without patients needing to do anything," Vikram Rao, study co-author and researcher at UCSF, said in a press release.
