Buzzing the brain: Home-based brain stimulation could help symptoms of depression

Imagine walking your dog on a late October evening, glancing at a neighbour’s window and seeing them sitting there, hooked up to a brain stimulator in their living room.While it sounds like something out of a Frankenstein-inspired movie, it could be a treatment of the future for people with major depressive disorder (MDD), results from a new trial suggest.The treatment is transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which provides a weak direct current to the brain through scalp electrodes. Cynthia Fu, professor of psychotherapy at King’s College in London, and colleagues have developed a home-based tDCS system and studied its use in treating depression. The electrodes are contained in a flexible cap or band that participants wear over their forehead.Fu and co-researchers from the U.K. and U.S. carried out a phase-two trial of the treatment in 174 participants with major depressive disorder. All participants were either treatment-free or had been engaging in psychotherapy and/or taking antidepressants for at least six weeks prior to the trial. Read: Bright light therapy may be beneficial for nonseasonal depressive disordersThe participants were randomized to receive 10 weeks of either real tDCS or sham tDCS, where the device delivered no stimulation. The cranial stimulation (or sham) was delivered for 30-minute-long sessions it five times a week for the initial three weeks, and then three times a week for the remaining seven weeks. At the end of the trial, there was a significant improvement in Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) scores for those who received tDCS compared to those who received the sham treatment. The difference in score improvement between the two groups was significant after four weeks of treatment.Those who had active tDCS had a significantly greater remission rate of 44.9% when compared to participants who had the sham treatment, who had a remission rate of 21.8%.The results were similar when researchers looked at the self-reported Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale numbers.Fu and colleagues’ results were more positive than other research on home-based tDCS therapy for major depressive disorder. The authors noted that previous studies had smaller sample sizes and suggested that longer treatment durations might be necessary to show clinical benefits.While there were no major adverse events, people in the treatment arm reported significantly more skin irritation and redness and trouble concentrating compared to people who had sham treatment.The paper was published in Nature. Wu and colleagues also found benefits of home-based tDCS in people with bipolar disorder. Their findings were published in the International Journal of Bipolar Disorders.Read: Tablet use by young kids linked to more outbursts of anger and frustration

Buzzing the brain: Home-based brain stimulation could help symptoms of depression

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics