The brain is an electrical device. Just like your toaster.
Lots of millivolts zipping and zapping from one neuron to the next neuron.
So can we, the medical doctors and medical researchers, figure out how to use electricity to tune up the brain?
That’s the BIG QUESTION.
But the brain is the most complex structure in the universe aside from the universe itself.
But the work of using electricity to tune up the brain of those with mental health challenges is well underway.
Depression , for example, involves multiple neural circuits. This is different in different patients. So what is needed is a personalized approach to using electricity to treat depression.
The personalization is based on brain mapping of brain activity. EEG does that trick.
And then electrodes are programmed to target areas of the brain involved in creating depression.
This is like a pacemaker for the brain. Deep brain stimulation with leads deep in the brain has been used for decades but it is very invasive and very expensive.
So transcranial brain stimulation using MRI targeting is a much less invasive and more accessible approach to treating depression and other conditions such as OCD.
Personalized brain stimulation requires accurate targeting of the right area of the brain but also the right rhythm. The neural code or the brain code is frequency dependent. Like a song. Get the frequency wrong and Taylor Swift’s song is gaarbbage.
So the brain is and has been proven to be plastic. It can be rewired and using electricity in targeted and personalized methodologies will help humanity with the biggest illness of all – mental illness.
Raymond Rupert health system disruptor and patient advocate.