
Brain-stimulation trials get personal to lift depression - lainon
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03864-4
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lemonberry
This is interesting. On a recent Kevin Rose podcast he and his guest talked
about targeted treatment for ADHD, dementia, etc. using video games. At one
point they also discussed people using self-built gadgets to stimulate their
own brain using electric current ( they do not recommend it though ).

[https://www.kevinrose.com/single-post/Adam-
Gazzaley](https://www.kevinrose.com/single-post/Adam-Gazzaley)

As an aside, I've found meditation to be very helpful in treating my non-
clinical depression. It's also one of the key tools I use to help with my
addiction/alcoholism issues.

And please, if you're thinking of taking your own life reach out to someone.

[https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org](https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org)

~~~
chimen
Would love to be able to meditate. My brain just goes all over the place and
it feels like I'm wasting my time.

~~~
JamesBarney
This is common misconception about mindfulness meditation. The goal of
mindfulness meditation is not to quiet mind(though this happens with
practice). It's to learn how to notice when your mind is unquiet.

So when you notice your mind wandering this is mindfulness. Imagine you're
coding all day long, and then you have this moment where you notice that
you're not paying attention to coding, but instead thinking about what it
would be like to be a ninja. You might have been thinking about being a ninja
for 5-10 minutes before you realized it. But this moment when you realize, oh
hey I was thinking about something other that what I thought I was thinking
about is a moment of mindfulness. And this is what you're practicing.

So when you notice your mind wandering, be happy, this is a moment of
mindfulness. Your mind was probably wandering for a while before you realized
it, but this moment is the moment you realized it.

~~~
lifeformed
What would mindful meditation be like then? Setting aside a moment to remind
yourself to notice?

~~~
joveian
I'm not sure about mindfulness meditation specifically or what exactly that
even refers to, but some people use a mindfulness bell that is rung randomly a
few times a day for exactly that purpose. One old form of mindfulness practice
is to use breath changing from in to out or out to in as moments of
mindfulness. See Centering in Zen Flesh Zen Bones translated by Paul Reps
(from a document predating Buddhism):

[https://shivayashiva.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/centering-
prac...](https://shivayashiva.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/centering-
practices-112-ways-to-open-the-invisible-door-of-consciousness/)

There is also a kind of meditation practice called "just note gone" where the
idea is to start giving absense of stimulation a distinct notice (by noticing
when something you had been perceiving is no longer there). I think most sit
down and meditate practices tend to focus on that kind of thing (feeling the
absense of stimulation as a distinct thing) via different methods.

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ncv
A few years ago while working on my undergrad I helped proctor a study
involving a similar technology--transcranial direct current stimulation
(tDCS)--and it's impact on working memory. Although neither the tech nor the
desired outcome in OP's article is identical to my undergrad project, the
researchers are likely facing similar challenges which seem universal for low-
current brain stimulation experiments:

\- Effects are measurable but very very small

\- Frequent stimulation is required to achieve the desired effect

\- The desired effect diminishes over time

This seems really promising, particularly because they're changing the
treatment for specific patients rather than using a one-size-fits-all model. I
hope their trials go well.

~~~
sivex
When I was doing research with TMS the problem we were trying to solve was
focusing the magnetic field to a small point in order to target specific areas
of the brain instead of stimulating a larger area. There was a lot of research
being done to do this, but that seemed to be the biggest technological hurdle
to the technology in addition to what you noted.

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leggomylibro
I once saw a presentation at a BCI conference about using DBS to treat
depression. They basically installed a 'happy button' in someone's brain, and
it worked.

On the one hand, it's sort of scary. On the other hand, what are you supposed
to do when nothing, not art nor work nor drugs nor thought, does anything to
ameliorate the pain?

~~~
msla
> On the one hand, it's sort of scary.

I can see both sides of this, at once, like I'm looking at an ambiguous image:
duck, or rabbit?

On one hand, it's absurd: "Electrochemical system is changed by electricity!
Shocker! Be afeared'n'affrighted!" The brain is a physical system, your
personality is a result of the behavior of that system, so changing the
physical system is going to change the personality. It's a more controlled
version of Phineas Gage and the railroad spike.

(Plus, dirty little secret: Electroconvulsive therapy _works_. It has nasty
side-effects, but it makes depression go away rather quickly. So the basic
idea of chasing away mental problems by shocking brain tissue is not new,
despite a decades-long effort on the part of artists to make people think ECT
is simply meaningless torture.)

On the other hand, I can see how this would be challenging to someone who
finds emotional states deeply meaningful, especially if they (as most people
who look for "meaningful emotional states" seem to) find sad states more
meaningful than happy ones.

It's the myth of the happy pill, by which I mean the myth that depression is
this wonderful, meaningful Long, Dark Night Of The Soul and that taking
something to fight it is "making you feel better" in a coercive sense, and
depriving you of that meaning, and, possibly, preventing you from getting to
the root of the problem, which must needs be done through talk therapy.

My conclusion is this: Emotions in and of themselves aren't meaningful,
treating symptoms doesn't mean you _can 't_ also look for root causes, and,
sometimes, an organic dysfunction _is_ the root cause, as opposed to something
you can talk out.

~~~
johnfn
Even if the root of someone's depression were something that _could_ be talked
out, what depressed person wouldn't want to work that out while not depressed?

~~~
amelius
I guess that while the person is not depressed and feels great, it totally
makes no sense to talk about anything related to the depression. This could
quickly provide the patient with the insight that a depression is purely
physical, and that nothing needs to be talked about really.

------
amelius
This reminds me of this article [1].

[1] [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d739jq/can-we-
sti...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d739jq/can-we-stimulate-
our-brains-to-trigger-on-demand-orgasms)

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starshadowx2
While I'm interested and excited by this, it gives me some "Terminal Man"
vibes.

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AlphaWeaver
I question what safety measures they are putting in place to prevent some sort
of negative feedback loop... I wonder if this has the potential issue with
functioning properly based on a loop that compounds and compounds on itself.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Can you explain what you mean a little more?

Are you just saying, your worried about someone getting more and more
depressed by using the device?

~~~
AlphaWeaver
Not necessarily... I can just imagine a scenario where the "algorithm" reacts
based off of some stimulus in the brain and applies stimulation in an attempt
to counteract that...

If there's so much as a small flaw and the stimulation it applies in return
causes the original stimulus to worsen instead of be relieved, I could imagine
the reaction from the algorithm continuing to make the situation worse if not
carefully designed.

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spaceman1331
the depression industry is a for-profit industry based on bullying

it is quite sick

~~~
outlace
That's not a very nuanced position to hold about something very complex.

