
A new form of brain stimulation relieved severe depression in a small study - doener
http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/04/stanford-researchers-devise-treatment-that-relieved-depression-i.html
======
PragmaticPulp
Actual paper is available here:
[https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.1...](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.19070720)

n=21, no control group, zero blinding. Placebo response is notoriously high in
depression studies, so it's unacceptable that they didn't include a control
group.

This technique is a variant of rTMS, which has been around for a long time.
We've had years of positive rTMS study results that failed to replicate in
real-world conditions. There's some early evidence that it might do something
positive, but it's not clear that it's a viable treatment option. In most
major cities you can usually find at least one obscure rTMS clinic somewhere,
but they won't offer the exact rTMS technique studied here. They also won't
give you 50 sessions across 5 days as used in this study.

It's very disappointing, even suspicious, that they didn't include a control
group. It's trivially easy to include a sham rTMS treatment because the
patients can't see the magnetic field. At minimum, they could have split the
group into low-dose and high-dose to demonstrate a dose-response relationship.
Yet they deliberately chose to avoid any control group or dose-response
measurements.

I can't access the full text, so I don't know when they measured the patients'
depressive symptoms. If they scored the depression inventory on the final day
of the 5-day treatment, this wouldn't be very promising as a long-term
treatment. The real test would be how the depression remission holds up after
the rTMS treatment is discontinued. If the remission persists for months, that
would be truly impressive. On the other hand, if this only works with 50 in-
office rTMS sessions per week, it's not a practical outpatient treatment.

I would love to be wrong and for this to be the holy grail of depression
treatment, but given the circumstances I think it's best interpreted as an
outlier study unless/until someone else reproduces it. I don't think we'll all
be going in for 50 sessions of rTMS across 5 days any time soon.

~~~
ipunchghosts
How do papers like this get published? This is a conference paper at best.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> How do papers like this get published? This is a conference paper at best.

The why is obvious: It's #1 on Hacker News right now, and spreading like a
wildfire across my social media. People love to hear about promising new
depression treatments, because we all know someone who suffers from
depression.

Strangely, most rTMS papers follow similar patterns: No control groups, small
sample sizes, questionable methodology.

The methodological issues would have been trivially easy to correct from the
start, so I assume the omission of control groups is intentional. I think it's
geared toward generating publicity and drumming up grant money. The core rTMS
technique seems to do _something_ for depression, so it would be great if
someone could translate that into a practical, sustainable treatment.

~~~
doorbellguy
Treating `depression` or claiming to have cured depression is something a lot
of people look forward to. Couple that with the fact that we are all sitting
in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, news stories with catchy titles like
these are bound to attract extra eyeballs.

------
jdm2212
Either this will win the Nobel Prize, or it won't hold up. (Guess which one is
more likely.)

A few reasons I don't think it will hold up: \- this is a university press
release \- N = 21 \- no control group \- no blinding \- university press
release doesn't even claim it's a new approach, just incremental improvement
on an existing approach \- the paper (link below) is about evaluating safety,
feasibility, and "preliminary efficacy" (i.e., they're not advertising this as
a robust result)

Paper available here:

[https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.1...](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.19070720)

[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/581280v3.full](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/581280v3.full)

~~~
jimmyswimmy
Indeed.

>With SAINT, study participants underwent 10 sessions per day of 10-minute
treatments, with 50-minute breaks in between. After a day of therapy, Lehman’s
mood score indicated she was no longer depressed; it took up to five days for
other participants. On average, three days of the therapy were enough for
participants to have relief from depression.

One imagines that three to five 10 hour (!) days of a presumably highly-
trained professional spending time and attention and focus on a patient serves
as no less than an incredibly strong placebo. It would be interesting to see a
blinded study where the transducer functionality was replaced by a small
heater (or whatever is needed to make the system act, feel and sound the same
for all involved).

It would be lovely if this held up. Depression and other psychological issues
are insidious.

~~~
conradev
They are doing said study. From the second sentence:

> The researchers are conducting a larger, double-blinded trial in which half
> the participants are receiving fake treatment.

~~~
lozaning
How does fake treatment work in a clinical therapy test setting?

I'd think I'd either figure out that the person giving me therapy was talking
nonsense pretty quickly, or their 'placebo' therapy is indistinguishable from
actual therapy, in which case am I still a control?

~~~
jefftk
This is magnetic stimulation. You could have a control group where you don't
turn on the magnet.

~~~
msandford
Yeah but there was an article posted a few days ago about how Reiki can't
possibly work but it still does.

IMO the only way to blind this is to put people in an automated machine that
either turns the magnet on or it doesn't (and it makes some noises either
way). You can't have highly trained professionals in the loop making people
feel valuable by giving them all this attention, as that could be a
confounding effect in both the alleged-treatment and the alleged-placebo.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22764824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22764824)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _IMO the only way to blind this is to put people in an automated machine
> that either turns the magnet on or it doesn 't (and it makes some noises
> either way). You can't have highly trained professionals in the loop making
> people feel valuable by giving them all this attention, as that could be a
> confounding effect in both the alleged-treatment and the alleged-placebo._

It's fine as long as both the experimental group and the control group get the
same amount of attention, right? If both groups show the same amount of
improvement, that means it was caused entirely by the attention, not by the
magnetic treatment.

~~~
jefftk
This probably only works if the professionals are blinded to whether the
machine is enabled

~~~
apocolyps6
That's what the "double" in double-blind means

~~~
jefftk
msandford is saying that you can only run an experiment like this and get good
results if the treatment is administered entirely by a machine. PhasmaFelis is
saying that as long as both groups get similar amounts of professional
attention then you can still get good results. I'm saying that to make sure
you get equal levels of professional attention you need to blind the
professionals to whether the machine is enabled.

(I agree that this is what the "double" in "double blind" means, but that's
not what we were talking about.)

~~~
andrekorol
In that case, let's just call it triple-blind... /s

------
greendestiny_re
If you're feeling depressed, you might be helped by a—warm bath.

A 2017 Freiburg study [1] took 36 moderately clinically depressed patients and
assigned 17 to 30-minute, 40 °C hyperthermic baths, with 19 as control.

After bathing twice a week for four weeks, the study claims the 17 patients
had a "moderate but significant improvement".

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5371197/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5371197/)

~~~
saltyfever
People must not want to hear the truth, hence your downvotes. Most forms of
depression can be cured with self-care.

"In health care, self-care is any necessary human regulatory function which is
under individual control, deliberate and self-initiated."

~~~
lukifer
I think Johann Hari has the gist right: in the vast majority of cases,
depression is a signal from the body of some biological/social/emotional needs
that aren't being met, rather than necessarily being an immutable medical
condition.

For n=1, I've struggled with (manic) depression and anxiety most of my life.
And while I've used a variety of strategies to cope (Seligman's "Learned
Optimism" and a potpourri of Buddhist ideas were incredibly helpful), the
secret sauce was getting off of sugar and junk food. When I'm staying on a
whole-foods, keto-ish diet, mood swings and unwanted negative thoughts have
their volume is turned down by 90%, making the remainder relatively easy to
process.

Everybody's different, so YMMV; in some cases, medication are an appropriate
tool. But there are some universals that basically benefit every human: drink
more water, get more sleep, go for a walk in the sunshine, eat your
vegetables, and the less sugar (probably) the better.

~~~
gramontblanc
The phenomenological impact of poor diet and harsh glycemic index ASDR cannot
be overstated. 'refined sugars negatively impact mood and emotional well-
being' might be one of the most rock solid universals of human nature.

All medical interventions should include the no-brainer diet, vitamins,
exercise, self-esteem interventions.

------
0xcde4c3db
One thing to note is that the study population consisted entirely of severely
depressed people. As far as I've read about it, the current consensus seems to
be that the more severe the depression is, the more likely it is to respond to
medical interventions as opposed to psychological/behavioral ones. This ties
in to a broader understanding that depressive disorders are considerably
heterogeneous and no single theory or treatment target is relevant to all
cases.

So while this may be a genuine breakthrough, I hope people don't get the idea
that it's _the_ cure for depression generally.

~~~
starpilot
> As far as I've read about it, the current consensus seems to be that the
> more severe the depression is, the more likely it is to respond to medical
> interventions as opposed to psychological/behavioral ones.

I've never heard this in my life, can you link? These test subjects were
people with treatment-resistant depression though, which I have as well. My
experience, along with others I've known with it, is that we're more likely to
deal with nocebo effects. HN is tossing heaps of cynicism on this report but
even for unblinded testing these results are remarkable.

> “There’s never been a therapy for treatment-resistant depression that’s
> broken 55% remission rates in open-label testing,” said Nolan Williams, MD,
> assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and a senior
> author of the study

~~~
0xcde4c3db
I suppose _consensus_ might not be the right word; maybe something closer to
_bias_ or even _superstition_ might be appropriate. But basically, I'm
synthesizing my own view of several trends here. That being the case, I don't
have a link that neatly sums this up. Perhaps this is even my own little
hallucination. I'm only an expert by comparison to the general public, in the
sense that I periodically try to survey the literature with the most open mind
I can manage. But the components I'm thinking of are mostly:

1) A sense that antidepressants tend to work better the more severe the
depression is. This often comes up as a counterpoint to the anti-
antidepressant talking point that SSRIs "don't outperform placebo" (often, in
turn, in reference to studies that directly or indirectly exclude or otherwise
under-represent people with severe depression).

2) A sense that the more severe a person's condition is, the less likely that
psychotherapy is to be effective, at least as a first-line treatment. There's
a lot of heat over whether or why this is the case, with a common refrain
among advocates of psychotherapy being that some people need antidepressant
drugs _temporarily_ in order to be able to "do the work" of psychotherapy.

3) A longstanding belief among various people in the field that "melancholic"
depression is both more severe/treatment-resistant/chronic/personality-based
and more amenable to biologically-oriented interventions. There is a
particular thread of HPA-axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) [1] dysfunction
that has been a subject of research for decades and continues to attract
interest, with a more specific clinical focus being the dexamethasone
suppression test (e.g. [2]).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamic%E2%80%93pituitary...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamic%E2%80%93pituitary%E2%80%93adrenal_axis)

[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27736954](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27736954)

------
curiousgal
I hold the prejudiced opinion that most, if not all, psychology research is
bogus. It's the one field with the most abuse of statistics and a crisis of
reproducibility that dates back to the last century.

~~~
threatofrain
This is psychiatry. Psychiatry certainly respects its sister field but takes
an independent look at the brain. We could always go back to the wild wild
west with no psychologists or psychiatrists.

I mean, does depression even exist, or is it a psychiatric scam?

~~~
q3k
> I mean, does depression even exist, or is it a psychiatric scam?

Yes. You're being disrespectful to people whose lives are severely affected by
depression.

~~~
unethical_ban
I think the hypothetical was posed to highlight the utility of these fields of
study, despite their issues with reproducibility and stats.

------
m_a_g
90% is really high. Like actually scary high. All the previous treatments were
lower than 60%.

I hope everything goes well with this treatment, and there will be no serious
side effects. It can save many people's lives.

~~~
penagwin
It looks to be a form of TMS which has already shown a lot of promise for
several mental disorders. I wasn't able to look at what they changed
specifically, but TMS itself is rather safe.

~~~
stevenwoo
Instead of one long treatment in a day repeated for up to six weeks, they made
it higher intensity, ten times a day, ten minute treatments on a day, repeated
with patients seeing difference in three to five days and they used an MRI to
target an exact location in the brain for each patient.

~~~
penagwin
Interesting!

Not to get to into it - but last summer I had a bad episode and was
recommended to ECT therapy and/or TMS (I have some other mental disorders that
would also benefit from TMS). My biggest problem with both of them was that
for TMS I'd have to travel a distance everyday for a month, with ECT it would
only be a few times a week but somebody else would have to drive me, and it's
not recommended to work during that time.

So this would be a game changer for me - I can take a week off no problem.

On safety: I'm no medical expert, my understanding is that why TMS works is
not really well understood (similar to SSRI's and other antidepressants) - we
just know it _tends to work_ and we have some theories for why. So from my
naive perspective higher, more concentrated doses certainly sounds like it has
the potential to be more dangerous - but that's just speculation.

~~~
grugagag
Does TMS affect long long term memory? Or is that ECT?

~~~
penagwin
Modern ECT causes temporary confusion and short term memory issues, but my
understanding is that they generally clear up after treatment. However, it's a
month long treatment, and it's not advised to work or drive during that time.
I don't think long term memory loss say several months after treatment is a
common problem, but I could be wrong.

To my knowledge TMS doesn't have those memory issues.

Please keep in mind that modern ECT is nothing like what people see in the
movies. While I'm not at all saying it should be a first tier treatment, it's
a treatment option for those with otherwise treatment resistant depression
(and also a few other disorders)

I was personally referred for ECT therapy last summer by my psychiatrist. I
was in the middle of a massive depressive episode, had already tried a ton of
different medications (and took a break from meds to see if that would help -
it didn't), diets, etc. I even mentioned to my doctor I was to the point where
I was potentially thinking about self-dosing on psychedelics or ketamine
because I felt I had no other options. At that point ECT therapy even with bad
side effects (which again to my knowledge don't normally last forever) would
be better then suicide.

I didn't go through with it because I'd have to take a month off work, and get
transportation to the clinic several times a week. Personally if it gets that
bad again I'm going to try to get TMS therapy, as I'm also on the ASD
spectrum, and there's been some evidence that suggests it may help those
symptoms as well.

------
slothtrop
As soon as I saw "magnetic stimulation" I was a tad skeptical as they've
already achieved this with brain electrodes in the past. The difference is it
could actually be practical, on psych visits. I see it as a stand-in for
medication with all sorts of side-effects. Not a solution mind-you, just a way
to bridge the gap to recover, which is what medication is meant to be.

EDIT: a stand-out line: "One month after the therapy, 60% of participants were
still in remission from depression. Follow-up studies are underway to
determine the duration of the antidepressant effects."

~~~
elric
TMS immediately dials my skepticism up to 11 as well. But there's some fairly
good evidence that is helps people who suffer from migraines with aura. From
what I understand, it has something to do with increased cortical excitability
in migraineurs, and TMS is somehow able to reduce that effect. I don't know
how this would translate to depression treatment, but it's interesting
nevertheless.

------
markroseman
Reading some of the comments is a good reminder that solid and meaningful
mental health research is very tough and expensive, just based on the sheer
variability, which can't be meaningfully captured by 99.9% of studies. Each
needs to be seen as one piece in a much, much larger puzzle.

I wrote up some of the problems with doing/interpreting mental health research
here: [https://mhnav.com/lies-and-evidence/](https://mhnav.com/lies-and-
evidence/)

------
loughnane
Anyone able to find the actual paper? I'm having a difficult time locating it.

EDIT: Here it is [0]

[0]
[https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.1...](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.19070720)

------
TheLegace
> Intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) is a noninvasive brain
> stimulation treatment that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug
> Administration for treatment-resistant depression.

If this is anything like Neurofeedback treatment, it wouldn't surprise me that
it is effective. Neurofeedback treats 3 major frequency ranges of the brain,
Delta, Theta and Alpha. Although this treatment seems passive whereas
Neurofeedback treatment requires active modulation and stimulation by the
person getting the treatment.

Going through Neurofeedback treatment myself and seeing the incredible life
changes because of it and now seeing the similarity of the affected brain
regions in this study shows that there might be some consensus reached on
treating these conditions without medication one day.

~~~
elric
That sounds interesting. Do you have any links with more information regarding
that neurofeedback treatment?

~~~
TheLegace
I found out about it in this book The Body Keeps the Score[1]. Its a massive
book, so I would just focus on the Neurofeedback section. But it doesn't have
the first hand experience so mileage may vary. By co-incidence the researcher
that pioneered this breakthrough treatment was located in the same city as me.
You can see some of the videos[2], but it will be difficult to understand and
appreciate unless you spend a lot of time reading papers and learning about
the brain. I will say its worth it to learn, especially if you want your
ability to focus to go from below average to far above average. Feel free to
email me if you want details, I had to become well versed at it out of
necessity more than anything.

[1][https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-
Trauma/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-
Trauma/dp/B00OBT7KAO/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Trauma&qid=1586284274&sr=8-1)

[2]
[http://addcentre.com/page-34/page-28/media.html](http://addcentre.com/page-34/page-28/media.html)

------
starpilot
This is some of the worst HN commentary I've seen. Boundless cynicism on an
early study which is actually showing unusually high success rate. What's
noteworthy is that the these results are good _among unblinded studies_ on
depression treatment. They are doing a double-blind study right now, mentioned
in the second sentence. These were patients with _treatment-resistant_
depression, which is defined as people who have undergone multiple treatments
without success and are rife with nocebo tendencies. These are not people who
are hopeful about their nth medication or round of talk therapy. They are
tough nuts to crack. That the treatment is showing any success with this group
is worth doing further studies.

------
MelioRatio
Here is the published study including an abstract, for those interested:
[https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.1...](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.19070720)

This new form of rTMS appears to have truly incredible potential to help
people whose depression is otherwise resistant to treatment, which is sorely
needed.

Having over 85% of participants meet remission criteria is, to put it mildly,
incredible, though with only 21 participants, sample size is too small to make
conclusions regarding large scale effectiveness.

As the paper notes, we now need double-blind trials. I very much hope that
this treatment will be able to help people on a larger scale.

~~~
GenericThrow123
These incredible numbers will almost certainly drop in larger trials and once
more medication resistant participants are included in a study. ECT is
comparable to the efficacy of this small scale trial, but their novel approach
and increased dosage could yield a major improvement to TMS.

Also, here's the biorxiv link to the full study:
[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/581280v3.full.pdf](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/581280v3.full.pdf)

------
Ididntdothis
Sounds interesting. I wonder what’s the best way to try such a treatment
without first spending tons of money and energy dealing with insurance and
doctors.

~~~
Roritharr
This. It sounds like this should be the FIRST thing to try, rather than the
last. Sadly this is not very likely how it is going to be for a very long
time.

~~~
ChrisClark
This is very similar to electro shock treatment. Causing localised seizures.

I don't really think this should be the first thing to try.

~~~
trts
The _point_ of ECT is to cause a seizure. The point of TMS is to achieve the
same effect without causing a seizure, though there is some risk of that.

------
taurath
Individual TMS is really interesting. My understanding was that most large-
scale TMS was untargeted and not really that effective.

I was about to write something about a side effect I had read, which was about
people losing the ability to swim, but that apparently a DBS (deep brain
stimulation) side effect for tremors from parkinsons.

------
jnaddef
> The researchers are conducting a larger, double-blinded trial in which half
> the participants are receiving fake treatment.

This second sentence from the article is enough: let us not comment on an
experiment that had no control group. I will be interested in the results from
the second trial though.

~~~
markroseman
I agree. There's not a chance that it will be enough to change practice at
this early stage, but it will be interesting.

------
yewenjie
Important note: this result is not from a randomized controlled trial, and
have been done on small number of subjects. The article mentions that the
researcher are designing a larger and proper trial.

------
cpeterso
Here is a short interview with comedian Neal Brennan about his personal
experiences with (40 30-minute sessions) of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.
He says it was more effective and longer lasting than Ketamine Therapy or
Zoloft. He was able to stop taking Zoloft.

[https://youtu.be/vB9DHMOiojE](https://youtu.be/vB9DHMOiojE)

This is an excerpt from a longer interview about his depression:

[https://youtu.be/FfsUxrGmbdU](https://youtu.be/FfsUxrGmbdU)

------
awaythrower
Assuming, on the off chance, that this isn't some sort of quack treatment
ploy, anything that works significantly would be a plus.

I'm on my 13th antidepressant now that is yet-again not working well and I'm
starting to wonder if my condition is inflammation-mediated rather than
receptor- or neurotransmitter-caused as only mirtazapine (also a powerful
antihistamine) ever helped me significantly, but only for a limited time.

~~~
1_player
Obvious disclaimer that every depression is different.

My depressive symptoms have never been medicated yet I'm pretty sure are
inflammation-based: changes in my diet drastically affect my mental and
physical well-being.

Exercise, lifestyle changes help, but diet seems to be the primary cause and
solution in my case.

------
sneak
Is there further documentation about this, or other papers I can read? This
part in particular seemed counterintuitive to me:

> _“The less treatment-resistant participants are, the longer the treatment
> lasts,” said postdoctoral scholar Eleanor Cole, PhD, a lead author of the
> study._

~~~
stupidcar
I interpreted this as “The less treatment-resistant participants are, the
longer the [effects of the] treatment lasts,” which would make more sense.

------
fallingfrog
If stimulating some part of the brain can increase neural activity in a
lasting way, could you use this to, say, make yourself better at math? Or,
could you use it to suppress unrest by making everyone happy? If this works
there are a lot of larger implications.

------
pyryt
Do I understand correctly that they basically: 1\. find the subpart of your
brain that causes you to be depressed 2\. use TMS to essentially block that
region from being so active ?

Wonder if you could use this one day also for the regions that cause me to
e.g. procrastinate...

------
johnward
I've done transcranial magnetic stimulation for my bipolar depression. Didn't
seem to help. It's a pain to try to work and go for treatments every day. Meds
work better for me.

------
cbsmith
HN click bait. Actual title is: Stanford researchers devise treatment that
relieved depression in 90% of participants in _small study_.

------
ck2
um, where does 90% come from?

 __ _Only about HALF of patients who undergo this treatment improve, and only
about a THIRD experience remission from depression._ __

and then

 __ _One month after the therapy, 60% of participants were still in remission
from depression_ __

this isn 't a magic wand but one tool in a toolbox

------
uyuioi
Depression is one the single most important economic problems the world need
fixed.

~~~
katet
Not a moral problem? Humanist? Why can't we have nice things and do this out
of simple human empathy for those who suffer?

~~~
uyuioi
Well. If you have depression and you’re a business owner or small trader for
example. It would be impossible to get out of bed some days and feed yourself.
So id say it’s one of the most important financial fixes for every human.

You took it as if it needs to be a fix just so people can be happy. Happiness
doesn’t mean you’re surviving.

------
propinquity
Is this the same concept as ECT?

------
backtoyoujim
yeah like i want the only thing that has stayed with me my whole life to
leave.

------
jonathanwallace
Sounds like mesmerism!

------
valuearb
Reproducibility crisis.

------
taigi100
Where do I sign up ? :rofl:

------
lstodd
This is equivalent to banging the brain with a sledgehammer.

No thanks, I prefer ketamine. At least it feels like a gentler one.

~~~
Natsu
That's great until you find someone with underlying psychosis and the voices
in their head after a few months of treatment tell them to take out a big
knife and go for a murder/suicide.

It's great for the people it works for, but Spravato/esketamine isn't for
everyone.

~~~
Jugglerofworlds
As someone who has schizoaffective disorder, I take offense to your assertion
that psychosis=murderer. Your claim only serves to perpetuate the stigma
attached to psychosis, when the disease itself is already bad enough.
Coincidentally, I happened to have taken ketamine infusions for depression
long before I was diagnosed with schizoaffective.

~~~
Natsu
> As someone who has schizoaffective disorder, I take offense to your
> assertion that psychosis=murderer.

I did not mean to imply that. I was relating a real event that I personally
observed.

------
alexandercrohde
Since this isn't double-blind, I wonder if there's reason to upvote it to the
top of HN now versus after the research progresses a little more.

Sometimes early signal, even if inaccurate, is very valuable (e.g. bitcoin).
With alleged medical advances, I almost never find that to be the case (I
can't recall the number of times I've read about cancer being beaten here).

------
gramontblanc
This reads as extremely ethically dangerous. I'm not sure it's possible to
justify any course of treatment leading towards individual neurocircuitry
'tweaks', even for an unambiguously good cause.

Harkens too closely to 'scientist seeks to cure homosexuality through direct
brain stimulation' in the 1950s. (
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath )

~~~
stupidcar
Isn't every treatment we have for depression some form of neuro-circuitry
tweaking? Whether you're using prescription medication, electroconvulsion,
psychosurgery, counselling or self-medicating with legal or illegal drugs,
you're deliberately altering your brain function in the hope that it'll result
in temporary or permanent changes to your feelings and behaviour. What makes
this procedure more ethically dangerous than those?

