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Alternatives to Meds for the Treatment of Brain Dysfunction Such as Epilepsy, Depression, ADHD, etc.

Monday, July 12th, 2010

According to a recently published medical study, there is new hope for alternatives to meds in the treatment of certain brain dysfunctions. Meds won’t be the only hope for relief for those suffering from epilepsy, depression, ADHD, and other types of brain dysfunctions.

According to the study published on the ASU news website:

The ability to diagnose and treat brain dysfunction without surgery may rely on a new method of non-invasive brain stimulation using pulsed ultrasound. This method has been developed by a team of scientists, led by William “Jamie” Tyler, a neuroscientist at Arizona State University.

The approach, published in the journal Neuron on June 9, shows that pulsed ultrasound not only stimulates action potentials in intact motor cortex in mice, but it also “elicits motor responses comparable to those only previously achieved with implanted electrodes and related techniques,” said Yusuf Tufail, the lead author from ASU’s School of Life Sciences.

Other techniques such as transcranial magnetic and deep brain stimulation, electroconvulsive shock therapy and transcranial direct current stimulation are used to treat a range of brain dysfunctions, including epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, chronic pain, coma, dystonia, psychoses and depression. However, most of these approaches suffer from “critical weaknesses,” Tyler said, including requirements for surgery, low-spatial resolution or genetic manipulations. Optogenetics, for example, is one state-of-the-art technology that merges genes from plants and other organisms with the intact brains of animals to offer control of neural circuitry.

“Scientists have known for more than 80 years that ultrasound can influence nerve activity,” Tufail said. “Pioneers in this field transmitted ultrasound into neural tissues prior to stimulation with traditional electrodes that required invasive procedures. Those studies demonstrated that ultrasound pre-treatments could make nerves more or less excitable in response to electrical stimulation.

“In our study, however, we used ultrasound alone to directly stimulate action potentials and drive intact brain activity without doing any kind of surgery.”

“It is fascinating to witness these effects firsthand,” he added. Tufail is one of four doctoral students in ASU’s School of Life Sciences who worked with Tyler on the project. The team also included Alexei Matyushov, a physics undergraduate student in ASU’s Barrett Honors College working with Tyler, and Nathan Baldwin, a doctoral student in bioengineering, and Stephen Helms Tillery, an assistant professor, with ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

“We knew from some of our previous work that ultrasound could directly stimulate action potentials in dishes containing slices of brain tissue,” Tyler said. “Moving to transmit ultrasound through the skin and skull to stimulate the intact brain inside a living animal posed a much greater challenge.”

For parents whose children are on a range of medications with significant associated side effects with the propensity toward long term permanent damage, the ultrasound technology appears to be a great choice. One Gilbert family whose use of certain medications for their son’s depression, wound up permanently damaging their son’s thyroid. Here is their account:

“It was one of those side effects glossed over by the doctors and pharmacists, kindof like an ‘Oh by the way…this never happens, but it could…’

It almost never happens, but it happened to us. We were saddened, and angered by a few issues we had with medications, and the doctors who so cavalierly prescribe them.

We were upset with the doctor for a few reasons.

The first being that the medication caused his thyroid to konk out. A complete shutdown of an organ responsible for regulating a variety of key systems.

The second issue was that it took 6 months to find out that his system was dangerously out of balance, and growing further and further out of balance with every day. His body wasn’t making a key regulatory chemical and he had a very dangerous case of hypothyroid. If a ‘normal’ reading was between 4 and 6, our son’s thyroid function was 95.

An immediate anger flashes through you, and a gut reaction is to call someone and yell. Then you realize it does no good to yell right now. You book yet another doctor appointment with yet another specialist. Great! Just what we needed!!!

The study goes on to say:

“We’ve come a long way from the observations of Scribonius Largus, a Roman physician in the 1st century A.D. who placed electric torpedo fish on headache sufferers’ foreheads to ease their pain,” Tyler said. “Our method paves the way for using sound waves to study and manipulate brain function, as well as to diagnose and treat its dysfunction.”

To read the complete study – visit: ASU news site
posted by www.southshoretms.com

Tags: add, adhd, depression, tms, transcranial magnetic stimulation
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