Training the brain directly

Another issue she faced was that she was morbidly obese, weighing 183kg with a BMI of 63 at her heaviest. This resulted in severely limited mobility which, naturally, exacerbated her depression, putting in place a vicious circle of poor health. As a last resort treatment, psychiatrists took a drastic decision to implant an electrical device in her brain, an invasive therapy known as deep brain stimulation. Not only did this treatment significantly help her depression, it had another astonishing outcome – she lost more weight than she had with any previous treatment, losing almost 50% more weight (2.8kg or 6.1lbs) per month than she had done after the gastric bypass surgery.

In 2002, deep brain stimulation was approved to treat Parkinson’s disease. It has been extremely effective and more than 40,000 patients have now been treated. Though it’s largely used for tremor disorders, this heralded its use in the treatment of other conditions, such a severe depression in the case of patients like Anna. To perform deep brain stimulation, first scientists use a drill to put a burr hole in a patient’s skull. After that, they place electrodes onto the brain itself. The patient is often awake, enabling researchers to test the specific area while the brain is stimulated.

That brain stimulation inhibits an area of the brain from performing its function is still a theory, but one that is strengthened by research in animals. For instance, a study using rats found that brain simulation resulted in an increase of the brain’s inhibitory chemical, gaba, which is released when certain areas need to be constrained. Another study showed that individuals which are better at controlling unwanted thoughts, had more of this chemical.

Yokum and her team are developing training tasks that are intended to help obese individuals reset the way their brain responds to food. They do this by showing digital images of health food on a patient and asking them to click ‘like’ towards it, doing the opposite with unhealthy food. “We are trying to train the brain this way,” says Yokum.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180312-how-electronic-brain-stimulation-silenced-food-cravings