PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Researchers reveal new more precise method of performing electroconvulsive therapy

Reports new study in Brain Stimulation

2013-05-06
(Press-News.org) Philadelphia, PA, May 6, 2013 - Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the most effective acute treatment for severe major depression. However, even with newer forms of ECT, there remains a significant risk of adverse cognitive effects, particularly memory problems.

Current theories hold that the regions that need to be stimulated to treat the depression (the cortex) are different and separate from the regions that result in memory problems (the hippocampus and temporal lobes). Theoretically, a more precise form of ECT could have all of the efficacy and few or none of the adverse cognitive side effects.

A new study published in Brain Stimulation now reports the initial clinical results of a novel form of precise ECT called FEAST (Focal Electrically Applied Seizure Therapy). This clinical trial in 17 depressed adults builds on earlier design work and animal testing done at Columbia University in NY. This new form of ECT uses pulsed direct current stimulation, with the bulk of the electrical charge being delivered directly under one electrode placed on the right orbital cortex, about 1 inch above the right eye. Traditional ECT uses alternating current, which flows in both directions and is thus harder to direct and target.

''We found, in this feasibility study, that FEAST produced clinically meaningful antidepressant improvements," said Dr. Ziad Nahas, first author of the research conducted jointly at the Medical University of South Carolina and Columbia University (NY). Dr. Nahas is now Department Chair at the America University in Beirut, Lebanon. "Importantly, the time it took for patients to be fully reoriented after the treatment was just 5 minutes from when they first opened their eyes. This orientation time traditionally corresponds to the cognitive side effects. This is much quicker than any other form of ECT, where the orientation time is much greater, sometimes up to or exceeding an hour."

Overall, the group had their depression symptoms almost reduced by half, after an average of 10 sessions over 4 weeks. Eight individual patients had at least a 50% reduction in their symptoms, and 5 remitted, meaning they were largely symptom free.

This was the first human use of FEAST, and the group is continuing to refine the method and test how it works using advanced brain imaging and electroencephalography (EEG).

Dr. Harold Sackeim, Professor of Psychiatry and Radiology at Columbia University and the early developer of the FEAST technique, commented, "These initial encouraging results suggest that one can perfect and refine ECT with a more focal delivery system like FEAST. These are exciting confirmatory data in depressed patients building on what we found in earlier work."

"Further work is needed to see if we can improve the titration schedule, refine the dose, and make this into another, better, method of performing ECT," said Nahas.

### The article is "A Feasibility Study of a New Method for Electrically Producing Seizures in Man: Focal Electrically Administered Seizure Therapy [FEAST]" by Ziad Nahas, Baron Short, Carol Burns, Melanie Archer, Matthew Schmidt, Joan Prudic, Mitchell S. Nobler, D.P. Devanand, Linda Fitzsimons, Sarah H. Lisanby, Nancy Payne, Tarique Perera, Mark S. George, and Harold A. Sackeim (DOI: 10.1016/j.brs.2013.03.004). The article appears in Brain Stimulation, Volume 6, Issue 3 (May-June, 2013), published by Elsevier.

The research was funded through an NIH grant for the initial development and human clinical work. Custom modified spECTrum 5000Q devices were donated by MECTA Corporation. The FEAST patent with Dr. Harold A Sackeim as the inventor, is pending.

Notes for Editors Full text of the article is available to credentialed journalists upon request; contact newsroom@elsevier.com or call +31 20485 3564; to schedule an interview with the authors, please contact Dr. Baron Short at shorteb@musc.edu or call +1 843 876 5142 or Dr. Nahas at +961 71 631 236 or zn17@aub.edu.lb.

The authors' affiliations, and disclosures of financial and conflicts of interests are available in the article.

About Brain Stimulation Brain Stimulation aims to be the premier journal for publication of original research in the field of neuromodulation. Its scope extends across the entire field of brain stimulation, including noninvasive and invasive techniques and technologies that alter brain function through the use of electrical, magnetic, radiowave, or focally targeted pharmacologic stimulation.

About Elsevier Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include SciVerse ScienceDirect, SciVerse Scopus, Reaxys, MD Consult and Nursing Consult, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite and MEDai's Pinpoint Review, which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Columbia engineers manipulate a buckyball by inserting a single water molecule

2013-05-06
New York, NY—May 3, 2013—Columbia Engineering researchers have developed a technique to isolate a single water molecule inside a buckyball, or C60, and to drive motion of the so-called "big" nonpolar ball through the encapsulated "small" polar H2O molecule, a controlling transport mechanism in a nanochannel under an external electric field. They expect this method will lead to an array of new applications, including effective ways to control drug delivery and to assemble C60-based functional 3D structures at the nanoscale level, as well as expanding our understanding of ...

The nocebo effect: Media reports may trigger symptoms of a disease

2013-05-06
Media reports about substances that are supposedly hazardous to health may cause suggestible people to develop symptoms of a disease even though there is no objective reason for doing so. This is the conclusion of a study of the phenomenon known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Those affected report experiencing certain symptoms on exposure to electromagnetic waves, such as those emitted by cell phones, and these take the form of physical reactions. With the help of magnetic resonance imaging, it has been demonstrated that the regions of the brain responsible for pain ...

Do-it-yourself invisibility with 3-D printing

2013-05-06
DURHAM, N.C. – Seven years ago, Duke University engineers demonstrated the first working invisibility cloak in complex laboratory experiments. Now it appears creating a simple cloak has become a lot simpler. "I would argue that essentially anyone who can spend a couple thousand dollars on a non-industry grade 3-D printer can literally make a plastic cloak overnight," said Yaroslav Urzhumov, assistant research professor in electrical and computer engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. Three-dimensional printing, technically known as stereolithographic fabrication, ...

A KAIST research team developed in vivo flexible large scale integrated circuits

2013-05-06
Daejeon, Republic of Korea, May 6th, 2013–-A team led by Professor Keon Jae Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST has developed in vivo silicon-based flexible large scale integrated circuits (LSI) for bio-medical wireless communication. Silicon-based semiconductors have played significant roles in signal processing, nerve stimulation, memory storage, and wireless communication in implantable electronics. However, the rigid and bulky LSI chips have limited uses in in vivo devices due to incongruent contact with the curvilinear surfaces of ...

Occupational data in medical billing records could prevent workplace injuries

2013-05-06
PHILADELPHIA (May 6, 2013)— A subtle change to hospital data collection policies could make a big difference in preventing occupational health and safety hazards, according to workplace safety researchers at the Drexel University School of Public Health. In a new article published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the researchers call on industry, occupational medicine and public health communities to support a change to data collection methods to include industry and occupation data. Every year, nearly four million Americans suffer a workplace ...

More than a good eye: Carnegie Mellon robot uses arms, location and more to discover objects

2013-05-06
PITTSBURGH—A robot can struggle to discover objects in its surroundings when it relies on computer vision alone. But by taking advantage of all of the information available to it — an object's location, size, shape and even whether it can be lifted — a robot can continually discover and refine its understanding of objects, say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. The Lifelong Robotic Object Discovery (LROD) process developed by the research team enabled a two-armed, mobile robot to use color video, a Kinect depth camera and non-visual information ...

Commands from the matrix

2013-05-06
Environment moulds behaviour - and not just that of people in society, but also at the microscopic level. This is because, for their function, neurons are dependent on the cell environment, the so-termed extracellular matrix. Researchers at the Ruhr-Universität have found evidence that this complex network of molecules controls the formation and activity of the neuronal connections. The team led by Dr. Maren Geißler und Prof. Andreas Faissner from the Department of Cell Morphology and Molecular Neurobiology reports in the "Journal of Neuroscience" in collaboration with ...

Weight gain linked with personality trait changes

2013-05-06
People who gain weight are more likely to give in to temptations but also are more thoughtful about their actions, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. To understand how fluctuations in body weight might relate to personality changes, psychological scientist Angelina Sutin of the Florida State University College of Medicine and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) examined data from two large-scale longitudinal studies of Baltimore residents. "We know a great deal about ...

We almost always buy in the same shops

2013-05-06
This news release is available in Spanish. This research study attempts to identify just how predictable we consumers are with respect to shopping patterns. As explained by one of its authors, Esteban Moro of the Department of Mathematics at UC3M, "the main conclusion we have drawn is that people's behavior is repetitive when it comes to visiting and spending in shops, and as such it is possible to have some success in predicting where we are going to buy in the future". Published in Scientific Reports, the open journal of the Nature group, the study was also produced ...

Penn study shows national movement against non-medically indicated deliveries prior to 39 weeks

2013-05-06
New Orleans, LA – A national movement to eliminate non-medically indicated (NMI) delivery before 39 weeks has prompted nearly two-thirds of all U.S. hospitals handling non-emergency births to adopt specific policies against the practice, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The results of the nationwide survey represent a strong step in promoting maternal and perinatal health, and reducing the number of infants requiring admission to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The full results of the survey are being ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Modesty and boastfulness – perception depends on usual performance

Do sweeteners increase your appetite? New evidence from randomised controlled trial says no 

Women with obesity do not need to gain weight during pregnancy, new study suggests

Individuals with multiple sclerosis face substantially greater risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19, despite high rates of vaccination

Study shows obesity in childhood associated with a more than doubling of risk of developing multiple sclerosis in early adulthood

Rice Emerging Scholars Program receives $2.5M NSF grant to boost STEM education

Virtual rehabilitation provides benefits for stroke recovery

Generative AI develops potential new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Biofuels could help island nations survive a global catastrophe, study suggests

NJIT research team discovering how fluids behave in nanopores with NSF grant

New study shows association of historical housing discrimination and shortfalls in colon cancer treatment

Social media use may help to empower plastic surgery patients

Q&A: How to train AI when you don't have enough data

Wayne State University researchers uncover potential treatment targets for Zika virus-related eye abnormalities

Discovering Van Gogh in the wild: scientists unveil a new gecko species

Small birds spice up the already diverse diet of spotted hyenas in Namibia

Imaging detects transient “hypoxic pockets” in the mouse brain

Dissolved organic matter could be used to track and improve the health of freshwaters

Indoor air quality standards in public buildings would boost health and economy, say international experts

Positive associations between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

New imaging method illuminates oxygen's journey in the brain

Researchers discover key gene for toxic alkaloid in barley

New approach to monitoring freshwater quality can identify sources of pollution, and predict their effects

Bidirectional link between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

Cell division quality control ‘stopwatch’ uncovered

Vaccine protects cattle from bovine tuberculosis, may eliminate disease

Andrew Siemion to receive the SETI Institute’s 2024 Drake Award

New study shows how the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus enters our cells

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy proves effective for locally advanced penile squamous cell carcinoma

Study flips treatment paradigm in bilateral Wilms tumor, shows resistance to chemotherapy may point toward favorable outcomes

[Press-News.org] Researchers reveal new more precise method of performing electroconvulsive therapy
Reports new study in Brain Stimulation