Hi, i was just reading your posting about that show on W5. I did not watch, although i had made a plan of doing so, but i did find on the ctv website a good highlight of the show in question... here it is (if not, you can go directly to http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060428/WFIVE_ripleys_060428/20060429?hub=WFive)
or to www.ctv.ca, and go down the page for W5 show, and it is under lighting the darkness...
Lighting the Darkness
Avis Favaro, CTV News
Researchers are cautiously optimistic about a revolutionary made-in-Canada treatment for severe and chronic depression -- what could be called a brain pacemaker to override depression.
A team at Toronto Western Hospital, which pioneered the technique, has implanted the pacemakers in 16 severely depressed Canadian patients (7 women and 9 men between ages 28 and 71).
Eight of the first 12 have had a "positive response" -- meaning their depression has lifted to the point where some returned to work and at least one started a new business. But it's too early to tell with the other four patients, who've received the implants in the last six months.
It's a technique developed by neurologist Helan Mayberg.
"The fact that the first number of patients have done this well is extremely exciting and encouraging and makes us very optimistic to pursue this," she said.
The technique is called Deep Brain Stimulation. Doctors deliver electricity via a pacemaker to an area of the brain called Cingulate 25 -- a small region about one centimetre wide.
It was identified by Dr. Mayberg as a region that processes emotions, particularly sadness. It's turned on high in normal people who are asked to think about something depressing. In those with chronic depression, it's on high all the time.
"I think it's like a thermostat," said Dr. Andres Lozano, the neurosurgeon who helped pioneer the technique with Dr. Mayberg. "When you are depressed it is set at 100 degrees, which is too high and inappropriate."
Groundbreaking procedure
In the world's first study of its kind, the medical team allowed CTV's W-FIVE to film patient number 16 -- 40-year-old Chantal Remeny of Toronto -- as she went through the groundbreaking procedure in March.
Remeny has been profoundly depressed for over 12 years. A physiotherapist at a Toronto-area hospital, she struggled to drag herself to work. But once home, her depression kept her in bed, with dark, hopeless thoughts racing through her head. Her family had to grocery shop for her, walk her dogs, and clean her home. She was also suicidal.
Dr. Sidney Kennedy is a psychiatrist and part of the research team. He assessed Remeny for the study.
"When I saw Chantal the first time I was really struck by the profound frozenness of her mood state. Nothing that she was doing gave her any pleasure or enjoyment. She had sort of become a hermit. She was really not functional in terms of any quality of life," said Kennedy.
Depression runs in Remeny's family. Four of her relatives committed suicide. Despite her deep depression, Remeny was always hopeful something would work to lift her spirits. She has been prescribed virtually every medication, has undergone therapy, even 65 electroconvulsive treatments. Some worked for a while. Nothing has lasted.
That's why she was recruited for the study at Toronto Western Hospital -- a test of the pacemaker in patients for whom all other treatments have failed.
A few volts of electricity
Surgery begins with doctors opening the scalp and then drilling two holes into the skull. They then locate area C-25 and then insert two electrodes into the region.
Then Dr. Mayberg questions the patient as the electrical stimulation is turned on in area C-25.
Some of the settings have no effect. One does. For Remeny, who has failed every known treatment for depression, from drugs to electroshock therapy, it is a sudden, striking transformation.
"It feels like the concrete was taken out of my head," Remeny said of the experience.
"It's amazing that, with just a few volts of electricity, one can produce such striking change in someone's mood and behaviour," Dr. Lozano said.
Dr. Mayberg is pleased with Chantal's response.
"To see profoundly ill people change before your eyes -- from the darkness and dullness to 'I feel like washing my clothes,' is the most amazing feeling a doctor can have," she said.
The procedure is being watched by surgeons from Australia, Brazil, and Spain.
International interest in the technique is growing because, unlike drugs, which bathe the brain in chemicals, it is a very targeted approach.
Explained Dr. Lozano: "The difference between this approach and the drug approach is, when you give a drug to a patient, that drug has access to 100 billion neurons in the brain and has collateral effects on other neurons in the brain, other circuits.
"Whereas now we are really pinpointing one small area of the brain, which is roughly one centimeter by one centimeter. So just a few hundred thousand neurons and these neurons are really causing trouble throughout the brain -- so one can specifically target these neurons and make them behave in a more normal fashion."
The transformation
The electrical current is on 24/7, as a battery pack implanted in the chest. It delivers a constant tiny electrical signal up wires threaded under the skin of the neck and scalp, to the electrodes in the brain.
One month after the operation and there is already a visible difference in Remeny. She smiles easily, has vast amounts of energy and most importantly the depression appears to be gone.
"I feel wonderful, and it's amazing. It's almost as if someone turned Chantal back on," she said.
Remeny has since been cleaning her home, making plans, feeling optimistic about her future. She was back to work, part time, within three weeks. And she remembers quite vividly the moment the depression disappeared in the operating room.
"For some of the electrodes, nothing was different. But when we got to some other electrodes that did work, I had some amazing changes, a total feeling of lightness to my head, like the concrete was taken out of my head."
Dr. Kennedy said not all patients show such an immediate response to the treatment, but in Remeny's case: "The profound slowing in tense sadness, really a sense of hopelessness, lack of energy, lack of interest -- all of those things, they are virtually all gone. It's amazing."
More importantly, the experiment has the potential to change the way doctors define depression. Many people still see it as a character flaw, a lack of drive. This study is showing its source may well be a brain defect that can be repaired with wires and some electricity.
"I think there is a fascination with the idea with something that is thought to be quote a psychological problem of depression," continued Kennedy.
"Here's an opportunity to identify within the brain where the depression problems lie, and show with simple manipulation you can actually produce a result."
But the procedure isn't for everyone. There is a small risk of infection from the brain surgery. There's also a 25 per cent chance the pacemaker won't work. In those cases, the pacemaker can be removed.
hope this help.
lolo |
lighting the darkness
Posted - 05/08/2006 : 10:54:27
back at ya.
So your not a basket case you are sick like the rest of us. I sent an e-mail to W5 about that surgery if I hear back from them I will let you know. By the way you are problaby a 
mom hard to believe when you feel like this I know, but I know my boy loves me and what it would do to him if I wasn't here even if I'm only half living . I just keep hoping that some cure will come lets keep our fingers crossed. How is your day going?
