The prefrontal and orbital frontal cortex are areas of the frontal lobe consistently implicated in patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), causing hyper-checking behavior or contamination behavior, while rodent models may only exhibit aspects of OCD.
Experiments with a couple of different brain areas involving patients who were allowed to stimulate with mild electric shocks, revealed that all three of them preferred an area in the midline thalamic structure, which produced feelings of anger and frustration, according to a transcript from the podcast 'Neurotalk'.
The Foundation for OCD Research is conducting an invasive trial to explore whether Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) improves OCD when modulated. A non-invasive approach is critical to optimize precision and define circuits.
FDA approval of Focus Ultrasound for tremor treatment has caught attention because it can deliver non-invasive ablation to the brain in a hypothesized zone that eliminates the need for invasive surgeries. Although the method works really well for tremor, finding a new target for psychiatric diseases, obesity and eating disorders remains a challenge.
The brain is a targeted approach and one of the biggest realizations of studying neuroscience is the possibility to optimize the brain’s functions surgically.
A neurosurgeon discusses his thoughts on non-invasive brain stimulation and blockade techniques and emphasizes the challenge of truly minimally invasive procedures in the brain.