Electrical brain stimulation improves mood of people suffering from depression

Stimulation of a brain region called the lateral cortex reliably produced acute improvement in mood.

(Web Desk) – Researchers have found an effective target in the brain for electrical stimulation to improve mood in people suffering from depression.

Stimulation of a brain region called the lateral cortex reliably produced acute improvement in mood in patients who suffered from depression at the start of the study.

Those effects were not seen in patients without mood symptoms, suggesting that the brain stimulation works to normalize activity in mood-related response.

The findings show that mood can be immediately improved by electrical stimulation of a relatively small area of brain and provide evidence that mood disorders are the result of dysfunction in brain circuits.