AUTHOR=Schlaepfer Thomas E., Bewernick Bettina , Kayser Sarah , Lenz Diane 

TITLE=Modulating Affect, Cognition, and Behavior – Prospects of Deep Brain Stimulation for Treatment-Resistant Psychiatric Disorders

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience

VOLUME=Volume 5 - 2011

YEAR=2011

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/integrative-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnint.2011.00029

DOI=10.3389/fnint.2011.00029

ISSN=1662-5145

ABSTRACT=Most patients suffering from psychiatric disorders respond to combina-tions of psycho- and psychopharmacotherapy, however there are patients who profit little if anything even after many years of treatment. Since about a decade different modalities of targeted neuromodulation – among them most prominently – Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) - are being actively researched as putative approaches to very treatment resistant forms of those disorders. Recently, promising pilot data have been re-ported both for Major Depression (MD) and Obsessive-Compulsive Disor-der (OCD). Given the fact that patients studied had been treated unsuc-cessfully for many years renders these findings remarkable. Remarkable is the fact, that in case of the long-term studies underway for MD, patients show a stable response. This gives hope to a substantial percentage of therapy-resistant psychiatric patients requiring new therapy approaches. There are no fundamental ethic objections to its use in psychiatric disor-ders, but until substantial clinical data is available, mandatory standards are needed. DBS is a unique and very promising method for the treat-ment of therapy-resistant psychiatric patients. The method allows ma-nipulating pathological neuronal networks in a very precise way.