Promising technology. Surgeons will establish “brain pacemakers” to people with alcohol or opioid addiction, to test whether this technology by electric pulses can help control addictions, reports the British newspaper The Guardian.
This brain implant technology is already used to help people with Parkinson’s disease, depressive people or those with an obsessive compulsive disorder.
“We believe that we can use a brain implant to act as pacemakers and normalize the electrical rhythms of the brain that are linked to dependence,” explains researcher Valerie Voon of the University of Cambridge.
Several small studies have recently suggested that brain implants could be effective in the treatment of alcohol addictions and opioids, this new important study should show if this technology could be more widely used.
A study conducted in twelve people
To carry out this study, researchers will select six people with alcoholism and six other attacks against opioid addiction. To be selected, these people will have to be addicted for at least five years, they have done at least three relapses, they already have conventional pharmacological treatment or have followed psychotherapy.
These twelve people will establish an electrode in certain precise places in their brain involved in the reward, motivation and decision making. These electrodes will be linked to an impulse generator, which will probably be established in your chest.
“The objective is to reduce a person’s lack state and increase their car -control providing these electrical impulses,” Valerie Voon explains.
These clinical trials will be randomized and the brain activity of the twelve participants will be recorded. The team of researchers expects to develop a new treatment to combat addiction, but also better understand the mechanisms of the brain at the origin of alcohol and opioid dependence.
Source: BFM TV
