Electrical Stimulation of the Prefrontal Cortex: from Antidepressant to Memory Enhancement Effects

Abstract

The use of stimulation electrodes implanted in the brain to control severely disabling neurological and psychiatric conditions is an exciting and fast-emerging area of clinical neuroscience. For patients who remain severely depressed, despite trial-and-error combinations of medication and psychotherapy, a novel strategy has been introduced recently using electrical stimulation to modulate the neurocircuitry of depression. Our research demonstrated that electrical stimulation targeting specifically the medial prefrontal cortex, most effectively treats symptoms of depressive-like behaviors, as compared to several other stimulated brain regions (cingulate cortex, nucleus accumbens core and shell parts, lateral habenula, ventral tegmental area). This study identifies stimulation of a specific cortical region as evoking powerful antidepressant effects in experimental models. Further, our studies have shown that it could also be used to enhance the growth of brain cells in the hippocampus, which mitigates the harmful effects of dementia-related conditions and improve the learning and memory functions. These findings suggested that deep brain stimulation has the potential to be developed into a therapy to treat patients suffering from dementia as well as treatment-resistant depression.