Rewiring the Brain | Andrew Leuchter | TEDxUCLA

[Music] [Applause] imagine that you could rewire your brain to change how you feel think or create what would you like to change would you like to improve your mood be less self-critical improve your attention your memory perhaps your artistic skills as a professor of psychiatry at UCLA development of new methods to enhance mind and brain health is my professional passion in my program we essentially rewrite patients brains every day using a technique called neuromodulation neuromodulation involves stimulating the brain using everything from an electromagnet to a 9-volt battery the tiny electrical microcurrents these methods apply to the brain are virtually without side effects but can have a huge impact on how we feel and think and the connections between brain cells the wiring of the brain at the present time these methods are used primarily for the treatment of illnesses such as depression in the future these revolutionary methods may be used to unlock human potential to enhance how it is that we interact with the world there have been three revolutions in mind and brain health the first was the psychological revolution approximately 150 years ago it's hard to believe that until that time most people believe that mental illness arose from demonic possession or moral failing as a result the major treatments were punishment or confinement with the psychological revolution came the development of the so called talking cures we developed psycho therapies that could be used to help people deal with their feelings and thoughts and treat depression second was the chemical revolution approximately 70 years ago we made the purely fortuitous discovery that our feelings and thoughts were mediated by chemicals called neurotransmitters that send signals from one nerve cell to the next it pranaya is it was a tuberculosis drug being tested in the sanatorium in Europe to the surprise of physicians not only did the drug cure TB it made more OHS patients unusually happy it provides it became the first antidepressant medication and ushered in a new era when we could correct brain chemistry to treat depression antidepressant drugs now have become among the most prescribed medications in the world with more than one in eight Americans reporting that they take these medications every month nevertheless the problem of depression continues to grow depression now has emerged as the single most disabling illness in the world for the first time surpassing cancer heart disease and AIDS in the US alone one person ends his or her life from suicide every 13 minutes about the length of my talk we need better treatments for this devastating condition the neural modulation revolution is happening now we've discovered that in addition to operating on feelings thoughts and chemicals the brain operates on sending electrical signals through an array of networks mental illness can be thought of as a problem with the network wiring and if we can rewire the network we can treat the illness neuromodulation 2 was a fortuitous discovery a researcher in London in 1985 discovered that if he put an electromagnet on his head and activated the area of the brain that controlled his right hand he could make his thumb twitch really that is how science works this new technique was called transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS fast-forward a few years when scientists began to wonder what if we activated the brain not just with one pulse of energy but a whole train of pulses would repetitive pulsing lead to lasting changes in brain function the scientists discovered that repetitive pulsing made nerve cells more plastic that is they sprouted new and denser connections with neighboring nerve cells areas of the brain that were dormant could become activated and areas that were overly active could be quieted down this revolutionary new technique was called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation or our TMS this is an our TMS device the patient sits in a chair and a powerful electromagnet much like what you might find an MRI machine is placed on the patient's head the magnet put sout pulses of energy that are transmitted through brain networks throughout the brain after a few weeks of daily treatment areas deep in the brain that are involved in mood regulation can become activated and and actually can become larger new connections that are associated with normal mood can form these changes can result in a resolution of all of the symptoms of depression improved mood better energy sleep and reduction in or elimination of thoughts of suicide so how well does this new technique work well about 60% of severely depressed patients even those who fail to benefit from years of medication therapy can get a substantial reduction in their depressive symptoms using our TMS and these results can be long-lasting so what does the future hold for our TMS well as I've mentioned a couple of times in this talk the most interesting discoveries in medicine sometimes are fortuitous you can see here the area of the brain that we most commonly target first for treatment of depression scientists began to wonder what else happens if we stimulate that brain area we found that for example unpleasant stimuli become less unpleasant patients with chronic pain for instance still feel the pain but it bothers them less patients with fibromyalgia can get a substantial reduction in their pain symptoms if we stimulate here around the frontal pole of the brain we can help relieve symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder we also can reduce negative self critical thinking if we stimulate around the central portion of the brain we can reduce pain symptoms throughout the body this area also can be useful for treating some symptoms of Parkinson's disease stimulating around the auditory cortex of the brain can reduce tinna de the part of the brain that controls hearing can reduce tinnitus chronic ringing in the ears for which there's traditionally been no effective treatment in addition this can reduce auditory hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia some intriguing recent results suggest that stimulating around the posterior portion of the brain can improve memory function in older adults all of these findings raise a very interesting question and that is what could our TMS do for normal healthy individuals well as you can see there's a lot of real estate on the brain that's a scientific term and we're still learning what the effects of stimulation are I want to focus for just a moment on one particular area here at the junction of the frontal and the temporal lobes of the brain it turns out that stimulating this area can unlock some amazing skills that for many of us may be hidden just below the surface of our consciousness you see here what happens if you ask a normal healthy individual with no particular artistic skill to draw a picture of a dog you get a stick figure that while it's clearly a canine is pretty uninteresting but what happens if you ask the same person to perform the task after stimulating this area with rTMS suddenly the dog shows a motion he has a personality looks like he's ready to play you see something similar here for this drawing of a horse at first you really can't even tell whether it's a horse or a mule it's pretty dull and lifeless after rTMS however suddenly the horse is springing to life he's ready for action rearing back his head now I was so impressed with these results that I had my staff performed this technique on me I am embarrassed to say that this is my drawing of a woman before rTMS actually it's beyond embarrassed kind of like what you might see a kindergartner draw but this is what I could do after our TMS okay okay I had a little help with the painting it turns out that stimulation of this brain area doesn't really have to do just with artistic skills it actually has more to do with how we see the world in just a second I'm going to flash a phrase on the screen as soon as I do I want you to look at it quickly and then raise your hand if you see a problem with it okay I see that maybe a quarter of you raised your hands it's not easy to see I missed it myself the first time a bird in vivir hand there's a duplicated B only about 25% of normal healthy individuals will catch that error on first reading after stimulating this brain area however the accuracy of proofreaders in detecting errors such as these more than doubles to almost 50% now our TMS treatment for illnesses is delivered daily for a number of weeks so that the effects of stimulation can be long lasting whereas the stimulation results that I just showed you came on after a single treatment and faded in less than an hour it does raise the interesting question of what if we were to stimulate this brain area for longer could we make results like these be long lasting and what we really want to do this now our TMS treatment for illnesses is remarkably safe we've performed more than 6,000 of these individual treatment sessions at UCLA every year with a major common side effect being a brief slight headache some patients actually have hundreds of these treatments and they generally state that they're thinking and memory improves nevertheless if we are going to get into elective brain rewiring we have to ask ourselves how far do we really want to go this question is becoming even more important now as we are starting to move neuromodulation from a controlled campus clinic into the home there now are simple neural modulation devices that can be used in the home that operate on a 9-volt battery trigeminal nerve stimulation or TMS was approved by the FDA just last month as the first non medication treatment alternative for ADHD in children based on a study that we actually did here at UCLA you can see here a subject in another one of our studies using the TMS device for the treatment of PTSD in veterans the patient places a small patch on his or her forehead and they stimulate their brain at night while they sleep this is as close to a side-effect free treatment as you can get now TNS is an evidence-based treatment that is approved by the FDA but now there are a whole host of non-regulated battery-operated devices that are kind of do-it-yourself kits that are springing up for sale on the internet these are not subject to FDA regulation and they're starting to be widely used on the basis of very little evidence so who are some of the people using them well for one adolescent boys who believe that they can greatly enhance their performance of video games go figure students are using these to enhance their reading comprehension or their acquisition of musical skills and at the same time that the military is studying such devices for treatment of PTSD they also are examining them for enhancing sustained attention of drone operators in combat zones and we probably all agree that using this technology to reduce human suffering is a good and noble goal we may not agree however that using these techniques to enhance combat performance is a good thing we are just now coming to understand the potential of the neuromodulation revolution scientists estimate that the human brain contract contains some 100 trillion connections among nerve cells that is vastly greater than the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy we still don't know which of these connections can be rewired nor what all the effects might be we know that we can treat illnesses and some intriguing recent results suggest that we might be able to use our TMS to enhance our feelings of spirituality or even to reduce our implicit biases we may be able to enhance how it is that we interact with the world maybe even make ourselves smarter now we just need to be smart enough to use these methods wisely thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 17,156

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Science, Happiness, Health, Medicine, Research, Time

Id: jAqokhmK_a4

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2019