{"id":180406,"date":"2024-01-13T10:22:35","date_gmt":"2024-01-13T16:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/the-spinal-cord-could-provide-a-radical-new-way-to-treat-depression"},"modified":"2024-01-13T10:22:35","modified_gmt":"2024-01-13T16:22:35","slug":"the-spinal-cord-could-provide-a-radical-new-way-to-treat-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/the-spinal-cord-could-provide-a-radical-new-way-to-treat-depression","title":{"rendered":"The Spinal Cord Could Provide a Radical New Way to Treat Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-spinal-cord-could-provide-a-radical-new-way-to-treat-depression3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/depression\">depression<\/a> affecting around <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41598-018-21243-x\">1 in 10 of us<\/a> at some point during our lives, the need for new and improved treatments is a top priority for researchers \u2013 and it appears that spinal cord stimulation could be one route for experts to investigate.<\/p>\n<p>A team led by researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine devised a pilot <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/clinical-trials\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">clinical trial<\/a> in which a little black box was placed on the spinal cord of 20 volunteers with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/depression\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">depression<\/a>, with one electrode on the back and one on the right shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>The box then delivered a specially customized, low-level electric buzz to half of the volunteers, for three sessions per week over eight weeks. This was shown to have a greater effect on depressive symptoms than the different, \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/what-is-a-placebo\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">placebo<\/a>\u2019 charge administered to the other half of the volunteers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With depression affecting around 1 in 10 of us at some point during our lives, the need for new and improved treatments is a top priority for researchers \u2013 and it appears that spinal cord stimulation could be one route for experts to investigate. A team led by researchers at the University of Cincinnati College [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}