Deep brain stimulation may boost memory

Jan 31, 2008

Patient flashes back decades in time after getting deep brain stimulation.

Deep brain stimulation may boost memory, according doctors reported today.

Deep brain stimulation is used to treat conditions including Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, and multiple sclerosis. Surgeons implant electrodes at certain spots in the brain and use electricity to stimulate those parts of the brain.

Researchers performed deep brain stimulation on a 50-year-old man who was morbidly obese.

Deep brain stimulation isn't a typical treatment for obesity. But the patient had already tried other obesity treatments and refused to get weight loss surgery, such as gastric bypass.

After informing the man about the procedure's risks - and getting his approval - the doctors performed deep brain stimulation. They positioned the electrodes to target a brain area called the hypothalamus, in the hopes that stimulating the hypothalamus would curb eating.

When the electrodes were stimulated at a certain threshold, the man reported feeling like he was about 20 years old; in a park with the friends and girlfriend he had had at that age. And those memories got more intense at higher thresholds.

Later, the man performed better on a memory test while the electrodes were being stimulated, compared with his test performance when the electrodes were off.

"It may be possible to apply electrical stimulation to modulate memory function" the researchers write in today's advance online edition of the Annals of Neurology.

The researchers saw if the patient lost weight after deep brain stimulation. The researchers did not reply in time for publication.