It can be challenging to create a treatment plan for depression. This is especially true for patients who aren’t responding to conventional treatments and are undergoing experimental therapies such as deep brain stimulation. For most medical conditions, doctors can directly measure the part of the body that is being treated, such as blood pressure for cardiovascular disease. These measurable changes serve as an objective biomarker of recovery that provides valuable information about how to care for these patients.
On the other hand, for depression and other psychiatric disorders, clinicians rely on subjective and nonspecific surveys that ask patients about their symptoms. When a patient tells their doctor they are experiencing negative emotions, is that because they are relapsing in their depression or because they had a bad day like everyone does sometimes? Are they anxious because their depression symptoms have lessened enough that they are experiencing new feelings, or do they have some other medical problem independent of their depression? Each reason may indicate a different course of action, such as altering a medication, addressing an issue in psychotherapy or increasing the intensity of brain stimulation treatment.
We are neuroengineers. In our study, newly published in Nature, we identified potential biomarkers for deep brain stimulation that could one day help guide clinicians and patients when making treatment decisions for those using this approach to alleviate treatment-resistant depression.
