Brain implant that could boost mood by using ultrasound to go under NHS trial | Devices may have potential to help patients with conditions such as depression, addiction, OCD and epilepsy

From the article: A groundbreaking NHS trial will attempt to boost patients’ mood using a brain-computer-interface that directly alters brain activity using ultrasound.

The device, which is designed to be implanted beneath the skull but outside the brain, maps activity and delivers targeted pulses of ultrasound to “switch on” clusters of neurons. Its safety and tolerability will be tested on about 30 patient in the £6.5m trial, funded by the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria).

In future, doctors hope the technology could revolutionise the treatment of conditions such as depression, addiction, OCD and epilepsy by rebalancing disrupted patterns of brain activity.

Jacques Carolan, Aria’s programme director, said: “Neurotechnologies can help a much broader range of people than we thought. Helping with treatment resistant depression, epilepsy, addiction, eating disorders, that is the huge opportunity here. We are at a turning point in both the conditions we hope we can treat and the new types of technologies emerging to do that.”

The trial follows rapid advances in brain-computer-interface (BCI) technology, with Elon Musk’s company Neuralink launching a clinical trial in paralysis patients last year and another study restoring communication to stroke patients by translating their thoughts directly into speech.

However, the technologies raise significant ethical issues around the ownership and privacy of data, the possibility of enhancement and the risk of neuro-discrimination, whereby brain data might be used to judge a person’s suitability for employment or medical insurance.

Clare Elwell, professor of medical physics at UCL, said: “These innovations could be really fast-moving from a technical perspective, but we’re lagging behind on addressing neuroethical issues. We’re now accessing neural pathways in a way that we haven’t been able to do before, so we need to carefully consider the clinical impact of any intervention and ensure we always act in the best interests of the patient.”

To be honest I find it impressive that such a groundbreaking trial that involves brain surgery essentially only costs a little over £200,000 per person. There’s a lot of cost related to the actual study and oversight and ethics and this is first of its kind never been done before. It makes it sound like one day this could be a rather cheap procedure and option relatively speaking.