American researchers were able to find a correlation between the activity of a specific region of the brain and the degree of depression. However, we are still far from a therapeutic application.

Treating depression is no easy task, but it could get a lot easier in the future. Researchers from the US Baylor College of Medicine claim to have developed a way to decode mood, with which the emotional state of a particular person can be read by monitoring brain activity, according to the British newspaper The Guardian. IFLScience.

According to Samir Sheth, head of the project, this is the first time that human emotions have been detected so precisely by monitoring brain regions. Moreover, the team also found a way to stimulate a specific area of ​​the brain, and in doing so, they were able to generate a positive mood.

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One of the study participants, referred to as John, said it felt like a mental weight had been lifted from him.

Doctors achieved all this by implanting six electrodes into a person’s brain, where feelings associated with depression could be identified. This type of therapy is not new – it is already common practice in the case of Parkinson’s disease – but depression has not yet been treated with it. At the same time, the researchers emphasize that the process is not yet fully understood, so there is no doubt that such treatment can be used from now on.

By the way, five people with major depression were included in the study. In the future, more patient samples will be required to draw accurate conclusions, but it has been noted that the intervention is costly and invasive, so there is not much opportunity for this at present.

At the same time, during the study, the activity of the cingulate cortex was detected, which seems to be associated with the patients’ bad mood. Experts believe the connection is so strong that the severity of a patient’s condition can be predicted by activity.

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