It’s amazing to think about how many more people we can help

Brain stimulation is one of the oldest and still most effective biological interventions in all of neurology. Beginning with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the 1930s, modern and less intrusive variations with fewer side-effects like Magnetic Seizure Therapy (MST) and Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) are now conducted every day by Dr. Daniel Blumberger and his team at CAMH’s Temerty Centre for Therapeutic Brain Intervention. They treat the most sick patients, the ones for whom no other intervention has worked, and see them getting their lives back. As these newer therapies are only available by public funding in three provinces (and not in Ontario), Dr. Blumberger believes only a fraction of the people who could benefit from brain stimulation are able to access it. Many people with mental illness suffer from depression, including people with autism and schizophrenia, where standard treatments for depression (e.g., antidepressants or talk therapy) don’t work. Public funding of brain stimulation would be game changing for many with mental illness.

As CAMH’s understanding of the biological mechanisms of the brain and its systems continues to improve, so does the Temerty Centre’s ability to administer brain stimulation in increasingly precise and effective ways.

At the moment, Dr. Blumberger’s team is exploring ways to maximize the impact of brain stimulation by using electroencephalogram (EEG) technology to see what is happening in the brain in real time as it is administered.

“This is an exciting new avenue,” says Dr. Blumberger. “We are seeing how the patient’s brain circuits are functioning and then delivering neurostimulation based on what is happening in those circuits. In the past you had a psychiatrist who listened to the patient and made interpretations about what they were saying. Today we are using EEG to listen to the brain. To be able to see what is happening in the brain and being able to deliver treatment in real time is a whole other level of specificity.”

That level of specificity in the form of truly personalized diagnosis and treatment is what Dr. Blumberger sees as the ultimate goal of all the brain research conducted at CAMH.

“Being able to understand what is going on for each patient, what is happening in the brain of each patient, and being able to deliver a targeted treatment for that specific brain pathology, I think that is the Holy Grail of medicine. I am very hopeful about the scalability of the tools we have and their potential to revolutionize how we treat brain disorders. It’s amazing to think about how many more people we can help with these personalized approaches.”