Study reveals how brain stimulation improves cognition, decision making in mental health disorders

Researchers have uncovered important insights that could improve how mental health conditions are treated with brain stimulation therapy.

Brain stimulation therapy is a treatment where electrical signals are used to stimulate specific parts of the brain.

The research team developed a preclinical model of a human brain stimulation therapy and found the therapy works by enhancing the brain’s ability to process conflicting pieces of evidence — thus improving human cognition by making people more flexible in their decision-making.

Lack of flexibility is a major factor in multiple mental health conditions, including depression, ADHD and addiction. Treatments to improve flexibility have traditionally been difficult to develop because of the lack of preclinical models.

This new model directly pulls from work the team had previously conducted which demonstrated its effectiveness on humans, and now will help them understand why and how brain stimulation works. They intend to use those insights to discover treatments that work more reliably and help more patients.

“This work is a true translational story. We found an effect in humans, developed a preclinical model and then showed that the learnings from that model actually tell us how a human clinical intervention works,” said Alik Widge, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

“Now, we’re working to build a clinical trial around this idea of enhancing decisional flexibility. If we’re right, that could be transformative for a wide range of disorders, from depression to addiction to PTSD and maybe even autism.”

The research team hopes to move this work into clinical trials within the next two years.