Uncover the biology of mental health with brain stimulation technology
i want you to take a moment
and close your eyes now think of five of
your closest friends
one of them will experience a mental
health problem
or illness this year open your eyes
for me that person was my grandpa he
suffered from lung disease
and depression we lived together and
every day i would make sure that he had
enough oxygen for his lungs
but i had no idea how to treat or even
talk about his depression
my grandpa is not alone mental health is
a complex balance affected by our
surroundings our past traumas
our minds and our bodies mental illness
is treatable
but our friends affected face immense
challenges when navigating our
healthcare system
my name is raj and i’m a researcher at
the e-brain lab at simon fraser
university
led by dr farzan as a community engaged
engineering student
i’ve always wanted to make a big impact
through technology
i remember building a wearable device to
track my grandpa’s oxygen level from my
phone
i became fascinated by what the human
body can tell us
through its many rhythms and signals but
when i took a course on how to read from
the brain
and even change its behavior it finally
clicked
i realized i could help people like my
grandpa by pursuing graduate studies in
neuroengineering
i was thrilled to realize that we can
combine neuroscience
and engineering to uncover the human
brain
and one application is to find better
ways to treat
and diagnose mental illness but what’s
wrong with how we do it today
if you’ve never experienced mental
illness it’s hard to understand how the
health care system works
so i’d like you to close your eyes and
imagine a new scenario
you’re lying on your bed with a horrible
fever
so you force yourself to get up and ask
a friend to get you some tylenol
you take your dose but after a few hours
you realize it’s not working
your fever is raging out of control so
you friend goes back to the pharmacy to
get you another brand
again it doesn’t quite work and now you
have strange side effects like
nausea weight gain and even lower libido
only after many many tries do you find
the right drug
which stops the fever open your eyes
wasn’t that frustrating this process of
trial and error
is typical for patients with mental
illness but instead of each treatment
lasting a few hours a single treatment
can last for months
to years to make it worse there are many
different mental illnesses
and a single person can have multiple
each disorder
can have many different subtypes and
overlapping symptoms
make diagnosis a nightmare bipolar
disorder is one of the most difficult to
diagnose
seventy percent of people with bipolar
disorder are misdiagnosed initially
and thirty percent don’t receive a
correct diagnosis for an entire decade
even when diagnosed correctly
finding the right treatment is daunting
for example
youth with depression have less than a
50 percent chance of success
on their first round of antidepressants
it can take years
and years of trying medication and
therapy to find a treatment
that actually works side effects are
another major issue
one of the most effective treatments for
someone who doesn’t respond to
medication
is to actually induce a seizure but the
most common way to do this is through
electroconvulsive therapy
which comes with the risk of memory loss
while many people do find a successful
treatment
there are so many others who fall
through the cracks
remember our mental health is shaped by
this complex interaction of our internal
biology
and our external surroundings but today
i want to focus on our biology
we do not have a one-size-fits-all
solution for mental illness
because our brains and our bodies are so
complex
like cell phones on a network there are
many different ways that our 86 billion
neurons talk to each other
and when groups of these brain cells are
sending the wrong message
it can cause trouble it’s hard to figure
out which connections are malfunctioning
so we often group unrelated problems
together into the same disease
combined with natural genetic variations
across the population
it is no surprise that the same
treatment can have different effects
on different people it’s time to come up
with a solution
what if we could create a simple
objective test sort of like an eye exam
but for mental health
a test for the brain that could match
patients to an effective and
personalized treatment
well researchers around the world are
working on it
to pinpoint these specific problems in
the human brain
we need to unravel its incredible
complexity
and i’m so excited to share with you the
unique challenges
and technologies that shape this journey
at the core of our research is a safe
and non-invasive technique
called transcranial magnetic stimulation
or
tms for short transcranial means
through the skull so this technique
passes a strong magnetic field
through your skull to activate your
brain
in fact it works quite similar to
wireless charging in cell phones
we place a wand near your head without
actually touching it
next we charge up the coils of wire on
the wand with a strong
magnetic field suddenly a targeted
region of your brain
lights up for just a few milliseconds
the fast-changing magnetic field causes
neurons in your brain
to fire and create signals
magnetic stimulation is a powerful
technique
but how deep does it go in your brain
and does it affect parts of the brain
that we don’t want to target the answer
is that stimulation
generally activates a small shallow area
in the brain
but human anatomy helps us out most of
our brain’s processing including vision
and sound
all happens on the thin winding outer
layer called the cortex
some of this layer is close enough to
the skull to target with magnetic
stimulation
but what about the equally important
deep regions in our brain which process
memory and emotion well
we can reach these deep regions by
targeting areas on the cortex
which are connected through white matter
white matter is like the ethernet cables
that wire up different parts of our
brain
these special neurons allow the brain to
form connections
and different networks allowing regions
to talk to each other forming our
consciousness and our thoughts
and tms is a great tool to study these
connections and how they change
through life and illness at our lab we
use an mri scan
to map out our brains to find regions to
target it’s actually really fun
to target the part of your brain that
controls movement the stimulation is
precise enough to twitch individual
fingers on your hand
without your conscious control and when
you experience it for yourself
it’s mind-boggling in fact most people
can try
brain stimulation safely the most common
side effects include headaches or
twitching
which usually disappear over time we can
also use this amazing tool for
therapeutics repetitive magnetic
stimulation
is already used as a treatment for major
depression
we target the prefrontal cortex near
your forehead we don’t exactly know how
it works but we think it reduces
symptoms
by changing how connected this region is
to the rest of your brain
by stimulating the same region
repeatedly we can encourage neurons to
form new connections
and discard old ones thereby changing
the behavior of our brain
long term this crucial concept is called
neuroplasticity
we can use it to reshape the brain’s
communication network
just like we can reshape plasticine in
our hands
we can take it a step further and read
out the brain’s electrical activity
using eeg neurons communicate through
tiny electrical pulses and when these
neurons are synchronized
we can record these pulses through
sensors on your scalp
picture this your doctor taps your knee
with the rubber hammer to measure your
reflex
similarly we are safely zapping a tiny
region of your brain
then measuring the entire electrical
response over one second
the shape of that response is like the
signature
of the brain reading these brain
signatures
can distinguish youth with depression
which could be a huge leap forward for
accurate diagnosis
we can collect someone’s brain data
combined with what treatment plan work
for them
after collecting thousands of data
points we could recommend similar
treatments
to others with similar brain signatures
this could enhance traditional
psychiatric assessments
to find the right treatment on the first
try
and we can measure progress in a whole
new way
just like her handwritten signatures
improved from when we’re in grade 2
to wenburn university our brain
signatures can improve
with time and with treatment
tracking these signatures can even help
us develop new interventions that target
specific deficiencies of the brain
we can learn so much from these brain
responses
but there’s a catch we have very little
idea of how stimulating one region
results in an activity across the entire
brain
to add to this confusion magnetic
stimulation creates a large clicking
noise
which can activate parts of the brain
that process sound
this interferes with the signal that we
actually want to record
we need more information to pull apart
these signals and get a clear scan of
our brain signature
scalp recordings are fast portable and
relatively cheap
but are not precise enough to locate
activity from individual brain areas
so we need to go a level deeper and by
deeper
i mean underneath our skulls our
research participants are getting their
brains mapped before surgery
with hundreds of sensors spread all over
their cortex
and deep brain regions just like humans
communicate over wi-fi
radio and cellular the brain
communicates at many different
frequencies
too with this technique we record the
fastest brain activity at 250 times a
second
if recording from the scalp is video
from an old nokia phone
recording from inside the skull is full
screen high definition
despite a new set of challenges we still
apply magnetic stimulation to
our participants we can finally see how
activating one brain region causes
signals to spread
across the entire brain this new probing
tool can help answer a variety of
questions
about how we think we feel and move
through the world
i’d like to use this tool to isolate
unwanted
auditory and sensory signals from
magnetic stimulation
we can learn so much more about these
signals and then subtract
them from our scalp recordings this will
help us
measure accurately the brain signatures
of anyone
without having to do any surgery
by combining these different ways to
measure and modulate the brain
we can arrive at a deeper truth and it
takes an interdisciplinary team of
experts
to make it happen i’d like to
acknowledge our collaborators
across canada the university of iowa the
mayo clinic and the e-brain lab
there is a global network of doctors
neuroscientists
psychologists and engineers exploring
these new technologies
including many i haven’t covered today
there’s still a lot of engineering work
left to be done
like building portable sensors and
stimulators to make it easier for
patients
ultimately our goal is to translate our
findings from the research lab
to the doctor’s office so that one day
in the future
treating mental illness might be as
simple as getting glasses
and yet there is so much that we can do
today
i invite you to show compassion and
understanding to yourselves
and your loved ones join the fight to
eliminate the stigma around mental
illness
support policies that reduce poverty and
systemic oppression
and make mental health services
accessible to
everyone remember that a healthier
society
goes hand in hand with healthier brains
while our research isn’t quite ready to
meet the public
it presents the potential to build an
intelligent mental health care system of
the future
wouldn’t it be amazing if our loved ones
could have access to rapid and effective
treatments
to live their incredible lives to the
fullest
it sure would have been great if my
grandpa could have gotten the right
treatment
to enjoy his last few years he was a
philosopher
intrigued by the human condition and i
would remember him reading stephen
hawking
dostoevsky and tagore to me growing up
he would have been thrilled if his
treatments and diagnostics came from
unraveling
our incredible complex brains
i’m so excited to continue my work at
the intersection of technology
biology and the social sciences to help
create a healthier society
one where we can all get the treatment
that we need
and we deserve thank you
you