Chronic pain got you down? Transcranial ultrasound stimulation may be able to brighten your day, if research published in the May issue of Brain Stimulation is any indication.
Researchers from the departments of anesthesiology and radiology at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson found a significant improvement in the subjective mood of volunteers suffering from chronic pain both 10 minutes and 40 minutes after transcranial ultrasound stimulation. No such gains were reported after placebo treatment.
The team, led by Dr. Stuart Hameroff, used a Logiq e ultrasound scanner (GE Healthcare), with its 12L-RS ultrasound probe applied at the scalp overlying the brain's temporal and frontal cortex. In random order, each subject received two 15-sec exposures: a placebo treatment and 8-MHz ultrasound, which was undetectable to the subjects (Brain Stimulation, May 2013, Vol. 6:3, pp. 409-415).
Following the transcranial ultrasound stimulation procedure, subjective reports of mood were improved after 10 minutes (p = 0.03) and 40 minutes (p = 0.04), according to the researchers.
The mechanism of how transcranial ultrasound stimulation affects mental state is unknown. However, recent research from the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan, suggests that the technique may stimulate natural megahertz resonances in brain microtubules, enhancing not only mood and conscious mental states, but perhaps also microtubule functions in synaptic plasticity, nerve growth, and repair, Hameroff said in a statement.
Preliminary results from a follow-up study led by University Arizona psychologists Jay Sanguinetti, PhD, and John J.B. Allen, PhD, suggest that 2-MHz transcranial ultrasound stimulation may be even more effective at enhancing mood than the 8-MHz technique.
Hameroff and colleagues plan further studies of the technique for traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer's disease, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
