If you lived during the middle ages and suffered from Tourette’s, they called it possession by demons and burned you at the stake. Or made you the village idiot. But we’ve come a long way since then – thanks to a single pill taken daily, most people with psychiatric diseases like Parkinsons, OCD or even depression lead normal lives. Here’s humanity’s next step forward.

Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, has proved a powerful way to block the tremors of say, Parkinson’s disease. In short, it is a surgical treatment involving the implantation of a medical device called a brain pacemaker, which sends electrical impulses to specific parts of the brain. Roughly 70 000 people around the world have undergone deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s or other movement disorders when standard medications fail.

In principal, the same procedure should be able to combat mental illness. And it is entirely possible. The only kicker is that doctors aren’t sure yet where in your brain mental illness come from. But according to this article, results aren’t looking too shabby at the moment. Watch this space.

[Source: Syracuse]