By The Financial District
Feb 62 min
American Amber Pearson used to wash her hands until they bled, terrified by the idea of contamination from everyday items, a debilitating result of her obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The repetitive rituals of Amber Pearson's condition are largely consigned to memory, thanks to a revolutionary brain implant that is being used to treat both her epilepsy and her OCD.
But the repetitive rituals of her condition are largely consigned to memory, thanks to a revolutionary brain implant that is being used to treat both her epilepsy and her OCD, as reported by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"I'm actually present in my daily life, and that's incredible," the 34-year-old told AFP. "Before, I was just constantly in my head worrying about my compulsions."
Brain implants have hit the headlines recently with Elon Musk's announcement that his Neuralink company had placed a chip in a patient's head, which scientists hope will ultimately allow people to control a smartphone just by thinking about it.
But the idea of inserting a device into the brain is not new, and for decades doctors have known that precisely applied electrical stimulation can affect the way the brain operates.
Such deep-brain stimulation is used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and other conditions affecting movement, including epilepsy.
Pearson's doctors offered her the 32-millimeter (just over an inch-long) device to treat her debilitating epileptic seizures, confident it would be able to detect the activity that causes the episodes and deliver a pulse to interfere with them.
It was then that Pearson herself had something of a lightbulb moment. "It was her idea to say: 'Well, you're going into my brain and putting this wire, and I have OCD, so can you just put a wire for OCD?'" recalls neurosurgeon Ahmed Raslan, who carried out the procedure at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland on the US West Coast.
"And you know, luckily, we took that suggestion seriously."