[Content note: This story contains discussion of suicide.]
There is an intense physicality to deep brain stimulation for depression. Participants have two slight bumps on their head, wires under the skin of their neck and a battery-powered control unit implanted under the skin in their chest.
Because he was implanted with two sets of electrodes, Patient 001 has two battery packs, one on each side of his upper chest. He lives in a hot place near the ocean. “It just sucks I can’t take my shirt off at the beach and not be self-conscious about that.” Sometimes the devices in his chest feel alien to him when he’s going to sleep. “I put my hand on it to be comfortable,” he says.
Amanda has a strained relationship with the device, too. “I don’t like the idea of it. I don’t like how it feels. Every time I accidentally touch the wire in my neck, I’m like, ‘Ugh, ugh, I don’t like it,’” she says. “It’s getting better, but sometimes I can still feel that thing in my chest just sitting there.”
2023-09-21 08:35:00
Original from www.sciencenews.org
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