Interventional Biological Psychiatry

Over 150,000 patients with Parkinson's Disease and with Parkinson's Disease associated movement disorders are treated with the method of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) worldwide. For ten years now, DBS has been under research for psychiatric disorders (e.g. severe chronic depression and obsessive compulsive disorder) - with promising results. DBS is a treatment in which electrodes are implanted in well-defined regions of the brain, thus requiring a surgical intervention to the brain. Similar to vagus nerve stimulation, the stimulator or “pacemaker” is implanted in the region of the clavicle and is connected with the electrodes via a cable running under the skin. If tolerated well, the stimulation system remains in the body permanently. After implantation, the stimulation can be adapted from the outside using a remote control.

Current studies

• Deep Brain Stimulation of the Superolateral Branch of the Medial Forebrain Bundle (slMFB) for the Treatment of Refractory Major Depression (FORESEE III)

                                                            The recruitment for our current studie FORSEE III has ended

At this moment, we are not offering new appointment for our current study FORSEE. In case you are interested in a treatment using DBS, and fullfil the general study requirements, we kindly ask you to fill out the following document and send it to us by post or fax. This way we can contact you if/once we are recruitiung for a new study in the future.

Previous studies

• Deep Brain Stimulation of the Superolateral Branch of the Medial Forebrain Bundle (slMFB) for the Treatment of Refractory Major Depression (FORESEE I und FORESEE II)

Published articles

• Superolateral medial forebrain bundle deep brain stimulation in major depression: a gateway trial
  (Coenen, Bewernick et al., 2019)
• Acute antidepressant effects of deep brain stimulation - Review and data from slMFB-stimulation
  (Bewernick et al., 2017)
• Deep brain stimulation to the medial forebrain bundle for depression - long term outcomes and a novel data analysis strategy
  (Bewernick et al., 2017)
• Deep Brain Stimulation of the Human Reward System for Major Depression - Rationale, Outcomes and Outlook
  (Schlaepfer et al., 2014)
• Rapid Effects of Deep Brain Stimulation for Treatment-Resistant Major Depression
  (Schlaepfer et al., 2013)