Brain implants to treat mental illness

The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, a US military research division, is investing $26 million in an effort to develop a cure against one of the soldier's most persistent disease: mental illness.

The cure relies on a brain implant through which things like anxiety, Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder and depression could be treated.

The device is already used to treat Parkinson's disease and is based on brain stimulation.

In order to successfully apply the same technology to soldiers, researchers have to isloate which neuronal pathways the brain uses for certain disorders and then use the implant to force the brain to take a different circuit.

'We know that once you start putting stimulation into the brain, the brain will change in response,' explained one neurosurgeon.

The project relies on the fact that the adult brain is still changing and responding rather than the older theory which states that the brain stops developing after a certain age.