NEUROPLASTIC TREATMENT for MENTAL DISORDERS

It is not a secret that treatments for mental disorders are limited in their therapeutic efficacy. The reason for this, among other things, is the lack of knowledge regarding the etiology (causes) of psychiatric disorders. For many years efforts to combine Computational Neuroscience with psychiatry are beginning to yield some insights that may connect phenomenology to brain disturbances and result in novel treatments. Such novel treatments seem to target Brain Plasticity. Plasticity is the term reserved for interactions taking place between, and among, neuronal network systems in the brain (neurogenesis and synaptic activity), these are typically interactive with external environments via sensation (sensory systems) and actions (motor activity). The disturbances to brain plasticity-dynamics can be defined by their time-scales and interactions with the environment. The future treatment in psychiatry will be achieved via modulating plasticity, there are 3 types of plasticity to be modulated. ‘Medication plasticity’ induction, is already achieved with SSRI’s. Direct electrical stimulation accounts for recently developing technologies these will induce ‘Direct Plasticity’ interventions. Finally, there will be the ‘Experience Dependent Plasticity’ where experience will be controlling plasticity using VR technology. To deliver a combined synchronized plasticity control a headset will be devised and will be equipped with a series of ‘Sensors’ that will extract the psychiatric phenomenology (mental status examination) by monitoring behavior speech content and affect. Then the phenomenology will be translated to Neuroanalytic formulation and outputted as therapeutic plasticity induction algorithms