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How deep brain stimulation is helping people with severe depression
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Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an experimental treatment strategy which uses an implanted device to help patients with severe depression who have reached a point where no other treatment works.
But despite her involvement in the DBS collaboration, which involves neuroscientists, neurosurgeons, electrophysiologists, engineers and computer scientists, neurologist Helen Mayberg does not see it as a long-term solution.
“I hope I live long enough to see that people won't require a hole in their brain and a device implanted in this way,” she says . “I often have a nightmare with my tombstone that kind of reads like, what did she think she was doing?”
Mayberg, director of the Nash Family Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, introduces Brandy as a typical patient, who says of her condition; “It kind of holds me down, and it takes so much effort to do anything, or to experience anything, and there’s always that cost of, kind of reminds me of like scar tissue, like every time you stretch, it comes back and it holds you even tighter.”
After receiving the treatment, Brandy describes the incremental changes that occurred: “Things got a little bit easier. And even in the smallest things, it got a little bit easier to brush your teeth, it got a little bit easier to get out of bed, it got a little bit easier to have hope. That just started a cascade of positive instead of the cascade of negative.”
This is the tenth episode in Tales from the Synapse, a 12-part podcast series produced in partnership with Nature Neuroscience and introduced by Jean Mary Zarate, a senior editor at the journal.
The series features brain scientists from all over the world who talk about their career journeys, collaborations and the societal impact of their research.
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How artificial intelligence is helping Ghana plan for a renewable energy future
23:56Julien Harou’s career started in geology in his current role as a water management and infrastructure researcher now straddles economics and engineering, with a particular focus on using artificial intelligence (AI) to measure Ghana’s future energy needs. Harou is relatively upbeat about progress so far towards achieving sustainable and reliable energy for all by 2030, the seventh of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the United Nations in 2015. He points out that from 2015 to 2021, the portion of the global population with access to electricity increased from 87% to 91%, and last year about 30% came from renewable sources. Harou’s research at the University of Manchester, UK, incorporates computer modeling and artificial intelligence design algorithms to balance Ghana’s long term renewable energy and infrastructure needs. But AI also helps to address the environmental and human health impacts. For example, Ghana’s Volta River was dammed in the 1960s to create the Akosombo dam. But its arrival depleted fish stocks and increased weed and algae growth, providing habitat for vectors of waterborne diseases. It’s all about compromise, he tells the seventh episode of How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a podcast series that profiles scientists whose work addresses one or more of the SDGs.Episodes 7-12 are produced in partnership with Nature Water, and introduced by Fabio Pullizi, its chief editor.How a young physicist’s job move helped Argentina join the ATLAS collaboration
21:57María Teresa Dova describes how an early career move to CERN as the first Latin American scientist to join Europe’s organisation for nuclear research ultimately benefited both her but also the researchers she now works with back home in Argentina.The move to Geneva, Switzerland, where CERN is based, required Dova to pivot from condensed matter physics, the subject of her PhD at the University of La Plata, Argentina, which she gained in 1988. But any misgivings about the move to Europe and switching to a new field were quickly banished by her excitement at working on the L3 Large Electron Positron Collider project, she tells Julie Gould. Dova returned to Argentina two-and-a-half years later, launching the experimental high energy group at La Plata and driving other important collaborations, including the inclusion of Argentina in CERN’s ATLAS particle detector collaboration. She describes how it happened.How to plug the female mentoring gap in Latin American science
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10:45In 2013 physicist Carolina Brito co-launched Meninas na Ciência (Girls in Science), a program based at Brazil’s Federal University of Rio Grande de Sul.The program exposes girls to university life, including lab visits and meetings with female academics. “There are several girls who have never met someone who has been to university,” says Brita. “It’s beyond a gender problem.”Jessica Germann was one of them. The 19-year-old is about to start an undergraduate physics degree. She tells Julie Gould how writing a school essay about particle physics and a fascination for YouTube science videos helped in her career choices.This episode is the second episode in a six-part Working Scientist podcast series about Latin American women in science.‘There is no cookie cutter female scientist’
27:22In her role as Vice Rector for research partnerships and collaboration at the University of the Valley in Guatemala City, Monica Stein works to strengthen science and technology ecosystems in the Central American country and across the wider region.To mark International Women's Day on 8 March, Stein outlines the steps needed to attract girls into science careers. Access to higher education needs to widen, she argues, alongside more robust legal and regulatory frameworks to make research careers more diverse.“We need to inspire other women, we need to mentor other women, we need to be available for conversations,” she says. “We need to tell them it’s okay to say no to a project, because you’re pregnant, just giving birth, or your child is young, which is something that is so common here in Guatemala.”This episode is the first episode in a six-part Working Scientist podcast series about Latin American women in science.How Tiger Worm toilets could help to deliver clean water and sanitation for all
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