US govt approves electric shock device

The US government has approved a new therapy for the severely depressed who have run out of treatment options – a pacemaker-like implant that sends tiny electric shocks to the brain.

The Food and Drug Administration’s clearance opens Cyberonics’s vagus nerve stimulator, or VNS, as a potential treatment for an estimated four million Americans with hard-to-treat depression – despite controversy over whether it really works.

A generator the size of a pocket watch is implanted into the chest. Wires snake up the neck to the vagus nerve, delivering tiny electric shocks through that nerve and into a region of the brain thought to play a role in mood.