Careful Research Needed

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has become well established in recent years as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease. As Kuhn et al. describe in their review article (1), the efficacy and safety of DBS for the treatment of psychiatric diseases are a current focus of research. Not a few people view this development with concern, and the reasons are evident. DBS is a direct intrusion into the human brain, the very organ that is most intimately connected to the human personality. Such interventions easily give rise to futuristic fantasies about interactions between man and machine. Furthermore, it might appear dubious that highly complex phenomena such as psychiatric diseases are supposed to be remediable with a circumscribed, local treatment. Not least, poor experiences from an earlier era of brain surgery give reason to worry: Until now, surgery for psychiatric diseases has always turned out to be on the wrong track, as its undesired effects have always outweighed its benefits to an unacceptable extent.