Electrical Brain Stimulation Prompts Big Hopes—and a Dash of Concern

Inserting a "pacemaker" into the brain to emit regular pulses of electricity and quell disordered neural activity may sound like a therapy of last resort, but if current experiments show beneficial results the brain surgery may one day be commonplace. But some scientists are cautioning that research on so-called deep brain stimulation may be pressing ahead too quickly, and warn that long-term effects of the surgery are not yet clear. A growing number of psychiatric researchers are testing the method's effectiveness on a host of psychiatric disorders.