Do they make one of these for Netflix?

Addiction can be a cruel beast. But thanks to a first-of-its-kind deep brain stimulation (DBS) study published in Nature Medicine on Monday, we have more information about the brain’s response to addiction – and the beginnings of a method to potentially stop it.

⚡️🧠 More deets… The study’s researchers implanted a brain stimulation device in two severely obese patients with loss-of-control binge eating disorder. Over the next six months, the patients were observed with the goal of honing in on a distinctive signal that could be associated with binge-eating behaviors.

• In particular, the scientists were monitoring activity in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens. It’s involved in processing pleasure and reward, and has been implicated in addiction.
• Whenever the device sensed signals that were found to predict food cravings in prior studies, it automatically stimulated that region of the brain, disrupting the cravings (and thus, the patients’ behavior).

Over the course of these six months, the two patients reported far fewer binge episodes. Each also lost more than 11 pounds – and one even improved so much that she no longer met the criteria for binge-eating disorder.

📸 Big picture: The idea of deep brain stimulation in humans isn’t entirely new, but this is the first evidence of it being able to treat addictive-type symptoms. A 2017 study published in PNAS suggests that DBS could also help boost memory, and other research is exploring its use for substance abuse and other reward-seeking behaviors.